Between a rock and a hard place: Black women, a century in the bottom class, 1860--1960

Discussions of race and class amongst race theorists have excluded wholly or minimized the extent to which gender exerts an influence. In the instances in which gender is considered, it is accorded secondary importance---treated as a nonessential factor, which can be subsumed under the "key" determining factors of race and class. However, the application of this perspective to social phenomenon only allows us to see a partial picture of how either race or class shapes the life chances of persons in American society. When we consider women, black women, in particular, for who race and gender have intersected historically to create a unique class position, it is clear that the answer to the question of which is more important race or class is misplaced.; In this dissertation, I outline my conceptual framework in which I argue for the simultaneity of race, gender and economic class oppression and the relationship of economic class to occupational position. I utilize it to explain how the intersection of race and gender functioned to constrain the class mobility of black women as compared to white women and black men for the course of a century. It builds on the theme present in the literature, which acknowledges that black women have a "race/gender specific experience" (Collins 1993:28) and extends it linking the intersection of race and gender concretely with the historical position of black women at the very bottom of the American economic structure.; Their current debased economic position, I argue, is a direct result of their historically disadvantaged position in the American occupational structure, which denied them access to occupational mobility and hence class mobility due to barriers on the basis of their race and sex. Unlike black men and white women whose master statuses were race and gender respectively, black women's dual statuses as black and female intersected, creating a multiple negative that acted to oppress them in a racist, patriarchal society where whiteness and maleness were valued. In sum, in the American occupational structure where racial and gender discrimination were the norm, black women were between a rock and a hard place.