The women interviewed in Double Burden share bitter,  important home truths as well as personal triumphs. Their accounts of  what it's like to be black and female in America just might open some  tightly shut eyes.  Although many whites wishfully conceive of slavery  as an awful, but surely very distant, chapter in U.S. history, Yannick  St. Jean and Joe R. Feagin show how powerfully its legacy has  continued to play out in outright segregation and the insidious  undercutting of negative characterizations.  Fueled by a collective  memory of brutality and frequent reminders that racism still thrives,  the well-educated, middle-class women quoted in the book recall being  given denigrating social messages about their beauty, self-worth,  sexuality, intelligence, and drive. Their pride in being resourceful  and willing to stand up for themselves rings through. One woman says  she keeps white men at work from "bothering" her by  threatening legal action: "Now, what do you own besides that  pickup truck and that big hat and those boots you got on?" she  asks. "Because it's going to be mine if you keep fooling with  me." Double Burden dips into a deep well of anger and  suspicion, and though its message may be hard to bear, it lobs a  necessarily explosive charge that blasts through the barriers built up  by everyday, often unconscious acts of racism. --Francesca  Coltrera

Double burden: Black women and everyday racism PDF

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