Because Boston office workers are the fifth-lowest paid in the country, Snyder says, 9 to 5 is now focusing its protest on the Boston Survey Group, an organization of more than 40 banks, insurance companies, hospitals, universities (including Harvard) and other businesses which meets quarterly to discuss employment practices. The group conducts biannual indepth clerical salary surveys, which, Snyder says, "set the going rate for salaries of secretaries and office workers. In effect, the Boston Survey Group sets an artificially low ceiling on what office workers are paid in Boston," Snyder says."

Turning to another aspect of a worker's compensation--her pension--Snyder says the fact that 75 per cent of the women workers in the United States retire without a pension must be rectified. She notes that as women turn 40, they are phased out or fired, leaving them without retirement benefits. And the typical pension system, basing benefits on at least ten years of continuous employment, works against a woman who may have to take five years off in the middle of her career to raise children. "It's like starting all over again," Snyder objects.

Despite the problems they still face, the women of 9 to 5 are pleased by their progress of the past two years and confidently face the challenges of the future. "Women as individuals can't really deal with systematic, across-the-board sex discrimination," Snyder says, "but there's a lot we can accomplish in groups."

Through the Media

In this day of instant media stars and "experts," 28-year-old Michele Wallace stands, by any account, as one of the biggest and brightest. Her book Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman has catapulted her to talk-show and lecture-circuit fame as the reigning authority on the plight of the Black woman, particularly her relationship with the Black man. Even the Washington Post said the "fearless presentation of her analysis quite takes the breath away. It is serious, well-written, effective in its demystification, valuable as a model of hardheaded but caring analysis, principled in its criticism, important."

Speaking at Tufts University recently, Wallace seemed astounded at the controversy her book had engendered and uncomfortable in the pundit role the popular press had placed her in. "The book's purpose was to initiate discussion and investigation more than it was to tell anyone what to do with their life," she says.

Wallace's basic proposition, the one that has drawn her headlines and hostility, inquiries and insults, is that "there is a profound distrust, if not hatred, between Black men and Black women. It has been nursed along largely by White racism but also by an almost deliberate ignorance on the part of Blacks about the sexual politics of their experience in this country."

Calling Black Macho "a feminist interpretation of our oppression as Black people," Wallace says it is possible "to look at everything in the world from the point of view of feminism. Sexism had as much to do with how we were cruelly mistreated as racism."

Is it racist or sexist, Wallace queries, that Black women were stereotyped as "fat nannies or wanton sluts?" Is it racist or sexist, she asks, that Black men were portrayed as "sex-crazed work machines or impotent old fools?"

Wallace posits that what allowed Blacks to become slaves in American while others did not is sexism. "The only way to make us slaves (chattel slaves, not the indentured servants the first White slaves in America were) was to demean us sexually," she says. "The only way they could justify selling Blacks was to say we were sexually unfit."

The Black woman's special burden dates from the days of slavery, Wallace says. "It's a fact that when a White man raped a Black woman and had children by her, it was supposed to mean that she had more upward social mobility. In fact, it seems the opposite--Black women were the victims in sexual encounters with White men. Even today, many Black women can't be attracted to White men because of it."

Because her husband was often sold to another plantation, the woman slave often had to raise her children while performing heavy work in the fields and other traditionally male tasks. But because the Black man "was not allowed to do any of the things it was said at the time men were supposed to do" and the Black woman merely filled a void, she "has been punished for doing what any other woman would have done in a crisis by being labeled a superwoman and a freak."

Meanwhile, America was trying to convince the Black man that the ultimate expression of his masculinity was the obtainment of a White woman, giving rise to the false perception that the preponderance of Black men lynched during the early part of this century died after falsely being accused of raping White woman. "A lot more Black men lost their jobs and land than penises and lives in lynching," Wallace states.

When the time came for the civil rights movement, Wallace says, the White media served to foster a myth of the Black protesters as "superstuds," manipulating them as much as any segregationist laws did. "Being taught that they were studs was just as oppressive as being told they could not take care of their families," she says. As a consequence, Black men "were doomed to protest in the way in which they had been programmed. The most immediately gratifying way young Black men of the '60s could assert their manhood was by having a White woman or oppressing Black women."

When Black women discuss social issues today, Wallace says, they most often address two concerns: the jealousy they draw from Black men because they count as minority "doubles" to satisfy affirmative action quotas and the perceived "shortage" of marriageable Black men resulting from the larger population of Black women. Wallace also sees one of the Black woman's foremost problems as other people's unwillingness to take her seriously.

If a Black female celebrity is pretty, or sexy, or married to a White man, she is called a talentless whore. If she's elegant or highbrow or intellectual, she's pronounced funny-looking, uptight, or in need of a good brutal fuck. If she happens to appeal to a White audience, she is despised. If she's independent, physical, or aggressive, she's called a dyke.

Phyllis Bursh '83 agrees with Wallace's contentions and her allegation that the above classifications apply to non-celebrity Black women also. "It's definitely true," Bursh says. "Males have said this to me--but it really shocked me to see it here." Tracy Ellis '82--feels that the fact that more Black women are being admitted to Harvard-Radcliffe than Black men, bucking a schoolwide trend, may contribute to hostility between Black men and Black women students. "It strikes a chord of inferiority (among the men)--it can become a defense mechanism to be resentful," she says.

Wallace says that the remedy to the resentment between Black men and women lies in the opening of a "dialogue"--one that won't be easy or pleasant. At Harvard, there are steps in that direction, including Freshman Black Table's symposium on Black male-female interactions held last year, and the Association of Black Radcliffe Women's plans for a similar forum this year. But the ultimate solution Michele Wallace would suggest to Black women at Harvard and everywhere is the same as the reason Black Macho was written--"Because my personal answer for Black women is to become feminist."