Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

In this essay, Lorde responds to Robert Staples’s article, “The Myth of Black Macho: A Response to Angry Black Feminists,” published in a 1979 issue of The Black Scholar. Lorde’s response, published in the following issue of The Black Scholar, argues that Black women addressing Black women’s issues should not be perceived as a threat to Black men, Black solidarity, or Black liberation. Furthermore, attacking Black Feminists in order to open dialogue between Black men and women is “shortsighted and self-defeating” (60) because the entire Black community stands to benefit from the eradication of sexism and misogyny.

Lorde inquires why Black men feel threatened, especially considering the self-evident inequality that exists with Black women remaining the lowest-paid group of all people despite recent economic gains (60). There is no analysis of capitalism that would justify Black men directing their rage towards Black women, particularly when Black women are likewise justifiably enraged yet refrain from violence against Black men—in contrast to how Black men rape, beat, and murder Black women (60-61). While Black men’s grievances and anxieties regarding the capitalist structure merit discussion, it is neither Black women’s nor Black Feminists’ job to articulate or tend to those grievances, especially when these same women bear the brunt of the men’s violent anticapitalist rage.