Simien Discusses Gender, Race

By: Katie Uhlan

Posted: 3/16/07

The Women's Center played host to a Herstory Month event Thursday night as Dr. Evelyn Simien lectured on her book "Black Feminist Voices in Politics."

Simien, a professor of political science and women's studies at UConn, highlighted important black women throughout the history of the feminist movement and comparing them to black men in the civil rights movement.

Throughout the talk, Simien would ask the audience, made up of about 45 students and faculty, to raise their hand if they recognized a name of an activist and every single time hands went up for the male names and stayed down for the female names.

"I think it's really interesting how she related the African American male counterpart, people recognized the male even though the women may have been more educated or important," said Chandra Waring, an 8th-semester sociology major.

A quote by Mary Churh Terrell, one of the women showcased in her book, summed up Simien's discussion very nicely: "A woman has only one handicap to overcome - a great one, true, her sex. A colored woman faces two - her sex and her race. A colored man has only one - that of race."

In addition to highlighting the lives and works of women vital to the black feminist movement, including Anna Julia Cooper, Sojourner Truth, Nannie Helen Burroughs and Francis E.W. Harper, Simien also showed how to identify a black feminist.

From 1993 to 1994, and again from 2004 to 2005, Simien conducted a survey of black adults, asking them specific questions about their attitudes toward black feminist consciousness. The results showed that a majority of black women supported the black feminist movement, but what may have been more shocking was the overwhelming majority of black men, in many cases more than the women, who supported black feminist consciousness.

"The study of black feminist attitudes and its over-time variation alerts us to issues relevant to gender that promote racial group consensus and at the same time, stimulate various modes of political behavior," Simien said.

"I just found it interesting how she related sex and gender to politics," said Marsha Techeira, a 4th-semester political science major. "Of course, men will have a different approach."

Simien is currently working on a second book on modern civil rights, looking at other important figures' lives to tie in a relation to the state of the civil rights movement today.

The courses she teaches at UConn include black feminist politics, a combined women's studies and political science class, African-American politics and black leadership and civil rights.

Simien's book was available for sale at the talk and can also be found at the UConn Co-op.

The lecture was hosted by the Women's Center, the Progressive Student Alliance, the Black Students Association, NAACP-UConn Chapter, UConn NOW and Mu Sigma Upsilon.