Turn the Ships Around! The Activist Art of Pearl Cleage

[Brothers] say that when the ships pulled up on the shores of Africa and the slavers came ashore to look for us, we [women] were the ones who held them back....We were the ones, they say, who encouraged them to stay at home, telling them how worried we would be if they went down there with the other warriors to turn the ships around.

Pearl Cleage: Deals With the Devil and Other Reasons to Riot (NY: Ballantine Books, 1987), 48.

In her essay, "Good Brother Blues" in Deals With the Devil, prolific playwright/novelist/essayist Pearl Cleage emphatically defines what the progressive African American woman is looking for in a man. She terms him "a righteous brother"—a man "who can listen...can teach... who is not intimidated or confused by the power and the magic of women" (46). He is especially someone who would never engage in any emotional or physical violence against women, or display a sexist attitude of any sort; but more than this, at his best he is tender, considerate, respectful. However, after describing at length the kind of Black man that even the most ardent of feminists might love, Cleage summarizes with the ultimate encompassing attribute: "We are looking for a brother who will turn the ships around." (46, 47).

She alludes to a misunderstanding that perhaps lies at the core of the uneasy relationship that often exists between Black men and women as they negotiate the precarious minefield of racism in the United States. Why didn't our African male warriors go down to the shores when the slave ships first arrived and turn those ships around? It has become an accusatory metaphor that lies uneasily beneath the surface whenever African-descended communities suffer racist assaults. Cleage articulates the Black male standpoint: "We [women] want, they say, all the protection and safety offered by a strong man, but we are unwilling to accept the presence of the warrior's heart. We, they say, are responsible for any confusion that exists on the manhood question; we are the ones, they say that counsel caution instead of courage; diplomacy instead of defense" (Deals 48). This core tension may lie at the heart of what Black feminist scholar Patricia Hill Collins describes as.... (cont.)