Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface Summary and Analysis

In Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface, Audre Lorde discusses the topic of black males' anger toward black females. The essay was first published in The Black Scholar in 1979 as a direct response to an article by Robert Staples published in the same journal earlier that year called The Myth of Black Macho: A Response to Angry Black Feminists. The tone of the essay is confrontational. Lorde accuses Staples of attacking black feminists under the guise of attempting to open a dialogue with them. She sees Staples' article as indicative of a wider trend in the black male community toward seeing black women as a threat rather than as potential allies.

To Lorde, the language in Staples' article makes it clear that for him, like many black men, black females have...