Are Women Included in the Fight for Black Civil Rights?

Sunday, I had a conversation on air with Rev. Jesse Jackson, Dr. Marc Lamont Hill and Dr. Julianne Malveaux. During the discussion, we brought up the meeting between Rev. Al Sharpton, Marc Morial, Ben Jealous and President Barack Obama. Dr. Malveaux made an excellent point during our conversation, in which she asked why more women were not included in the meeting that Jealous, Morial and Sharpton had with President Obama. I thought about the question for a second, and here are some quick thoughts:

We know that women have been historically excluded from the forefront of the struggle for Civil Rights. We also know this is wrong. African American women, with all of the contributions they've made to the advancement of black people, deserve to have a voice in the American conversation on race and every other issue of relevance. Misogyny runs deep in the black community, perhaps deeper than within white America. This has got to change.

I spoke on this issue with Rev. Sharpton yesterday, who gave me a thorough explanation of how the meeting with President Obama went down. He agreed whole-heartedly that women should be included in future dialogues. One challenge with his meeting with President Obama is that the group that had the meeting with the president were the ones who requested the meeting, President Obama was not the one who requested it. This was the natural reason that Dorothy Height, former head of the National Council for Negro Women, was invited to participate, since she was part of the group who asked to meet with Presisdent Obama. It would have been difficult to include others in the meeting, given that there was a blizzard, and they didn't find out about the meeting until the last minute.

While it is commendable that Dorothy Height was invited to be part of the group that met with President Obama, the truth is that we can continue to make progress on this front. There are other outstanding women doing amazing things, like Dr. Julianne Malveaux (President of Bennett College) and Bernice King, the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Malveaux is a natural participant in the conversation about black unemployment, given that she has a PhD in Economics from MIT. But I would also argue that her contention with the president might make a dialogue more challenging, since President Obama seems most interested in speaking with African Americans who have not been highly critical of him. On the other hand, Dr. Malveaux's critiques of the president should be respected, not ignored. If Dr. Malveaux would not be a good fit for such a meeting, another black woman should be given a voice.

Even when I engage in black social commentary, I rarely get the chance to hear as many black female voices as the male ones. During the Don Imus "Nappy Headed Hoe" scandal in 2006, there were no prominent black female figures in position to respond to Imus' horrible statement. That needs to change, and all of us need to find ways to be sensitive to the need for including black women in our fight for equality. Without the relentless and courageous support of women, we'd be almost nothing.