Editor Focuses on Black-Against-Black Friction : Chief of Essence Magazine Deplores Elitist Attitude of Some Black Yuppies

. . . Let’s be real. We live in a racist society, and that makes it difficult to keep our faith high. . . . There is little to remind us daily of how powerful and capable we are, so we must do that for ourselves and for each other. . . . We can make a difference in our lives and in the world. We black folks have to believe this is true. It’s time to dream big dreams and make them real.

--Susan L. Taylor,

editor-in-chief of Essence,

the magazine for black women.

Susan Taylor raised her right hand, made a fist and started shaking it in Mixmaster motion. “If America is vibrating like this, “ she said, her fist churning faster and faster, “black America is vibrating like this. “

If Americans as a whole are worried about joblessness, disintegrating families, homelessness, crime and drug abuse, Taylor said, “Look what’s happened with blacks.” She spoke of the plight of the young black male--”There are more black men in prison than in college. That was not the case 20 years ago.” She spoke of the plight of inner-city children--”When we were in grammar school,” said Taylor, 40, “no one was offering us drugs on the playground.”

And she spoke of her sorrow at seeing black people pitted against black people, the “haves” ignoring blacks’ history as a people united in their struggle as they scramble to disenfranchise themselves from their heritage.

“So much of the pain black people are feeling,” she said, “we’re working it out against each other.” Beginning about 1965, a year after passage of the Civil Rights Act, Taylor said, “I think we saw a split in America, a division between the haves and the have-nots. Twenty years ago most of us were have-nots. Now we have an elite group who don’t feel a responsibility for the rest.

“We have an educated class, we have an understanding of our history . . . yet a lot of those people who could make that their focus are on vacation.” Is she condemning black yuppies or, as she prefers to call them, “buppies”? Taylor does not limit her criticism to any age group but says her criticism is leveled at those black Americans “who see themselves as not a part of that pain . . . they’re saying, ‘I’ve got mine. You get yours yourself.’ ”

As editor-in-chief of Essence, which has a paid circulation of 800,000 and a “pass-along” circulation she estimates at 4 million (perhaps a fourth of them male), Taylor sometimes uses the magazine’s pages to alleviate another black-black friction, that between men and women.

“The critical issue for black men and women,” Taylor said, “is to stop pointing the finger at each other” in anger and frustration. “Until we can find new ways for men and women to bond,” she said, “the dreams we have for America will not be realized. We must let the dialogue begin.”

For their part, she suggested, black women must stop “fantasizing” from television, stop castigating black men for failing to provide them with every creature comfort known to the heroines of “Dallas” or “Dynasty.”

Even though the usual TV portrayal of blacks is less than positive, Taylor pointed out--”We see ourselves being collared by some police officer and shoved into a car. We see black men in handcuffs”--the fact remains that, for all people, “the fantasies are the same, to house our children, clothe them and feed them and educate them, drive the car we want and dress the way we want.”

Because “black people watch 30% more TV than other people,” Taylor added, there is even more fantasizing.

For their part, she said, black men “must not see black women as a threat.” There is a cycle of fingerpointing that began, she speculates, when “coming out of slavery we as women believed that men should protect us.” The truth, she said, is that men, having come out of slavery, “are not equipped” to do that, caught up as they are for the most part in the “daily struggle for survival.”

Even so, Taylor said, television has “made us feel we can really live like the people on the screen.”

Lack of Opportunity

Black men, despite having been reared on the idea that they should take charge of their lives, Taylor pointed out, often don’t have the opportunity to do that in the white man’s world so they seek a sense of empowerment elsewhere and personal relationships founder. At the same time, black women are apt to grow disenchanted with a provider who is unable to provide.

Taylor is trying to encourage dialogue. Taking over the editorship of Essence in 1981, Taylor initiated an annual men’s issue--”an issue about men,” rather than for men, she emphasized, noting that it’s “an incredible seller”--and started a monthly column by men, “Say, Brother.”

In recent issues male guest columnists have included a novelist who lives in Washington and two New Yorkers, a singer and a writer-poet. These are personal essays in which men talk about relationships--one, a man in his 30s, about his discomfort with the idea of dating a woman too young to even remember the civil rights movement, another about his rescuing himself from a life of “free-lance” sex and general dissipation, another about his bitter custody battle for his son and of “the cruel hoax of romantic love.”

The February issue has a sizzling cover--a man and woman naked, it is suggested, in an embrace--but, Taylor is quick to say, the issue is a political package in a “provocative” wrap. She’s talking about the politics of male-female relationships. Features include tips on “Keeping Your Love Alive,” “Choosing a Male Role Model for Your Child,” “What Is This State Called Marriage?” and, from a male contributor, “Giving Up the Chase.”

Talks to the ‘Whole Woman’

“Essence is the only women’s magazine that really talks to the whole woman,” Taylor said. “Yes, we talk a lot about love. Our readers are very interested in relationships.” (The love issue, each February, is Essence’s hottest seller.)

In the editor’s corner for February, Taylor writes, “ . . . We sisters and brothers have gifts to exchange, and we have work we must do together. . . . The empowerment of our people is at stake. It’s time we created a new vision of love that allows our love to be.”

Now, what about this article titled “Are You a Man Junkie”? No, no, Taylor said emphatically, Essence does not aspire to be a black women’s Cosmopolitan. The message, she explained, is that a woman with self-esteem does not need a man at her side to feel worthy.

As black women, Taylor said, “We’re raised to believe that we’re nothing without men. We still feel this incredible piece of us is missing if we don’t have a man. We’re saying to our readers, ‘Any man won’t do.’ And a lot of us do compromise. We have to help women break that cycle.”

Taylor likes to talk to people about taking charge of their lives, moving their lives forward so they start to believe they can. “I’ve come from a place where I didn’t believe in myself,” she said, telling how 16 years ago she was a single mother of a 6-week-old daughter--”I had no money, no man. My car was broken. I was making $500 a month working at Essence and paying $368 a month rent. I could not see tomorrow.”

What turned it around for her, she said, was a conversation with a minister who implored her to believe in herself. “Nobody had ever said that to me,” she said, “and I went to Catholic school for eight years.” Her climb up the Essence ladder began as a free-lance contributor, then beauty editor, then beauty and fashion editor.

Exotic Good Looks

Today, Taylor, a statuesque onetime actress with corn-rowed hair and exotic good looks, exudes confidence and poise and, in Essence press releases, is described as “a kind of national black everywoman.” She is both editor of a mass circulation magazine and host/executive producer of “Essence, the Television Program,” a 30-minute interview show that is produced in New York and syndicated to 55 network affiliates and independent stations. (It is seen on KTLA-Channel 5 at 6:30 a.m. Saturdays.)

As a divorced mother, she has supported her daughter, Shana, now 16, since the child was an infant. While Shana, who “wants to be a rock-and-roll singer, and a psychiatrist,” prepares for a summer program at Cornell University, her mother continues as a full-time undergraduate at Fordham University, where she is a sophomore concentrating on information science.

“It’s real important to me,” said Taylor, who grew up in Harlem, the daughter of a shopkeeper and a homemaker mother whose own parents had immigrated from the Caribbean. She manages both college and a full-time job by “trying to not let everything become a priority. If Shana needs me today, that’s where I am.” And when necessary, she added, “I tell myself, ‘Get off the telephone. You have this book to read.’ ”

Susan Taylor assesses the black condition in the ‘80s and she does not like what she perceives. “The kind of dreams our parents dreamed for us are eroding for our children,” she said. “Our children are growing up in single-family households. And black women continue to be on the bottom of the economic ladder.”

She mentions stress-connected mental and physical health problems among blacks. She mentions a 50% dropout rate among black males in school.

Asked to identify the number one problem for blacks in 1986, Taylor does not hesitate to say, “Self-esteem. There’s nothing on a day-to-day basis that affirms us,” while at every turn there is “something to negate us. And the first pitfall is not believing in yourself.”

Her challenge, as editor of Essence, Taylor said, is “delivering a magazine that affirms black women” while it informs and inspires them. She likes to describe Essence as “a light source, a big sister.”

Common Denominator

She doesn’t like to talk about demographics but, rather, to think of her readers (identified by marketing studies as between 18 and 49, well educated and in a skilled clerical, professional or business position) as women of a certain “mind-set” and, Taylor said, that can be “a young mother, a doctor, a woman whose children are leaving home, a woman struggling off of welfare.” The common denominator: “They all want to move their lives forward. Our readers are a very motivated group of black women. Our job is to keep them motivated. Ebony and Essence, we’re making strong efforts to tell positive stories about black people.”

When the first issue of Essence appeared in May of 1970, Taylor recalled, readers protested what they viewed as an overemphasis on fashion, and Essence responded. (When Essence, the flagship of black-owned Essence Communications Inc., was still in the conceptual stage, Taylor recalled, there was talk of naming the magazine Sapphire, which seemed to some to have a goddess-like ring. Wiser heads, however, protested an Amos ‘n Andy connotation. Remembering, Taylor laughed and said, “Can you believe it! Thank God they listened, or there’d be no Essence.”)

Taylor pointed out that the magazine was among the first to deal editorially with incest, cocaine, heroin and rape. Recent issues have run the gamut, from an interview with Winnie Mandela, wife of South Africa’s imprisoned African National Congress leader, Nelson Mandela, to romantic meals a deux, hair-styling tips, spa vacations and facial bleaching.

She does not consider Essence in competition with the much older Ebony except that “unfortunately, we’re pitted against each other for advertising dollars.” Essence, which began with a mission to “celebrate the beauty, pride, strength and uniqueness of all black women,” a 50,000 circulation and $130,000 capitalization, last year had revenues of more than $20 million.

Some advertising dollars are disappearing, which concerns and angers Taylor. “We’re seeing a decrease in the number of liquor and cigarette ads in Essence,” she said. “As a black woman, as editor-in-chief, I feel good about that. As a business person, that hurts.” In magazines for white women, she noted, “That advertising is being replaced by a kind of advertising that we’re not getting.”

Racism the Reason

Specifically, she cited advertising for health and fitness equipment and certain perfumes. And she is convinced that “racism is the simple and pure reason. I also think marketers take black people for granted, but black people are getting a little wiser now. We’ll have people write and ask why (a certain perfume-maker) is not in Essence.”

Taylor said black women “buy twice as many of some fragrances,” yet the companies do not advertise. Confronted with this fact, she said, the cosmetics companies tell her that if they advertise in Essence their products will “lose prestige with white women.”

She thinks it’s more likely that “decisions on advertising dollars are made by white males who live in suburban communities . . . the only black women they interact with are the women who empty their trash pails. If there are black women in their place of business, they think those women are unique. And when (these men) see what their wives read, they don’t see Essence.”

Taylor points a finger, too, at blacks. “Black dollars don’t turn over in our communities at all,” she said. “Black people don’t spend money with black people. We’re not entrepreneurs. We need to be able to support, employ and sustain ourselves. (Black money) is always going out of the community and empowering other people.”

(One recent study found that only 6.6% of the $200 billion black gross national product was spent with blacks, while other ethnic groups turn over their dollars within their communities five to 12 times.)

Taylor uses speaking engagements, such as a recent one here before the Black Public Relations Society of Southern California, to spread the message: Educated blacks, those who have been identified by black educator Asa Stephen DuBois as “the talented tenth,” must “pave the way for the rest, get ourselves in tune. We must lift as we climb . . . then I see black America moving forward.”

She points to her own life as “testimony” that, although for each person in that talented tenth there are 100 struggling for their daily existence, it is possible, with a little help, to pull one’s self up.

In the face of federal budget cutbacks affecting human services programs, Taylor said, black people who have made it must resolve to help their own--traditionally, she said, “It was the group we sent forward who always came back and provided for the rest.” And, she said, blacks must never forget their history of “triumph in harder times than we’ll ever face.”

This country was built, Taylor said, on “300 years of free labor, by an inexhaustible supply of black people. Black people deserve a piece of the pie, they really do.”