Amy: Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy! I’m Amy McPhie Allebest. Today’s text is an essay written by Black Civil Rights activist Frances Beal in 1969. It’s called “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female,” and I must say, it kind of took my breath away. It answered some questions that I have had for a long time, and it introduced new questions that I didn’t know I needed to ask, and it gave me a lot to think about. Also, this essay lends itself to discussion of what it feels like to be black and female in America, and so because I want to give my reading partner Rayna Clay Mackay time to share some personal stories, as well as to discuss the text, we’re going to divide this essay into two episodes. And I’m soooo excited to welcome back a fan favorite on Breaking Down Patriarchy podcast, Rayna Clay Mackay. Hi, Rayna!
Rayna: Hi, Amy!
Amy: Listeners will remember Rayna from our episode on Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman” speech, which Frances Beal mentions here in “Double Jeopardy,” which is a really cool connection. Rayna, I know you said you had read “Double Jeopardy” before, but it was new to me, so I’m really eager to hear your thoughts. But first, could you just tell listeners a little bit about yourself? Specifically I’m wondering if you can tell us a bit more about your family. I remember reading a New York Times article about a member of your family that you posted on Facebook - would you be willing to share a bit about that, and about how your family contributed to make you who you are today?
Rayna: So the article I posted last year was my grandfather’s obituary in the NYT. Rhody McCoy was my mother’s father, and he was a major player in the civil right’s movement. We can talk about him anytime! He raised 6 girls and 1 son (my uncle is the youngest and everyone jokes that if he had been born first, none of the girls would exist!) during the 50s and 60s. He was almost militant in his focus on education as a survival skill for Black people as well as women. He had the same expectation of my mom and her sisters (and subsequently me and my female cousins) that he did of the boys. Which was truly revolutionary at that time and not well known in “popular” culture in regards to Black people. The media and “majority” culture has done a fab job of portraying Black people as lazy, angry, and uneducated etc. That was the antithesis of what I knew in my family and our Black friends.
But to circle back to my parents, my father was a Texan and nuclear mathematician who worked on the atom bomb in the 60s. He had a crisis of conscience (or a mid-life crisis!) and then became a playwright. He and my mom met in NYC off-broadway, and eventually when she moved to SF they reconnected and the rest is history...for a very brief time. He was killed by a drunk driver when I was 9 months old. My mom subsequently lost her mother a little over a year later, and understandably had a very difficult few years. She’s a seeker and was looking for a religious community, and when I was 4, she joined the Church. It was around this time that her talking points deviated slightly from our family in terms of race relations. Growing up, she always told me I could be and do whatever I wanted to be and do. She believed in me 100% and I always felt like my gender was not an issue when it came to accomplishment. But, (and I think this was to help me not feel othered in a majority White church) she really promoted that we are “all alike unto God” and that there is “no color.” This was super hard for me to reconcile as I clearly looked different than almost every person I interacted with (my mom is super light, most un-enlightened people thought she was Hispanic). She chose to immerse me in “church” culture rather than “Black” culture, so it was an interesting dichotomy.
Amy: Thanks so much, Rayna. [I will probably have some follow-up questions here!]
Just to introduce the text a little bit more… this author and