e overestimated. It must be understood before any deep understanding of Cannon's ethics is possible: "Black women are the mot vulnerable and the most exploited members of the American society. The structure of the capitalist political economy in which Black people are commodities combined with patriarchal contempt for women has caused the Black woman to experience oppression that knows no ethical or physical bounds" (Cannon 4). Thus ethical ideas in the dominant culture may not have the same meanings for black womanist culture. For example, the Protestant work ethic may be morally very well and good if one assumes an opportunity to work. But black women (Cannon (b) points out) as a group do work that white males and females and black men refuse to do. They also do it for less money than any of the other groups would agree to do it for (Cannon 3). Therefore, black womanist ethics questions the authority of established ethical principles. It sets those principles beside black women's actual strategies of coping with oppression reality, and of passing those strategies down through the generations.
Black womanist ethics filters established ethical principles through black women's "facticity of life" to form ethical judgments. The way Cannon builds her ethical argument is to start with the historical background of black women's lived reality and lived morality. From there she proceeds to "the black woman's literary tradition as a source for ethics" (Cannon vii). What that means is that Cannon uses personal narrative to tell the "story" of black womanist ethics. Indeed, an important way in which black women learn ethical behavior is from the oral transmission of stories and ideas from their elder family generations: "I am most aware of the rich lore I inherited from my mother's garden" (Cannon (b) 28), says Cannon. Personal stories make an immediate connection with where black women fit in the picture of unfolding events. The connection is...