This year, Black History Month is about both the past and the possible. On February 5, Super Tuesday, Black history came alive, and we the living helped make it: Presidential hopeful Barack Obama won 13 of the 22 states in which primaries were held. On February 9, he swept the three states--Louisiana, Nebraska, and Washington--holding Democratic primaries. The next day, he won the Maine caucuses. As of this writing he is also expected to do well in the February 12 primaries held in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.--the so-called Potomac primary.

These are just the latest of many historic events in a year in which all we know for certain is that a woman or an African-American man will be the Democratic Party's nominee for president. Yet in this year of surprises, what isn't surprising is the absence of the visages and voices of Black women in the presidential campaign. With the occasional exception of Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey, Black women have been virtually invisible. And tradition (not to mention Bill Clinton's negative impact on the campaign trail) dictates that even while Mrs. Obama, as the spouse of the presidential candidate, may be seen, she is, like the rest of us, seldom heard.

It seems that for the most part, Black women are useless unless someone has a point to make at our expense.

Offenses of Gender and Race

Prominent feminist Gloria Steinem, in a recent New York Times op-ed (registration required), created a hypothetical Black woman whose credentials mirror Obama's and then argued that because of gender, she wouldn't be able to get elected to the U.S. Senate or become a viable candidate for president. Steinem's point? That women of all persuasions have had it harder than men across the board, and we should join her in supporting Hillary Clinton. The debate over whether sexism or racism has the more negative impact is nothing new, but who is in a better position than Black women to understand the intersection of both?

Former United Nations ambassador and Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, who has endorsed Hillary Clinton and considers himself to be advocating on her behalf, was asked his opinion of Obama. He responded that Bill Clinton is "every bit as Black as Barack." His evidence? "He's probably gone with more Black women than Barack."

Given the history of sexual exploitation of Black women and men--particularly the rape of Black women by White slave owners and others as a means of slave production--Young's comment is profoundly ignorant and offensive to me, as a Black woman and as a feminist. And his logic--that Black people should vote for Hillary Clinton because her husband has supposedly had sexual relations with more Black women than Obama has--is really too convoluted to unravel. What it does tell us clearly, however, is that it's past time for Young to retire from the public arena.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

More than 50 years ago, a character in Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston's masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God called Black women "the mules of the world." What Hurston meant was that Black women are the ones who do the work and are abused and unappreciated.

Too many of us still function as beasts of burden. Who notices that we're pulling not only our own weight but also that of children, elderly parents, and others dependent on us for sustenance? When we have a husband or male partner--and many of us don't--we're still usually carrying more than our share of the burden.

On the few occasions when regular Black women are seen and heard, chances are we're in a beauty parlor. Do reporters think that the scent of shampoo, relaxer, and hair being fried with a curling iron acts as Black women's truth serum? Beauty-parlor talk apparently equals the gospel, but no such authenticity seems to adhere to Black women who get their hair done naturally in locks or twists or who don't go to the beauty parlor at all. To be fleetingly visible and iconographic, must one be straightened and relaxed?

There was a Black-woman sighting the other day when Nobel laureate Toni Morrison endorsed Obama, but the visual, like her letter, was brief. Back in 1998, Morrison had famously called Bill Clinton America's first Black president in an article in The New Yorker. Her endorsement of Obama served notice that Clinton could no longer wrap himself in the cloak of conferred Blackness--and assume Black support--now that the real thing was on the scene.

Recently, Obama was interviewed on Black Entertainment Television. "Why was it important for you to marry a Black woman?" the questioner, a Black man, asked, as if marriage to Michelle Obama were a political calculation or a case of marrying down for someone of his talents. "First of all, if you've met my wife, she's fine. That's part of it," he said, grinning. "She is the love of my life . . . just a superior person. You have to ask her why she married me."

For that brief moment, Black women were--all of us--fully visible, appreciated, and loved, not dim figures to be hauled out and exploited at the convenience of others. Let's see: someone who sees, hears, respects, and loves us. Surely those are fair criteria for Black women to use in choosing a candidate.

--On the Verge columnist Jill Nelson's latest book is Finding Martha's Vineyard: African Americans at Home on an Island (Doubleday; $27.50)

Shown: Michelle Obama, wife of presidential candidate Barack Obama, at a UCLA rally in Los Angeles on 2/3/08. Image courtesy of Obama '08