I couldn’t let the week pass without saying something about Shirley Chisholm.
I was 13 when Chisholm, who had already beat the odds when she beat two men in her Brooklyn district to become the first black woman to serve in Congress, was busy taking on another challenge. This time, she was running for the presidency of the United States.
I recall the gaggles of women who surrounded Chisholm at the Democratic National Convention in 1972, her mantra about being unbought and unbossed, and her brilliance and confidence.
But I also remember a mild controversy that erupted around Chisholm during those times.
Redd Foxx, a pioneering comedian known for his crude humor, made a joke about her that rubbed many black people the wrong way. Basically, he said that while he generally preferred black women over white women, he sure as hell would take Raquel Welch over Shirley Chisholm.
Being that the “black is beautiful,” movement still reigned, Foxx’s quip drew angry responses from many black people. Why did he have to drag Chisholm, who was approaching icon stature, into a silly discussion about who he’d prefer to sleep with?
But for me Foxx’s joke, while it was intended to provoke laughs rather than tongue lashings, stung because of the reality it projected at that time; that when it all boils down to brass tacks, women – unlike men – have to be pleasing to look at before being listened to. Ironically, it was a reality that the dark-skinned, bespectacled Chisholm, and all the other feminists were feverishly working to counteract.
And while I’m sure that her fans probably got more upset about the joke than she did, what was important was that Chisholm, who died on New Year’s Day at age 80, didn’t allow her life to be limited by such shallowness.
She had too many other things to worry about.
As a member of the House Education and Labor Committee – an assignment she fought for after initially being relegated to the House Agriculture Committee [she reminded them that there wasn’t much agriculture in Brooklyn] – Chisholm began work on legislation to sponsor a nationwide system of day care centers.
She also vigorously opposed laws that allowed for unchecked wiretapping and domestic spying, and was a staunch opponent of the Vietnam War.
She also championed the Equal Rights Amendment.
Chisholm’s politics were largely driven by her passion for the poor and the voiceless. The New York Times reported that she would be reduced to tears while describing the plight of malnourished schoolchildren in her district.
It was likely those realities that made Chisholm, for the most part, shun the shallowness that often rules when women allow themselves to become too preoccupied with their looks and their sex appeal. Unfortunately, though, such superficiality reigns these days.
It reigns on BET, where Melyssa Ford, a former video model and co-host of the show BET Style, told Essence magazine, “I’m eye candy, and that’s as far as it goes.”
It reigns among too many young girls – both black and white – who show up at school dressed more for a night of clubbing than for a day of learning. And I cringe when I go into a store and scan the racks for teen girl magazines, and almost every other story is about how to get boys, not how to develop passions for things that really matter.
Now there’s nothing wrong with a woman making the most of her looks and being appealing. But there’s more to life than that. And that point is being lost on too many of us.
But what Chisholm showed was that intelligence and guts can be the stuff of sexiness.
I’m sure that despite what Foxx said, her two husbands must have thought so. And I believe that black women like her paved the way for black women like me to not shrink at the odds and to carve my own path in life rather than cave into expectations already created.
In any case, she leaves a legacy that transcends the shallowness of what is deemed as physical beauty.
And I hope that the way Chisholm lived her life will cause more of us sisters to remember that it is our legacies that live on long after our looks – and our lives – have turned to dust.
