writing a short comparison of two questions

I am a product of an intellectual tradition which until twenty-five years ago did not exist within the academy. Like patchwork in a quilt, it is a tradition gathered from meaningful bits and pieces. My tradition has no name, because it embraces more than womanism, Blackness, or African studies, although those terms will do for now. —Barbara Omolade 1994, ix

It seems I am running out of words these days. I feel as if I am on a linguistic tread- mill that has gradually but unmistakably increased its speed, so that no word I use to positively describe myself or my scholarly projects lasts for more than five sec- onds. I can no longer justify my presence in academia, for example, with words that exist in the English language.The moment I find some symbol of my presence in the rarefied halls of elite institutions, it gets stolen, co-opted, filled with negative meaning. —Patricia Williams 1995, 27

U.S. Black women’s struggles on this “linguistic treadmill” to name this tradition with “no name” reveal the difficul- ties of making do with “terms [that] will do for now.” Widely used yet increas- ingly difficult to define, U.S. Black feminist thought encompasses diverse and often contradictory meanings. Despite the fact that U.S. Black women, in partic- ular, have expended considerable energy on naming Black women’s knowledge, definitional tensions not only persist but encounter changing political climates riddled with new obstacles. When the very vocabulary used to describe Black feminist thought comes under attack, Black women’s self-definitions become even more difficult to achieve. For example, despite continued acceptance among many African-Americans of Afrocentrism as a term referencing tradi- tions of Black consciousness and racial solidarity, academics and media pundits maligned the term in the 1980s and 1990s. Similarly, the pejorative meanings increasingly attached to the term feminist seem designed to discredit a move-

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES OF BLACK FEMINIST THOUGHT

2

C o p y r i g h t 2 0 0 0 . R o u t l e d g e .

A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . M a y n o t b e r e p r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n f r o m t h e p u b l i s h e r , e x c e p t f a i r u s e s p e r m i t t e d u n d e r U . S . o r a p p l i c a b l e c o p y r i g h t l a w .

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ AN: 70795 ; Collins, Patricia Hill.; Black Feminist Thought : Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment Account: s8329998.main.ehost

ment dedicated to women’s empowerment. Even the term Black fell victim to the deconstructive moment, with a growing number of “Black” intellectuals who do “race” scholarship questioning the very terms used to describe both themselves and their political struggles (see, e.g., Gilroy 1993). Collectively, these developments produced a greatly changed political and intellectual context for defining Black feminist thought.

Despite these difficulties, finding some sort of common ground for thinking through the boundaries of Black feminist thought remains important because, as U.S. Black feminist activist Pearl Cleage reminds us, “we have to see clearly that we are a unique group, set undeniably apart because of race and sex with a unique set of challenges” (Cleage 1993, 55). Rather than developing definitions and arguing over naming practices—for example, whether this thought should be called Black feminism, womanism, Afrocentric feminism, Africana woman- ism, and the like—a more useful approach lies in revisiting the reasons why Black feminist thought exists at all. Exploring six distinguishing features that characterize Black feminist thought may provide the common ground that is so sorely needed both among African-American women, and between African- American women and all others whose collective knowledge or thought has a similar purpose. Black feminist thought’s distinguishing features need not be unique and may share much with other bodies of knowledge. Rather, it is the convergence of these distinguishing features that gives U.S. Black feminist thought its distinctive contours.

W h y U . S . B l a c k F e m i n i s t T h o u g h t ?

Black feminism remains important because U.S. Black women constitute an oppressed group. As a collectivity, U.S. Black women participate in a dialectical relationship linking African-American women’s oppression and activism. Dialectical relationships of this sort mean that two parties are opposed and opposite. As long as Black women’s subordination within intersecting oppres- sions of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation persists, Black feminism as an activist response to that oppression will remain needed.

In a similar fashion, the overarching purpose of U.S. Black feminist thought is also to resist oppression, both its practices and the ideas that justify it. If inter- secting oppressions did not exist, Black feminist thought and similar opposi- tional knowledges would be unnecessary. As a critical social theory, Black femi- nist thought aims to empower African-American women within the context of social injustice sustained by intersecting oppressions. Since Black women cannot be fully empowered unless intersecting oppressions themselves are eliminated, Black feminist thought supports broad principles of social justice that transcend U.S. Black women’s particular needs.

Because so much of U.S. Black feminism has been filtered through the prism

22 B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

of the U.S. context, its contours have been greatly affected by the specificity of American multiculturalism (Takaki 1993). In particular, U.S. Black feminist thought and practice respond to a fundamental contradiction of U.S. society. On the one hand, democratic promises of individual freedom, equality under the law, and social justice are made to all American citizens. Yet on the other hand, the reality of differential group treatment based on race, class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship status persists. Groups organized around race, class, and gender in and of themselves are not inherently a problem. However, when African- Americans, poor people, women, and other groups discriminated against see lit- tle hope for group-based advancement, this situation constitutes social injustice.

Within this overarching contradiction, U.S. Black women encounter a dis- tinctive set of social practices that accompany our particular history within a unique matrix of domination characterized by intersecting oppressions. Race is far from being the only significant marker of group difference—class, gender, sexuality, religion, and citizenship status all matter greatly in the United States (Andersen and Collins 1998). Yet for African-American women, the effects of institutionalized racism remain visible and palpable. Moreover, the institutional- ized racism that African-American women encounter relies heavily on racial seg- regation and accompanying discriminatory practices designed to deny U.S. Blacks equitable treatment. Despite important strides to desegregate U.S. society since 1970, racial segregation remains deeply entrenched in housing, schooling, and employment (Massey and Denton 1993). For many African-American women, racism is not something that exists in the distance.We encounter racism in every- day situations in workplaces, stores, schools, housing, and daily social interaction (St. Jean and Feagin 1998). Most Black women do not have the opportunity to befriend White women and men as neighbors, nor do their children attend school with White children. Racial segregation remains a fundamental feature of the U.S. social landscape, leaving many African-Americans with the belief that “the more things change, the more they stay the same” (Collins 1998a, 11–43). Overlaying these persisting inequalities is a rhetoric of color blindness designed to render these social inequalities invisible. In a context where many believe that to talk of race fosters racism, equality allegedly lies in treating everyone the same. Yet as Kimberle Crenshaw (1997) points out, “it is fairly obvious that treating different things the same can generate as much inequality as treating the same things differently” (p. 285).

Although racial segregation is now organized differently than in prior eras (Collins 1998a, 11–43), being Black and female in the United States continues to expose African-American women to certain common experiences. U.S. Black women’s similar work and family experiences as well as our participation in diverse expressions of African-American culture mean that, overall, U.S. Black women as a group live in a different world from that of people who are not Black and female. For individual women, the particular experiences that accrue to liv- ing as a Black woman in the United States can stimulate a distinctive conscious-

23D I S T I N G U I S H I N G F E A T U R E S O F B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

ness concerning our own experiences and society overall. Many African- American women grasp this connection between what one does and how one thinks. Hannah Nelson, an elderly Black domestic worker, discusses how work shapes the perspectives of African-American and White women: “Since I have to work, I don’t really have to worry about most of the things that most of the white women I have worked for are worrying about.And if these women did their own work, they would think just like I do—about this, anyway” (Gwaltney 1980, 4). Ruth Shays, a Black inner-city resident, points out how variations in men’s and women’s experiences lead to differences in perspective. “The mind of the man and the mind of the woman is the same” she notes, “but this business of living makes women use their minds in ways that men don’t even have to think about” (Gwaltney 1980, 33).

A recognition of this connection between experience and consciousness that shapes the everyday lives of individual African-American women often pervades the works of Black women activists and scholars. In her autobiography, Ida B. Wells-Barnett describes how the lynching of her friends had such an impact on her worldview that she subsequently devoted much of her life to the anti- lynching cause (Duster 1970). Sociologist Joyce Ladner’s discomfort with the disparity between the teachings of mainstream scholarship and her experiences as a young Black woman in the South led her to write Tomorrow’s Tomorrow (1972), a groundbreaking study of Black female adolescence. Similarly, the trans- formed consciousness experienced by Janie, the light-skinned heroine of Zora Neale Hurston’s (1937) classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, from obedient granddaughter and wife to a self-defined African-American woman, can be directly traced to her experiences with each of her three husbands. In one scene Janie’s second husband, angry because she served him a dinner of scorched rice, underdone fish, and soggy bread, hits her.That incident stimulates Janie to stand “where he left her for unmeasured time” and think. And in her thinking “her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. . . . [S]he had an inside and an out- side now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them” (p. 63).

Overall, these ties between what one does and what one thinks illustrated by individual Black women can also characterize Black women’s experiences and ideas as a group. Historically, racial segregation in housing, education, and employment fostered group commonalities that encouraged the formation of a group-based, collective standpoint.1 For example, the heavy concentration of U.S. Black women in domestic work coupled with racial segregation in housing and schools meant that U.S. Black women had common organizational networks that enabled them to share experiences and construct a collective body of wisdom. This collective wisdom on how to survive as U.S. Black women constituted a dis- tinctive Black women’s standpoint on gender-specific patterns of racial segrega- tion and its accompanying economic penalties.

The presence of Black women’s collective wisdom challenges two prevail- ing interpretations of the consciousness of oppressed groups. One approach

24 B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

claims that subordinate groups identify with the powerful and have no valid independent interpretation of their own oppression. The second assumes the oppressed are less human than their rulers, and are therefore less capable of inter- preting their own experiences (Rollins 1985; Scott 1985). Both approaches see any independent consciousness expressed by African-American women and other oppressed groups as being either not of our own making or inferior to that of dominant groups. More importantly, both explanations suggest that the alleged lack of political activism on the part of oppressed groups stems from our flawed consciousness of our own subordination.2

Historically, Black women’s group location in intersecting oppressions pro- duced commonalities among individual African-American women. At the same time, while common experiences may predispose Black women to develop a dis- tinctive group consciousness, they guarantee neither that such a consciousness will develop among all women nor that it will be articulated as such by the group. As historical conditions change, so do the links among the types of expe- riences Black women will have and any ensuing group consciousness concerning those experiences. Because group standpoints are situated in, reflect, and help shape unjust power relations, standpoints are not static (Collins 1998a, 201–28). Thus, common challenges may foster similar angles of vision leading to a group knowledge or standpoint among African-American women. Or they may not.

D i v e r s e R e s p o n s e s t o C o m m o n C h a l l e n g e s w i t h i n B l a c k F e m i n i s m

A second distinguishing feature of U.S. Black feminist thought emerges from a tension linking experiences and ideas. On the one hand, all African-American women face similar challenges that result from living in a society that histori- cally and routinely derogates women of African descent. Despite the fact that U.S. Black women face common challenges, this neither means that individual African-American women have all had the same experiences nor that we agree on the significance of our varying experiences.Thus, on the other hand, despite the common challenges confronting U.S. Black women as a group, diverse responses to these core themes characterize U.S. Black women’s group knowl- edge or standpoint.

Despite differences of age, sexual orientation, social class, region, and reli- gion, U.S. Black women encounter societal practices that restrict us to inferior housing, neighborhoods, schools, jobs, and public treatment and hide this dif- ferential consideration behind an array of common beliefs about Black women’s intelligence, work habits, and sexuality. These common challenges in turn result in recurring patterns of experiences for individual group members. For example, African-American women from quite diverse backgrounds report similar treat- ment in stores. Not every individual Black woman consumer need experience

25D I S T I N G U I S H I N G F E A T U R E S O F B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

being followed in a store as a potential shoplifter, ignored while others are waited on first, or seated near restaurant kitchens and rest rooms, for African- American women as a collectivity to recognize that differential group treatment is operating.

Since standpoints refer to group knowledge, recurring patterns of differen- tial treatment such as these suggest that certain themes will characterize U.S. Black women’s group knowledge or standpoint. For example, one core theme concerns multifaceted legacies of struggle, especially in response to forms of vio- lence that accompany intersecting oppressions (Collins 1998d). Katie Cannon observes, “[T]hroughout the history of the United States, the interrelationship of white supremacy and male superiority has characterized the Black woman’s real- ity as a situation of struggle—a struggle to survive in two contradictory worlds simultaneously, one white, privileged, and oppressive, the other black, exploited, and oppressed” (1985, 30). Black women’s vulnerability to assaults in the work- place, on the street, at home, and in media representations has been one factor fostering this legacy of struggle.

Despite differences created by historical era, age, social class, sexual orienta- tion, skin color, or ethnicity, the legacy of struggle against the violence that per- meates U.S. social structures is a common thread binding African-American women. Anna Julia Cooper, an educated, nineteenth-century Black woman intel- lectual, describes Black women’s vulnerability to sexual violence:

I would beg . . . to add my plea for the Colored Girls of the South:—that large, bright, promising fatally beautiful class . . . so full of promise and possibilities, yet so sure of destruction; often without a father to whom they dare apply the loving term, often without a stronger brother to espouse their cause and defend their honor with his life’s blood; in the midst of pitfalls and snares, waylaid by the lower classes of white men, with no shelter, no protection. (Cooper 1892, 240)

Yet during this period Cooper and other middle-class U.S. Black women built a powerful club movement and numerous community organizations (Giddings 1984, 1988; Gilkes 1985).

Stating that a legacy of struggle exists does not mean that all U.S. Black women share its benefits or even recognize it. For example, for African-American girls, age often offers little protection from assaults. Far too many young Black girls inhabit hazardous and hostile environments (Carroll 1997). In 1975 I received an essay titled “My World” from Sandra, a sixth-grade student who was a resident of one of the most dangerous public housing projects in Boston. Sandra wrote, “My world is full of people getting rape. People shooting on another. Kids and grownups fighting over girlsfriends. And people without jobs who can’t afford to get a education so they can get a job . . . winos on the streets raping and killing little girls.” Her words poignantly express a growing Black feminist sensi- bility that she may be victimized by racism, misogyny, and poverty. They reveal her awareness that she is vulnerable to rape as a form of sexual violence. Despite

26 B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

her feelings about her neighborhood, Sandra not only walked the streets daily but managed safely to deliver three siblings to school. In doing so she participated in a Black women’s legacy of struggle. Sandra prevailed, but at a cost. Unlike Sandra, others simply quit.

This legacy of struggle constitutes one of several core themes of a Black women’s standpoint. Efforts to reclaim U.S. Black women’s intellectual traditions have revealed Black women’s long-standing attention to additional core themes first recorded by Maria W. Stewart (Richardson 1987). Stewart’s perspective on intersecting oppressions, her call for replacing derogated images of Black wom- anhood with self-defined images, her belief in Black women’s activism as moth- ers, teachers, and Black community leaders, and her sensitivity to sexual politics are all core themes advanced by a variety of Black feminist intellectuals.

Despite the common challenges confronting African-American women as a group, individual Black women neither have identical experiences nor interpret experiences in a similar fashion.The existence of core themes does not mean that African-American women respond to these themes in the same way. Differences among individual Black women produce different patterns of experiential knowledge that in turn shape individual reactions to the core themes. For exam- ple, when faced with controlling images of Black women as being ugly and unfeminine, some women—such as Sojourner Truth—demand, “Ain’t I a woman?” By deconstructing the conceptual apparatus of the dominant group, they challenge notions of Barbie-doll femininity premised on middle-class White women’s experiences (duCille 1996, 8–59). In contrast, other women internal- ize the controlling images and come to believe that they are the stereotypes (Brown-Collins and Sussewell 1986). Still others aim to transgress the bound- aries that frame the images themselves. Jaminica, a 14-year-old Black girl, describes her strategies: “Unless you want to get into a big activist battle, you accept the stereotypes given to you and just try and reshape them along the way. So in a way, this gives me a lot of freedom. I can’t be looked at any worse in soci- ety than I already am—black and female is pretty high on the list of things not to be” (Carroll 1997, 94–95).

Many factors explain these diverse responses. For example, although all African-American women encounter institutionalized racism, social class differ- ences among African-American women influence patterns of racism in housing, education, and employment. Middle-class Blacks are more likely to encounter a pernicious form of racism that has left many angry and disappointed (Cose 1993; Feagin and Sikes 1994). A young manager who graduated with honors from the University of Maryland describes the specific form racism can take for middle-class Blacks. Before she flew to Cleveland to explain a marketing plan for her company, her manager made her go over it three or four times in front of him so that she would not forget her marketing plan.Then he explained how to check luggage at an airport and how to reclaim it. “I just sat at lunch listening to this man talking to me like I was a monkey who could remember but couldn’t

27D I S T I N G U I S H I N G F E A T U R E S O F B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

think,” she recalled. When she had had enough, “I asked him if he wanted to tie my money up in a handkerchief and put a note on me saying that I was an employee of this company. In case I got lost I would be picked up by Traveler’s Aid, and Traveler’s Aid would send me back” (Davis and Watson 1985, 86). Most middle-class Black women do not encounter such blatant incidents, but many working-class Blacks do. Historically, working-class Blacks have struggled with forms of institutionalized racism directly organized by White institutions and by forms mediated by some segments of the Black middle class.Thus, while it shares much with middle-class Black women, the legacy of struggle by working-class Blacks (Kelley 1994) and by working-class Black women in particular will express a distinctive character (Fordham 1993).

Sexuality signals another important factor that influences African-American women’s varying responses to common challenges. Black lesbians have identified heterosexism as a form of oppression and the issues they face living in homo- phobic communities as shaping their interpretations of everyday events (Shockley 1974; Lorde 1982, 1984; Clarke et al. 1983; Barbara Smith 1983, 1998; Williams 1997). Beverly Smith describes how being a lesbian affected her perceptions of the wedding of one of her closest friends: “God, I wish I had one friend here. Someone who knew me and would understand how I feel. I am mas- querading as a nice, straight, middle-class Black ‘girl’ ” (1983, 172). While the majority of those attending the wedding saw only a festive event, Beverly Smith felt that her friend was being sent into a form of bondage. In a similar fashion, varying ethnic and citizenship statuses within the U.S. nation-state as well also shape differences among Black women in the United States. For example, Black Puerto Ricans constitute a group that combines categories of race, nationality, and ethnicity in distinctive ways. Black Puerto Rican women thus must negotiate a distinctive set of experiences that accrue to being racially Black, holding a spe- cial form of American citizenship, and being ethnically Latino.

Given how these factors influence diverse response to common challenges, it is important to stress that no homogeneous Black woman’s standpoint exists. There is no essential or archetypal Black woman whose experiences stand as normal, normative, and thereby authentic. An essentialist understanding of a Black woman’s standpoint suppresses differences among Black women in search of an elusive group unity. Instead, it may be more accurate to say that a Black women’s collective standpoint does exist, one characterized by the tensions that accrue to different responses to common challenges. Because it both recognizes and aims to incorporate heterogeneity in crafting Black women’s oppositional knowledge, this Black women’s standpoint eschews essentialism in favor of democracy. Since Black feminist thought both arises within and aims to articu- late a Black women’s group standpoint regarding experiences associated with intersecting oppressions, stressing this group standpoint’s heterogeneous com- position is significant.

Moreover, in thinking through the contours of a Black women’s standpoint,

28 B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

it is equally important to recognize that U.S. Black women also encounter the same challenges (and correspondingly different expressions) as women of African descent within a Black diasporic context. This context in turn is situated within a transnational, global context. The term diaspora describes the experi- ences of people who, through slavery, colonialism, imperialism, and migration, have been forced to leave their native lands (Funani 1998, 417). For U.S. Black women and other people of African descent, a diasporic framework suggests a dispersal from Africa to societies in the Caribbean, South America, North America, and Europe. Understandings of African-American womanhood thus reflect a distinctive pattern of dispersal associated with forced immigration to the United States and subsequent enslavement (Pala 1995). Since a diasporic frame- work is not normative, it should not be used to assess the authenticity of people of African descent in reference to an assumed African norm. Rather, Black dias- poric frameworks center analyses of Black women within the context of common challenges experienced transnationally.

The version of Black feminism that U.S. Black women have developed cer- tainly must be understood in the context of U.S. nation-state politics. At the same time, U.S. Black feminism as a social justice project shares much with comparable social justice projects advanced not only by other U.S. racial/ethnic groups (see, e.g.,Takaki 1993), but by women of African descent across quite diverse societies. In the context of an “intercontinental Black women’s consciousness movement” (McLaughlin 1995, 73), women of African descent are dispersed globally, yet the issues we face may be similar.Transnationally, women encounter recurring social issues such as poverty, violence, reproductive concerns, lack of education, sex work, and susceptibility to disease (Rights of Women 1998). Placing African- American women’s experiences, thought, and practice in a transnational, Black diasporic context reveals these and other commonalities of women of African descent while specifying what is particular to African-American women.

B l a c k F e m i n i s t P r a c t i c e a n d B l a c k F e m i n i s t T h o u g h t

A third distinguishing feature of Black feminist thought concerns the connec- tions between U.S. Black women’s experiences as a heterogeneous collectivity and any ensuing group knowledge or standpoint. One key reason that stand- points of oppressed groups are suppressed is that self-defined standpoints can stimulate resistance. Annie Adams, a Southern Black woman, describes how she became involved in civil rights activities:

When I first went into the mill we had segregated water fountains. . . . Same thing about the toilets. I had to clean the toilets for the inspection room and then, when I got ready to go to the bathroom, I had to go all

29D I S T I N G U I S H I N G F E A T U R E S O F B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

the way to the bottom of the stairs to the cellar. So I asked my boss man, “what’s the difference? If I can go in there and clean them toilets, why can’t I use them?” Finally, I started to use that toilet. I decided I wasn’t going to walk a mile to go to the bathroom. (Byerly 1986, 134)

In this case Ms. Adams found the “boss man’s” point of view inadequate, devel- oped one of her own, and acted on it. On the individual level, her actions illus- trate the connections among lived experiences with oppression, developing one’s own point of view concerning those experiences, and the acts of resistance that can follow. A similar relationship characterizes African-American women’s group knowledge. U.S. Black women’s collective historical experiences with oppression may stimulate a self-defined Black women’s standpoint that in turn can foster Black women’s activism.

As members of an oppressed group, U.S. Black women have generated alter- native practices and knowledges that have been designed to foster U.S. Black women’s group empowerment. In contrast to the dialectical relationship linking oppression and activism, a dialogical relationship characterizes Black women’s collective experiences and group knowledge. On both the individual and the group level, a dialogical relationship suggests that changes in thinking may be accompanied by changed actions and that altered experiences may in turn stim- ulate a changed consciousness. For U.S. Black women as a collectivity, the strug- gle for a self-defined Black feminism occurs through an ongoing dialogue whereby action and thought inform one another.

U.S. Black feminism itself illustrates this dialogical relationship. On the one hand, there is U.S. Black feminist practice that emerges in the context of lived experience. When organized and visible, such practice has taken the form of overtly Black feminist social movements dedicated to the empowerment of U.S. Black women.Two especially prominent moments characterize Black feminism’s visibility. Providing many of the guiding ideas for today, the first occurred at the turn of the century via the Black women’s club movement. The second or mod- ern Black feminist movement was stimulated by the antiracist and women’s social justice movements of the 1960s and 1970s and continues to the present. However, these periods of overt political activism where African-American women lobbied in our own behalf remain unusual. They appear to be unusual when juxtaposed to more typical patterns of quiescence regarding Black women’s advocacy.

Given the history of U.S. racial segregation, Black feminist activism demon- strates distinctive patterns. Because African-Americans have long been relegated to racially segregated environments, U.S. Black feminist practice has often occurred within a context of Black community development efforts and other Black nationalist-inspired projects. Black nationalism emerges in conjunction with racial segregation—U.S. Blacks living in a racially integrated society would most likely see less need for Black nationalism. As a political philosophy, Black nationalism is based on the belief that Black people constitute a people or

30 B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

“nation” with a common history and destiny. Black solidarity, the belief that Blacks have common interests and should support one another, has long perme- ated Black women’s political philosophy. Thus, Black women’s path to a “femi- nist” consciousness often occurs within the context of antiracist social justice projects, many of them influenced by Black nationalist ideologies. In describing how this phenomenon affects Black women in global context, Andree Nicola McLaughlin contends, “[A]mong activist Black women, it is generally recognized that nationalist struggle provides a rich arena for developing a woman’s con- sciousness” (McLaughlin 1995, 80).To look for Black feminism by searching for U.S. Black women who self-identify as “Black feminists” misses the complexity of how Black feminist practice actually operates (Collins 1993a).

Similar views have been expressed about the feminism of women in Africa. When a colleague asked Obioma Nnaemeka to describe African feminists’ defin- ition of African feminism, her off-the-cuff response was telling: “[T]he majority of African women are not hung up on ‘articulating their feminism’; they just do it.” In Nnaemeka’s view, “It is what they do and how they do it that provide the ‘framework’; the ‘framework’ is not carried to the theater of action as a defi- nitional tool. . . . Attempts to mold ‘African feminism’ into an easily digestible ball of pointed yam not only raise definitional questions but create difficulties for drawing organizational parameters and unpacking complex modes of engage- ment” (Nnaemeka 1998a, 5). Here Nnaemeka provides a compelling argument concerning the interconnectedness of experiences and ideas, one that differs markedly from accepted models of how one defines social justice movements. Her model references the dialogical relationship, and points to a different way of thinking about Black feminist thought as knowledge. Specifically, Black feminist practice requires Black feminist thought, and vice versa.

When it comes to the dialogical relationship within U.S. Black feminism, on the other hand, there is U.S. Black feminist thought as a critical social theory. Critical social theory constitutes theorizing about the social in defense of eco- nomic and social justice. As critical social theory, Black feminist thought encom- passes bodies of knowledge and sets of institutional practices that actively grap- ple with the central questions facing U.S. Black women as a group. Such theory recognizes that U.S. Black women constitute one group among many that are dif- ferently placed within situations of injustice. What makes critical social theory “critical” is its commitment to justice, for one’s own group and for other groups.

Within these parameters, knowledge for knowledge’s sake is not enough— Black feminist thought must both be tied to Black women’s lived experiences and aim to better those experiences in some fashion. When such thought is suffi- ciently grounded in Black feminist practice, it reflects this dialogical relationship. Black feminist thought encompasses general knowledge that helps U.S. Black women survive in, cope with, and resist our differential treatment. It also includes more specialized knowledge that investigates the specific themes and challenges of any given period of time. Conversely, when U.S. Black women can-

31D I S T I N G U I S H I N G F E A T U R E S O F B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

not see the connections among themes that permeate Black feminist thought and those that influence Black women’s everyday lives, it is appropriate to question the strength of this dialogical relationship. Moreover, it is also reasonable to ques- tion the validity of that particular expression of Black feminist thought. For example, during slavery, a special theme within Black feminist thought was how the institutionalized rape of enslaved Black women operated as a mechanism of social control. During the period when Black women worked primarily in agri- culture and service, countering the sexual harassment of live-in domestic work- ers gained special importance. Clear connections could be drawn between the content and purpose of Black feminist thought and important issues in Black women’s lives.

The potential significance of Black feminist thought goes far beyond demon- strating that African-American women can be theorists. Like Black feminist prac- tice, which it reflects and which it seeks to foster, Black feminist thought can cre- ate collective identity among African-American women about the dimensions of a Black women’s standpoint. Through the process of rearticulation, Black feminist thought can offer African-American women a different view of our- selves and our worlds (Omi and Winant 1994, 99). By taking the core themes of a Black women’s standpoint and infusing them with new meaning, Black femi- nist thought can stimulate a new consciousness that utilizes Black women’s everyday, taken-for-granted knowledge. Rather than raising consciousness, Black feminist thought affirms, rearticulates, and provides a vehicle for expressing in public a consciousness that quite often already exists. More important, this rearticulated consciousness aims to empower African-American women and stimulate resistance.

Sheila Radford-Hill stresses the importance of rearticulation as an essential ingredient of an empowering Black feminist theory in her essay “Considering Feminism as a Model for Social Change.” In evaluating whether Black women should espouse feminist programs, Radford-Hill suggests, “[T]he essential issue that black women must confront when assessing a feminist position is as follows: If I, as a black woman, ‘become a feminist,’ what basic tools will I gain to resist my individual and group oppression?” (1986, 160). For Radford-Hill, the rele- vance of feminism as a vehicle for social change must be assessed in terms of its “ability to factor black women and other women of color into alternative con- ceptions of power and the consequences of its use” (p. 160).Thus Black feminist thought as critical social theory aims to aid African-American women’s struggles against intersecting oppressions.

At first glance, these connections between Black feminist practice and Black feminist thought might suggest that only African-American women can partici- pate in the production of Black feminist thought and that only Black women’s experiences can form the content of that thought. But this model of Black femi- nism is undermined as a critical perspective by being dependent on those who are biologically Black and female. Exclusionary definitions of Black feminism

32 B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

which confine “black feminist criticism to black women critics of black women artists depicting black women” (Carby 1987, 9) are inadequate because they are inherently separatist. Instead, the connections here aim for autonomy. Given this need for self-definition and autonomy—an important objective of “an intellec- tual tradition which until twenty-five years ago did not exist within the acade- my” (Omolade 1994, ix)—what is the significance of Black women intellectuals within Black feminist thought?

D i a l o g i c a l P r a c t i c e s a n d B l a c k W o m e n I n t e l l e c t u a l s

A fourth distinguishing feature of Black feminist thought concerns the essen- tial contributions of African-American women intellectuals. The existence of a Black women’s standpoint does not mean that African-American women, aca- demic or otherwise, appreciate its content, see its significance, or recognize its potential as a catalyst for social change. One key task for Black women intellectuals of diverse ages, social classes, educational backgrounds, and occu- pations consists of asking the right questions and investigating all dimensions of a Black women’s standpoint with and for African-American women. Historically, Black women intellectuals stood in a special relationship to the larger commu- nity of African-American women, a relationship that framed Black feminist thought’s contours as critical social theory.Whether this relationship will persist depends, ironically, on Black women intellectuals’ ability to analyze their own social locations.

Very different kinds of “thought” and “theories” emerge when abstract thought is joined with pragmatic action. Denied positions as scholars and writ- ers which allow us to emphasize purely theoretical concerns, the work of most Black women intellectuals has been influenced by the merger of action and the- ory. The activities of nineteenth-century educated Black women intellectuals such as Anna J. Cooper, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell exemplify this tradition of merging intellectual work and activism. These women both analyzed the intersecting oppressions that circumscribed Black women’s lives and worked for social justice.The Black women’s club move- ment they created was both an activist and an intellectual endeavor.Working-class Black women also engaged in a parallel joining of ideas and activism. But because they were denied formal educations, the form of their activism as well as the con- tent of the ideas they developed differed from those of middle-class Black women.The live performances of classic Black women blues singers in the 1920s can be seen as one important arena where working-class women gathered and shared ideas especially germane to them (Davis 1998).

Many contemporary Black women intellectuals continue to draw on this tra- dition of using everyday actions and experiences in our theoretical work. Black feminist historian Elsa Barkley Brown describes the importance her mother’s

33D I S T I N G U I S H I N G F E A T U R E S O F B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

ideas played in the scholarship she eventually produced on African-American washerwomen. Initially Brown used the lens provided by her training as a histo- rian and saw her sample group as devalued service workers. But over time she came to understand washerwomen as entrepreneurs. By taking the laundry to whoever had the largest kitchen, they created a community and a culture among themselves. In explaining the shift of vision that enabled her to reassess this por- tion of Black women’s history, Brown notes, “It was my mother who taught me how to ask the right questions—and all of us who try to do this thing called scholarship on a regular basis are fully aware that asking the right questions is the most important part of the process” (1986, 14).

This special relationship of Black women intellectuals to the community of African-American women parallels the existence of two interrelated levels of knowledge (Berger and Luckmann 1966). The commonplace, taken-for-granted knowledge shared by African-American women growing from our everyday thoughts and actions constitutes a first and most fundamental level of knowl- edge. The ideas that Black women share with one another on an informal, daily basis about topics such as how to style our hair, characteristics of “good” Black men, strategies for dealing with White folks, and skills of how to “get over” pro- vide the foundations for this taken-for-granted knowledge.

Experts or specialists who participate in and emerge from a group produce a second, more specialized type of knowledge. Whether working-class or mid- dle-class, educated or not, famous or everyday, the range of Black women intel- lectuals discussed in Chapter 1 are examples of these specialists. Their theories that facilitate the expression of a Black women’s standpoint form the specialized knowledge of Black feminist thought. The two types of knowledge are interde- pendent. While Black feminist thought articulates the often taken-for-granted knowledge shared by African-American women as a group, the consciousness of Black women may be transformed by such thought. Many Black women blues singers have long sung about taken-for-granted situations that affect U.S. Black women.Through their music, they not only depict Black women’s realities, they aim to shape them.

Because they have had greater opportunities to achieve literacy, middle-class Black women have also had greater access to the resources to engage in Black feminist scholarship. Education need not mean alienation from this dialogical relationship. The actions of educated Black women within the Black women’s club movement typify this special relationship between one segment of Black women intellectuals and the wider community of African-American women:

It is important to recognize that black women like Frances Harper, Anna Julia Cooper, and Ida B. Wells were not isolated figures of intellectual genius; they were shaped by and helped to shape a wider movement of Afro-American women. This is not to claim that they were representative of all black women; they and their counterparts formed an educated, intel- lectual elite, but an elite that tried to develop a cultural and historical per-

34 B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

spective that was organic to the wider condition of black womanhood. (Carby 1987, 115)

The work of these women is important because it illustrates a tradition of join- ing scholarship and activism. Because they often lived in the same neighbor- hoods as working-class Blacks, turn-of-the-century club women lived in a Black civil society where this dialogical relationship was easier to establish. They saw the problems.They participated in social institutions that encouraged solutions. They fostered the development of a “cultural and historical perspective that was organic to the wider condition of black womanhood.” Contemporary Black women intellectuals face similar challenges of fostering dialogues, but do so under greatly changed social conditions. Whereas racial segregation was designed to keep U.S. Blacks oppressed, it fostered a form of racial solidarity that flourished in all-Black neighborhoods. In contrast, now that Blacks live in eco- nomically heterogeneous neighborhoods, achieving the same racial solidarity raises new challenges.

Black women intellectuals are central to Black feminist thought for several reasons. First, our experiences as African-American women provide us with a unique angle of vision concerning Black womanhood unavailable to other groups, should we choose to embrace it. It is more likely for Black women, as members of an oppressed group, to have critical insights into the condition of our oppression than it is for those who live outside those structures. One of the characters in Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s 1892 novel, Iola Leroy, expresses this belief in the special vision of those who have experienced oppression:

Miss Leroy, out of the race must come its own thinkers and writers. Authors belonging to the white race have written good books, for which I am deeply grateful, but it seems to be almost impossible for a white man to put himself completely in our place. No man can feel the iron which enters another man’s soul. (Carby 1987, 62)

Only African-American women occupy this center and can “feel the iron” that enters Black women’s souls, because while U.S. Black women’s experiences resemble others, such experiences remain unique. The importance of Black women’s leadership in producing Black feminist thought does not mean that others cannot participate. It does mean that the primary responsibility for defin- ing one’s own reality lies with the people who live that reality, who actually have those experiences.

Second, Black women intellectuals both inside and outside the academy are less likely to walk away from Black women’s struggles when the obstacles seem overwhelming or when the rewards for staying diminish. In discussing Black women’s involvement in the feminist movement, Sheila Radford-Hill stresses the significance of taking actions in one’s own behalf:

Black women now realize that part of the problem within the movement was our insistence that white women do for/with us what we must do

35D I S T I N G U I S H I N G F E A T U R E S O F B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

for/with ourselves: namely, frame our own social action around our own agenda for change. . . . Critical to this discussion is the right to organize on one’s own behalf. . . . Criticism by black feminists must reaffirm this principle. (1986, 162)

For most U.S. Black women, engaging in Black feminist research and scholarship is not a passing fad—these issues affect both contemporary daily life and inter- generational realities.

Third, Black women intellectuals from all walks of life must aggressively push the theme of self-definition because speaking for oneself and crafting one’s own agenda is essential to empowerment. As Black feminist sociologist Deborah K. King succinctly states, “Black feminism asserts self-determination as essential” (1988, 72). Black feminist thought cannot challenge intersecting oppressions without empowering African-American women. Because self-definition is key to individual and group empowerment, ceding the power of self-definition to other groups, no matter how well-meaning or supportive of Black women they may be, in essence replicates existing power hierarchies. As Patrice L. Dickerson con- tends, “A person comes into being and knows herself by her achievements, and through her efforts to become and know herself, she achieves” (personal corre- spondence 1988). Like Dickerson, individual African-American women have long displayed varying types of consciousness regarding our shared angle of vision. When these individual expressions of consciousness are articulated, argued through, contested, and aggregated in ways that reflect the heterogeneity of Black womanhood, a collective group consciousness dedicated to resisting oppression becomes possible. Black women’s ability to forge these individual, often unarticulated, yet potentially powerful expressions of everyday conscious- ness into an articulated, self-defined, collective standpoint is key to Black women’s survival. As Audre Lorde points out, “It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others—for their use and to our detriment” (1984, 45).

Fourth, Black women intellectuals are central in the production of Black fem- inist thought because we alone can foster the group autonomy that fosters effec- tive coalitions with other groups. Recall that Black women intellectuals need not be middle-class, educated, middle-aged, or recognized as such by academia or other establishments. Black women intellectuals constitute a highly diverse group. Rather than assuming that Black women intellectuals constitute a Black female version of William E. B. DuBois’s Talented Tenth—a common mispercep- tion advanced by some elitist academics who apparently have difficulty imagin- ing everyday Black women as bona fide intellectuals (see, e.g., Gilroy 1993, 53)— the type of intellectual leadership envisioned here requires collaboration among diverse Black women to think through what would constitute Black women’s autonomy. Moreover, although Black feminist thought originates within Black women’s communities, it cannot flourish isolated from the experiences and ideas of other groups. Black women intellectuals must find ways to place our own het-

36 B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

erogeneous experiences and consciousness at the center of any serious efforts to develop Black feminist thought without having our thought become separatist and exclusionary.

This autonomy is quite distinct from separatist positions whereby Black women withdraw from other groups and engage in exclusionary politics. In her introduction to Home Girls, A Black Feminist Anthology, Barbara Smith describes this difference: “Autonomy and separatism are fundamentally different. Whereas autonomy comes from a position of strength, separatism comes from a position of fear. When we’re truly autonomous we can deal with other kinds of people, a multiplicity of issues, and with difference, because we have formed a solid base of strength” (1983, xl). As mothers, college presidents, grassroots activists, teachers, musicians, and corporate executives, Black women intellectuals who contribute to articulating an autonomous, self-defined standpoint are in a posi- tion to examine the usefulness of coalitions with other groups, both scholarly and activist, in order to develop new models for social change. Autonomy to develop a self-defined, independent analysis means neither that Black feminist thought has relevance only for African-American women nor that we must con- fine ourselves to analyzing our own experiences. As Sonia Sanchez points out, “I’ve always known that if you write from a black experience, you’re writing from a universal experience as well. . . . I know you don’t have to whitewash yourself to be universal” ( Tate 1983, 142).

By advocating, refining, and disseminating Black feminist thought, individ- uals from other groups who are engaged in similar social justice projects—Black men, African women,White men, Latinas,White women, and members of other U.S. racial/ethnic groups, for example—can identify points of connection that further social justice projects.Very often, however, engaging in the type of coali- tion envisioned here requires that individuals become “traitors” to the privileges that their race, class, gender, sexuality, or citizenship status provide them. For example, in Memoir of a Race Traitor, Mab Segrest (1994) writes of how coming to terms with her lesbian identity spurred her recognition of how her Whiteness gave her unearned privileges. Unlike most U.S.White women, Segrest turned her back on this privilege, embraced her new identity as a “race traitor,” and came to see her role as confronting social injustice.3 Similarly, sociologist Joe Feagin’s antiracist scholarship exemplifies a similar rejection of the unearned privileges of Whiteness. Feagin chooses to use benefits that may accrue to him as a White male to engage in collaborative scholarship with Black men (Feagin and Sikes 1994) and with Black women (St. Jean and Feagin 1998).While many might see Segrest and Feagin as “race traitors,” their intellectual work illustrates how coalition building that advances Black feminist thought might operate.

Just as African-American women who aim to advance Black feminism as a social justice project can support other social justice projects—U.S. Black women who are respectful of the importance of Latina autonomy to Latina social justice projects can study, learn from, research, and teach about Latinas if they do so in

37D I S T I N G U I S H I N G F E A T U R E S O F B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

non-exploitative ways—so can others approach Black feminist thought in a sim- ilar fashion. Thus, U.S. Black feminist thought fully actualized is a collaborative enterprise. It must be open to coalition building with individuals engaged in similar social justice projects.

Coalition building such as this requires simultaneous if not prior dialogues among Black women intellectuals and within the larger African-American women’s community. Exploring the common themes of a Black women’s stand- point is an important first step. Moreover, finding ways of handling internal dis- sent is especially important for building Black women’s intellectual communities. Evelynn Hammonds describes how maintaining a united front for Whites stifles her thinking: “What I need to do is challenge my thinking, to grow. On white publications sometimes I feel like I’m holding up the banner of black woman- hood. And that doesn’t allow me to be as critical as I would like to be” (in Clarke et al. 1983, 104). Cheryl Clarke observes that she has two dialogues: one with the public and the private ones in which she feels free to criticize the work of other Black women. Clarke states that the private dialogues “have changed my life, have shaped the way I feel . . . have mattered to me” (p. 103).

Coalition building also requires dialogues with groups engaged in similar social justice projects. Black women intellectuals can use our outsider-within location in building effective coalitions and stimulating dialogue with others who are similarly located. Barbara Smith suggests that Black women develop dia- logues from a “commitment to principled coalitions, based not upon expediency, but upon our actual need for each other” (1983, xxxiii). Dialogues among and coalitions with a range of groups, each with its own distinctive set of experiences and specialized thought embedded in those experiences, form the larger, more general terrain of intellectual and political discourse necessary for furthering Black feminism. Through dialogues exploring how domination is maintained and changed, parallels between Black women’s experiences and those of other groups become the focus of investigation.

Dialogues associated with ethical, principled coalition building create possi- bilities for new versions of truth. Alice Walker’s answer to the question of what she felt were the major differences between the literature of African-Americans and Whites offers a provocative glimpse of the types of truths that might emerge through epistemologies that embrace dialogues and coalition building. Walker did not spend much time considering this question, since it was not the differ- ence between them that interested her, but, rather, the way Black writers and White writers seemed to be writing one immense story, with different parts of the story coming from a multitude of different perspectives. In a conversation with her mother, Walker refines this epistemological vision: “I believe that the truth about any subject only comes when all sides of the story are put together, and all their different meanings make one new one. Each writer writes the miss- ing parts to the other writer’s story. And the whole story is what I’m after” (1983, 49). Her mother’s response to Walker’s vision of the possibilities of dia-

38 B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

logues and coalitions hints at the difficulty of sustaining such dialogues across differences in power: “ ‘Well, I doubt if you can ever get the true missing parts of anything away from the white folks,’ my mother says softly, so as not to offend the waitress who is mopping up a nearby table; ‘they’ve sat on the truth so long by now they’ve mashed the life out of it’ ” (1983, 49).

B l a c k F e m i n i s m a s D y n a m i c a n d C h a n g i n g

A fifth distinguishing feature of U.S. Black feminist thought concerns the signif- icance of change. In order for Black feminist thought to operate effectively with- in Black feminism as a social justice project, both must remain dynamic. Neither Black feminist thought as a critical social theory nor Black feminist practice can be static; as social conditions change, so must the knowledge and practices designed to resist them. For example, stressing the importance of Black women’s centrality to Black feminist thought does not mean that all African-American women desire, are positioned, or are qualified to exert this type of intellectual leadership. Under current conditions, some Black women thinkers have lost contact with Black feminist practice. Conversely, the changed social conditions under which U.S. Black women now come to womanhood—class-segregated neighborhoods, some integrated, far more not—place Black women of different social classes in entirely new relationships with one another.

African-American women as a group may have experiences that provide us with a unique angle of vision. But expressing a collective, self-defined Black fem- inist consciousness is problematic precisely because dominant groups have a vested interest in suppressing such thought. As Hannah Nelson notes, “I have grown to womanhood in a world where the saner you are, the madder you are made to appear” (Gwaltney 1980, 7). Ms. Nelson realizes that those who control school curricula, television programs, government statistics, and the press typi- cally prevail in establishing their viewpoint as superior to others.

An oppressed group’s experiences may put its members in a position to see things differently, but their lack of control over the ideological apparatuses of society makes expressing a self-defined standpoint more difficult. Elderly domes- tic worker Rosa Wakefield assesses how the standpoints of the powerful and those who serve them diverge:

If you eats these dinners and don’t cook ‘em, if you wears these clothes and don’t buy or iron them, then you might start thinking that the good fairy or some spirit did all that. . . . Black folks don’t have no time to be thinking like that. . .. But when you don’t have anything else to do, you can think like that. It’s bad for your mind, though. (Gwaltney 1980, 88)

Ms. Wakefield has a self-defined perspective growing from her experiences that enables her to reject standpoints advanced by more powerful groups. And yet ideas like hers are typically suppressed by dominant groups. Groups unequal in

39D I S T I N G U I S H I N G F E A T U R E S O F B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

power are correspondingly unequal in their ability to make their standpoint known to themselves and others.

The changing social conditions that confront African-American women stimulate the need for new Black feminist analyses of the common differences that characterize U.S. Black womanhood. Some Black women thinkers are already engaged in this process. Take, for example, Barbara Omolade’s (1994) insightful analysis of Black women’s historical and contemporary participation in mammy work. Most can understand mammy work’s historical context, one where Black women were confined to domestic service, with Aunt Jemima created as a con- trolling image designed to hide Black women’s exploitation. Understanding the limitations of domestic service, much of Black women’s progress in the labor market has been measured by the move out of domestic service. Currently, few U.S. Black women work in domestic service in private homes. Instead, a good deal of this work in private homes is now done by undocumented immigrant women of color who lack U.S. citizenship; their exploitation resembles that long visited upon African-American women (Chang 1994). But, as Omolade points out, these changes do not mean that U.S. Black women have escaped mammy work. Even though few Aunt Jemimas exist today, and those that do have been cosmetically altered, leading to the impression that mammy work has disap- peared, Omolade reminds us that mammy work has assumed new forms.Within each segment of the labor market—the low-paid jobs at fast-food establishments, nursing homes, day-care centers, and dry cleaners that characterize the secondary sector, the secretaries and clerical workers of the primary lower tier sector, or the teachers, social workers, nurses, and administrators of the primary upper tier sec- tor—U.S. Black women still do a remarkable share of the emotional nurturing and cleaning up after other people, often for lower pay. In this context, the task for contemporary Black feminist thought lies in explicating these changing rela- tionships and developing analyses of how these commonalities are experienced differently.

The changing conditions of Black women’s work overall has important implications for Black women’s intellectual work. Historically, the suppression of Black feminist thought has meant that Black women intellectuals have tradition- ally relied on alternative institutional locations to produce specialized knowledge about a Black women’s standpoint. Many Black women scholars, writers, and artists have worked either alone, as was the case with Maria W. Stewart, or within African-American community organizations, the case for Black women in the club movement and in Black churches. The grudging incorporation of work on Black women into curricular offerings of historically White colleges and universi- ties, coupled with the creation of a critical mass of African-American women writers such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Gloria Naylor within these institutional locations, means that Black women intellectuals can now find employment within academia. Black women’s history and Black feminist literary criticism constitute two focal points of this renaissance in Black women’s intel-

40 B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

lectual work (Carby 1987). Moreover, U.S. Black women’s access to the media remains unprecedented, as talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey’s long-running television show and forays into film production suggest.

The visibility provided U.S. Black women and our ideas via these new insti- tutional locations has been immense. However, one danger facing African- American women intellectuals working in these new locations concerns the potential isolation of individual thinkers from Black women’s collective experi- ences—lack of access to other U.S. Black women and to Black women’s commu- nities. Another is the pressure to separate thought from action—particularly political activism—that typically accompanies training in standard academic disciplines or participating in allegedly neutral spheres like the “free” press. Yet another involves the inability of some Black women “superstars” to critique the terms of their own participation in these new relations. Blinded by their self-pro- claimed Black feminist diva aspirations, they feel that they owe no one, especially other Black women. Instead, they become trapped within their own impover- ished Black feminist universes. Despite these dangers, these new institutional locations provide a multitude of opportunities for enhancing Black feminist thought’s visibility. In this new context, the challenge lies in remaining dynamic, all the while keeping in mind that a moving target is more difficult to hit.

U . S . B l a c k F e m i n i s m a n d O t h e r S o c i a l J u s t i c e P r o j e c t s

A final distinguishing feature of Black feminist thought concerns its relationship to other projects for social justice. A broad range of African-American women intellectuals have advanced the view that Black women’s struggles are part of a wider struggle for human dignity, empowerment, and social justice. In an 1893 speech to women, Anna Julia Cooper cogently expressed this worldview:

We take our stand on the solidarity of humanity, the oneness of life, and the unnaturalness and injustice of all special favoritisms, whether of sex, race, country, or condition. . . . The colored woman feels that woman’s cause is one and universal; and that . . . not till race, color, sex, and con- dition are seen as accidents, and not the substance of life; not till the uni- versal title of humanity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is con- ceded to be inalienable to all; not till then is woman’s lesson taught and woman’s cause won—not the white woman’s nor the black woman’s, not the red woman’s but the cause of every man and of every woman who has writhed silently under a mighty wrong. (Loewenberg and Bogin 1976, 330–31)

Like Cooper, many African-American women intellectuals embrace this per- spective regardless of particular political solutions we propose, our educational backgrounds, our fields of study, or our historical periods.Whether we advocate

41D I S T I N G U I S H I N G F E A T U R E S O F B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

working through autonomous Black women’s organizations, becoming part of women’s organizations, running for political office, or supporting Black com- munity institutions, African-American women intellectuals repeatedly identify political actions such as these as a means for human empowerment rather than ends in and of themselves. Thus one important guiding principle of Black fem- inism is a recurring humanist vision (Steady 1981, 1987).4

Alice Walker’s preference for the term womanist addresses this notion of the solidarity of humanity. ”Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender,” she writes. To Walker, one is “womanist” when one is “committed to the survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female.” A womanist is “not a separatist, except periodically for health” and is “traditionally universalist, as is ‘Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige, and black?’Ans.: ‘Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented’ ” (1983, xi). By redefining all people as “people of color,” Walker universalizes what are typically seen as individual struggles while simul- taneously allowing space for autonomous movements of self-determination.5

In assessing the sexism of the Black nationalist movement of the 1960s, lawyer Pauli Murray identifies the dangers inherent in separatism as opposed to autonomy, and also echoes Cooper’s concern with the solidarity of humanity:

The lesson of history that all human rights are indivisible and that the fail- ure to adhere to this principle jeopardizes the rights of all is particularly applicable here. A built-in hazard of an aggressive ethnocentric movement which disregards the interests of other disadvantaged groups is that it will become parochial and ultimately self-defeating in the face of hostile reac- tions, dwindling allies, and mounting frustrations. . . . Only a broad move- ment for human rights can prevent the Black Revolution from becoming isolated and can insure ultimate success. (Murray 1970, 102)

Without a commitment to human solidarity and social justice, suggests Murray, any political movement—whether Black nationalist, feminist, or anti-elitist— may be doomed to ultimate failure.

Former congresswoman Shirley Chisholm also points to the need for self- conscious struggle against the stereotypes that support social injustice. In “work- ing toward our own freedom, we can help others work free from the traps of their stereotypes,” she notes. “In the end, antiblack, antifemale, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing—antihumanism. . . . We must reject not only the stereotypes that others have of us but also those we have of ourselves and others” (1970, 181).

This humanist orientation within U.S. Black feminism also resembles similar stances taken with Black diasporic feminisms. Ama Ata Aidoo, a former minister of education in Ghana and author of novels, poetry, and short stories, describes the inclusive nature of her political philosophy:

42 B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

When people ask me rather bluntly every now and then whether I am a feminist, I not only answer yes, but I go on to insist that every woman and every man should be a feminist—especially if they believe that Africans should take charge of African land, African wealth, African lives, and the burden of African development. It is not possible to advocate indepen- dence for the African continent without also believing that African women must have the best that the environment can offer. For some of us, this is the crucial element in our feminism. (Aidoo 1998, 39)

Aidoo recognizes that neither African nor U.S. Black women nor any other group will ever be empowered in situations of social injustice. Social justice projects are not either/or endeavors where one can say, “We have our movement and you have yours—our movements have nothing to do with one another.” Instead, such projects counsel, “We have our movement, and we support yours.” In a context of intersecting oppressions, Black feminism requires searching for jus- tice not only for U.S. Black women, but for everyone.

The words and actions of these diverse Black women intellectuals may address markedly different audiences.Yet in their commitment to Black women’s empowerment within a context of social justice, they advance the strikingly sim- ilar theme of the oneness of all human life. Perhaps the most succinct version of the humanist vision in U.S. Black feminist thought is offered by Fannie Lou Hamer, the daughter of sharecroppers and a Mississippi civil rights activist.While sitting on her porch, Ms. Hamer observed, “Ain’ no such thing as I can hate any- body and hope to see God’s face” (Jordan 1981, xi).

43D I S T I N G U I S H I N G F E A T U R E S O F B L A C K F E M I N I S T T H O U G H T

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

This page intentionally left blank

EBSCOhost - printed on 6/13/2020 1:53 AM via UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA CRUZ. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use