Black Men Vs. Black Women: Exploring The Sexism, Abuse, and Elitism in Black Advancement Throughout History- Visual

 Jerriona Leonard

Professor Harris

ENGL 2016

30 November, 2025

Black Men Vs. Black Women: Exploring The Sexism, Abuse, and Elitism in Black Advancement Throughout History

The steps taken toward Black Advancement have been numerous and significant. Many movements have taken place that have been monumental in our liberation, most of which have been represented by a Black man. Throughout history, the focus has been on the Black man as a representative of the Black community. When equality, peace, and justice for Black people are considered, Black women are often left out of the picture. The focus, the investment, and the attention are given to the Black man while Black women are asked to sit back, surrender their place in the movements, and trust that the men will provide those rights and freedoms to them once they obtain them for themselves. But what happens when they don’t? This dynamic of power, almost like a domino effect, where the Black man fights for his freedom from the white man, and the Black woman, as a result, will receive freedom as well, reminds me of W. E. B. Du Bois’s “The Talented Tenth”. This theory stated that if Black people invested in their most gifted children, pouring attention, academic resources, and hope into them, then they would go out and become educated, then return to their homes and pour into their communities. But for this ideology, the same question remains: what if they don’t? This idea–that Black women are supposed to wait for Black men to save them while Black men are also trying to save themselves–has sexist and elitist underpinnings, and is a theme that is challenged in the SOUL! Interview between Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin. 

To visualise this topic, I created an original painting attached below, which I titled, The Downward Domino Effect.

The Downward Domino Effect (Leonard, 2025).

 Previously, I stated that Black women are expected to wait to be saved by Black men while they simultaneously attempt to save themselves from their white counterparts. In the image, a white man is standing on a pile of human hearts while he points his finger in a commanding manner. He also holds a bleeding heart behind his back. He towers over a Black man, who is kneeling in a pool of blood. There is a bleeding open cavity in the Black man’s chest, signifying his missing heart, which is in the hands of the white man standing over him. He points at the Black woman in the image, mimicking the same position as the white man, as she drowns in the pool of blood. She grabs onto the wrist of the Black man as he points down at her, her nails digging into his skin, making him bleed onto her. The entire image is a symbolic depiction of the hierarchy in America that, even in the present day, has been affecting society behind the scenes. 

The Black man in the image is imitating the stance of the white man as a means of control and an attempt to regain power in the only way that he can: through asserting his power over the Black woman. In the SOUL! Interview, Giovanni and Baldwin talked about the power dynamic between white men, Black men, and Black women. In one portion of the interview, when the two were discussing the Black   man being restricted in his ability to fully “be a man,” and the abuse he inflicts on the Black   woman and his children as a result of this, Baldwin said:

 “My father finally went mad and I understood when I became a man, how that could happen. It wasn't like he didn't love us, he loved us. It wasn't like he didn't love his wife [...] he loved her, but he couldn't take it. Day after day and hour after hour being treated like a n*gger, on that job and in those streets and on those subways, and then coming home to his children who did not understand them at all, who were moving further and further away from them because they were afraid of him, and also which is even worse, afraid of the situation, the condition, which he represented.”

He explained that Black men, because they are mistreated constantly by their white counterparts, are unable to properly love their families. He also mentioned that one will eventually become like the kind people who hurt and oppress them. In response to this statement, Giovanni said, “ I don't understand how [...] a Black   man, that he can be nothing in the streets, and so fearful in his home, that he can, he can be brutalized by some white person somewhere, and then come home and treat, you know what I mean, me, my mother, it's the same way that he was being treated.” This dialogue between the two is an example of a real-life application of this scenario. 

The white man standing on top of a pile of hearts represents the many people he has hurt and oppressed to seem superior and gain power for himself. He towers over the Black man, looking down on and causing harm to both him and the Black woman, but pointing directly at the man. This is to further display how the “Downward Domino Effect” works. The white man is targeting the Black man, and the Black man, because he is treated as less of a man, resorts to oppressing the Black woman to feel a sense of superiority. As stated by Baldwin, he is becoming the people who hurt him, which is demonstrated by the open chest cavity where the heart was.

The Black woman’s firm grip on the man’s wrist, causing him to bleed, is symbolic of her expectation to be saved by him. She is hoping that he will lift her up, but she continues to drown, and her grip on him only makes him bleed onto her more. The pool of blood is an important part of the piece, as it represents the pain of the Black man as well as of the men and women before him. All of the trauma and hurt from multiple generations consumes them both, especially the Black woman, because historically, Black women have been expected to bear the weight of their families and carry the burdens placed on Black men as well. In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, one of the main characters, Janie’s grandmother, calls Black women the “Mule of the World,” explaining how white people “hand the burdens” to Black men, and Black   men, worn down, frustrated, and deprived of power, pass that weight “onto the womenfolks.” 

I also added a golden aura around the Black woman to symbolise her unused potential. Black women were often placed at the back of these movements. Women’s rights focused on white women’s rights and didn’t usually consider Black women, so they are often left out of the picture. In the 1960s, Stokely Charmicheal, a Black male Civil Rights activist, said that “The only position for women in the movement is prone.” While this statement was said as a joke, there was reality behind it, and it reinforced the expectation that Black women should both literally and figuratively ”lie down” while Black men take the lead during the movement. The Black man has a dark, purple aura. Purple, a mixture of red, which symbolises anger, and blue, which symbolises sadness, shows the mixture of negative emotions that are bottled up inside the Black man and released onto the Black woman.

The painting and its metaphoric messages and deep symbolism represent the sad reality of the past and present in Black history. It uncovers the sexism, abuse, and elitism that Black women experience as a result of the layered oppression within our own community. Black women have been expected to sit down, be idle, and submit to their male counterparts in hopes of being liberated through them. While the past cannot be changed, as a people, the Black community can address these issues to prevent them in the future and create a space of equality, safety, and freedom for everyone in it.