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Emily West
This is from her book Chains of Love: Slave Couples in Antebellum South Carolina. Black women have had the second shift long before that 1989 article that popularized the term or it was discussed conceptually amidst mainstream White feminism during the women’s movement.
There was primary exploitative labor as an enslaved woman, much of the same work that enslaved men did. But there was also the rearing and care of the slave master’s home and children. And then there were children of the enslaved and slave quarters that required work. Three shifts, and obviously not in a “regulated” sense that implies pay or freedom. I mean grueling labor in addition to rape, physical and emotional abuse, exploitative medical experimentation and psychological warfare.
Even post-slavery, many Black women worked as domestics and had to devote their time and care to families that were not their own. And then try to have the energy to do the same for their own families (and children of other families, as some were “othermothers” as well) once they got home. Couple this with the fact that racism meant that many of their male partners could not get work at all.
Think about the origins of this concept before pretending that modern “the second shift” or “breadwinner" conversations really have anything to do the with historical and lived realities of Black women in America.
(via gradientlair)