Letter from Carby to Hunter

Dear Jane Hunter,

The status of black women’s migration in the early 1900s is not as simplistic as you describe. In speaking about these women, you assume that choices are equally available to all. You assume that somehow a woman who just migrated from the hatred that consumed her in the South will always have the freedom to have a “clean” job. You assume that just because you were lucky enough to succeed in the face of adversity, all black women should be able to do so by following your path. You are forgetting that in exercising their sexuality, black women are acting upon their new mobility. While this may not be the ideal way to do so (because of the ways in which they are taken advantage of), it is a step to black women’s new freedom. These women are people. They have communities, families, lives as rich as your own. And in victimizing them or blaming them, you are contributing to the degradation of their humanity and all black women’s humanity. I agree with your attempt to provide alternative, safer options for black urban women, but I do not agree with the way in which you are oversimplifying the situation.

Sincerely,

Hazel Carby

Questions:

1) What would Carby think of Larsen’s portrayal of Helga and Clare?

2) Does Carby present a solution in her paper on the portrayal of black women’s bodies in the early 1900s?