Feminism
in the United States has never emerged from the women who are most victimized by
sexist oppression; women who are daily beaten down, mentally, physically, and
spiritually-women who are powerless to change their condition in life. They are
a silent majority. A mark of their victimization is that they accept their lot
in life without visible question, without organized protest, without collective
anger or rage. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique is still heralded as
having paved the way for contemporary feminist movement-it was written as if
these women did not exist. Friedan's famous phrase, "the problem that has
no name," often quoted to describe the condition of women in this society,
actually referred to the plight of a select group of college-educated, middle
and upper class, married white women-housewives bored with leisure, with the
home, with children, with buying products, who wanted more out of life. Friedan
concludes her first chapter by stating: "We can no longer ignore that voice
within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children
and my house.'" That "more" she defined as careers. She did not
discuss who would be called in to take care of the children and maintain the
home if more women like herself were freed from their house labor and given
equal access with white men to the professions. She did not speak of the needs
of women without men, without children, without homes. She ignored the existence
of all non-white women and poor white women. She did not tell readers whether it
was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a
prostitute, than to be a leisure class housewife.
She
made her plight and the plight of white women like herself synonymous with a
condition affecting all American women. In so doing, she deflected attention
away from her classism, her racism, her sexist attitudes towards the masses of
American women. In the context of her book, Friedan makes clear that the women
she saw as victimized by sexism were college-educated, white women who were
compelled by sexist conditioning to remain in the home. She contends:
It
is urgent to understand how the very condition of being a housewife can create a
sense of emptiness, non-existence, nothingness in women. There are aspects of
the housewife role that make it almost impossible for a woman of adult
intelligence to retain a sense of human identity, the firm core of self or
"I" without which a human being, man or woman, is not truly alive. For
women of ability, in America today, I am convinced that there is something about
the housewife state itself that is dangerous.1
Specific
problems and dilemmas of leisure class white housewives were real concerns that
merited consideration and change but they were not the pressing political
concerns of masses of women. Masses of women were concerned about economic
survival, ethnic and racial discrimination, etc. When Friedan wrote The
Feminine Mystique, more than one third of all women were in the work force.
Although many women longed to be housewives, only women with leisure time and
money could actually shape their identities on the model of the feminine
mystique. They were women who, in Friedan's words, were "told by the most
advanced thinkers of our time to go back and live their lives as if they were
Noras, restricted to the doll's house by Victorian prejudices."2
From
her early writing, it appears that Friedan never wondered whether or not the
plight of college-educated, white housewives was an adequate reference point by
which to gauge the impact of sexism or sexist oppression on the lives of women
in American society. Nor did she move beyond her own life experience to acquire
an expanded perspective on the lives of women in the United States. I say this
not to discredit her work. It remains a useful discussion of the impact of
sexist discrimination on a select group of women. Examined from a different
perspective, it can also be seen as a case study of narcissism, insensitivity,
sentimentality, and self-indulgence which reaches its peak when Friedan, in a
chapter titled "Progressive Dehumanization," makes a comparison
between the psychological effects of isolation on white housewives and the
impact of confinement on the self-concept of prisoners in Nazi concentration
camps.3
Friedan
was a principal shaper of contemporary feminist thought. Significantly, the
one-dimensional perspective on women's reality presented in her book became a
marked feature of the contemporary feminist movement. Like Friedan before them,
white women who dominate feminist discourse today rarely question whether or not
their perspective on women's reality is true to the lived experiences of women
as a collective group. Nor are they aware of the extent to which their
perspectives reflect race and class biases, although there has been a greater
awareness of biases in recent years. Racism abounds in the writings of white
feminists, reinforcing white supremacy and negating the possibility that women
will bond politically across ethnic and racial boundaries. Past feminist refusal
to draw attention to and attack racial hierarchies suppressed the link between
race and class. Yet class structure in American society has been shaped by the
racial politic of white supremacy; it is only by analyzing racism and its
function in capitalist society that a thorough understanding of class
relationships can emerge. Class struggle is inextricably bound to the struggle
to end racism. Urging women to explore the full implication of class in an early
essay, "The Last Straw," Rita Mae Brown explained:
Class
is much more than Marx's definition of relationship to the means of production.
Class involves your behavior, your basic assumptions about life. Your experience
(determined by your class) validates those assumptions, how you are taught to
behave, what you expect from yourself and from others, your concept of a future,
how you understand problems and solve them, how you think, feel, act. It is
these behavioral patterns that middle class women resist recognizing although
they may be perfectly willing to accept class in Marxist terms, a neat trick
that helps them avoid really dealing with class behavior and changing that
behavior in themselves. It is these behavioral patterns which must be
recognized, understood, and changed.4
White
women who dominate feminist discourse, who for the most part make and articulate
feminist theory, have little or no understanding of white supremacy as a racial
politic, of the psychological impact of class, of their political status within
a racist, sexist, capitalist state.
It
is this lack of awareness that, for example, leads Leah Fritz to write in Dreamers
and Dealers, a discussion of the current women's movement published in 1979:
Women's
suffering under sexist tyranny is a common bond among all women, transcending
the particulars of the different forms that tyranny takes. Suffering cannot
be measured and compared quantitatively. Is the enforced idleness and
vacuity of a "rich" woman, which leads her to madness and/or suicide,
greater or less than the suffering of a poor woman who barely survives on
welfare but retains some-how her spirit? There is no way to measure such
difference, but should these two women survey each other without the screen of
patriarchal class, they may find a commonality in the fact that they are both
oppressed, both miserable.5
Fritz's
statement is another example of wishful thinking, as well as the conscious
mystification of social divisions between women, that has characterized much
feminist expression. While it is evident that many women suffer from sexist
tyranny, there is little indication that this forges "a common bond among
all women." There is much evidence substantiating the reality that race and
class identity creates differences in quality of life, social status, and
lifestyle that take precedence over the common experience women
share-differences which are rarely transcended. The motives of materially
privileged, educated, white women with a variety of career and lifestyle options
available to them must be questioned when they insist that "suffering
cannot be measured." Fritz is by no means the first white feminist to make
this statement. It is a statement that I have never heard a poor woman of any
race make. Although there is much I would take issue with in Benjamin Barber's
critique of the women's movement, Liberating Feminism, I agree with his
assertion:
Suffering
is not necessarily a fixed and universal experience that can be measured by a
single rod: it is related to situations, needs, and aspirations. But there must
be some historical and political parameters for the use of the term so that
political priorities can be established and different forms and degrees of
suffering can be given the most attention.6
A
central tenet of modern feminist thought has been the assertion that "all
women are oppressed." This assertion implies that women share a common lot,
that factors like class, race, religion, sexual preference, etc. do not create a
diversity of experience that determines the extent to which sexism will be an
oppressive force in the lives of individual women. Sexism as a system of
domination is institutionalized but it has never determined in an absolute way
the fate of all women in this society. Being oppressed means the absence of
choices. It is the primary point of contact between the oppressed and the
oppressor. Many women in this society do have choices, (as inadequate as they
are) therefore exploitation and discrimination are words that more accurately
describe the lot of women collectively in the United States. Many women do not
join organized resistance against sexism precisely because sexism has not meant
an absolute lack of choices. They may know they are discriminated against on the
basis of sex, but they do not equate this with oppression. Under capitalism,
patriarchy is structured so that sexism restricts women's behavior in some
realms even as freedom from limitations is allowed in other spheres. The absence
of extreme restrictions leads many women to ignore the areas in which they are
exploited or discriminated against; it may even lead them to imagine that no
women are oppressed.
There
are oppressed women in the United States, and it is both appropriate and
necessary that we speak against such oppression. French feminist Christine
Delphy makes the point in her essay, "For a Materialist Feminism,"
that the use of the term oppression is important because it places feminist
struggle in a radical political framework:
The
rebirth of feminism coincided with the use of the term "oppression."
The ruling ideology, i.e. common sense, daily speech, does not speak about
oppression but about a "feminine condition." It refers back to a
naturalist explanation: to a constraint of nature, exterior reality out of reach
and not modifiable by human action. The term "oppression," on the
contrary, refers back to a choice, an explanation, a situation that is
political. "Oppression" and "social oppression" are
therefore synonyms or rather social oppression is a redundance: the notion of a
political origin, i.e. social, is an integral part of the concept of oppression.7
However,
feminist emphasis on "common oppression" in the United States was less
a strategy for politicization than an appropriation by conservative and liberal
women of a radical political vocabulary that masked the extent to which they
shaped the movement so that it addressed and promoted their class interests.
Although
the impulse towards unity and empathy that informed the notion of common
oppression was directed at building solidarity, slogans like "organize
around your own oppression" provided the excuse many privileged women
needed to ignore the differences between their social status and the status of
masses of women. It was a mark of race and class privilege, as well as the
expression of freedom from the many constraints sexism places on working class
women, that middle class white women were able to make their interests the
primary focus of feminist movement and employ a rhetoric of commonality that
made their condition synonymous with "oppression." Who was there to
demand a change in vocabulary? What other group of women in the United States
had the same access to universities, publishing houses, mass media, money? Had
middle class black women begun a movement in which they had labeled themselves
"oppressed," no one would have taken them seriously. Had they
established public forums and given speeches about their "oppression,"
they would have been criticized and attacked from all sides. This was not the
case with white bourgeois feminists for they could appeal to a large audience of
women, like themselves, who were eager to change their lot in life. Their
isolation from women of other class and race groups provided no immediate
comparative base by which to test their assumptions of common oppression.
Initially,
radical participants in women's movement demanded that women penetrate that
isolation and create a space for contact. Anthologies like Liberation Now,
Women's Liberation: Blueprint for the Future, Class and Feminism, Radical
Feminism, and Sisterhood Is Powerful, all published in the early
1970s, contain articles that attempted to address a wide audience of women, an
audience that was not exclusively white, middle class, college-educated, and
adult (many have articles on teenagers). Sookie Stambler articulated this
radical spirit in her introduction to Women's Liberation: Blueprint for the
Future:
Movement
women have always been turned off by the media's necessity to create celebrities
and superstars. This goes against our basic philosophy. We cannot relate to
women in our ranks towering over us with prestige and fame. We are not
struggling for the benefit of the one woman or for one group of women. We are
dealing with issues that concern all women.8
These
sentiments, shared by many feminists early in the movement, were not sustained.
As more and more women acquired prestige, fame, or money from feminist writings
or from gains from feminist movement for equality in the workforce, individual
opportunism undermined appeals for collective struggle. Women who were not
opposed to patriarchy, capitalism, classism, or racism labeled themselves
"feminist." Their expectations were varied. Privileged women wanted
social equality with men of their class; some women wanted equal pay for equal
work; others wanted an alternative lifestyle. Many of these legitimate concerns
were easily co-opted by the ruling capitalist patriarchy. French feminist
Antoinette Fouque states:
The
actions proposed by the feminist groups are spectacular, provoking. But
provocation only brings to light a certain number of social contradictions. It
does not reveal radical contradictions within society. The feminists claim that
they do not seek equality with men, but their practice proves the contrary to be
true. Feminists are a bourgeois avant-garde that maintains, in an inverted form,
the dominant values. Inversion does not facilitate the passage to another kind
of structure. Reformism suits everyone! Bourgeois order, capitalism,
phallocentrism are ready to integrate as many feminists, as will be necessary.
Since these women are becoming men, in the end it will only mean a few more men.
The difference between the sexes is not whether one does or doesn't have a
penis, it is whether or not one is an integral part of a phallic masculine
economy.9
Feminists
in the United States are aware of the contradictions. Carol Ehrlich makes the
point in her essay, "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Can It
Be Saved?," that "feminism seems more and more to have taken on a
blind, safe, nonrevolutionary outlook" as "feminist radicalism loses
ground to bourgeois feminism," stressing that "we cannot let this
continue":
Women
need to know (and are increasingly prevented from finding out) that feminism is
not about dressing for success, or becoming a corporate executive, or gaining
elective office; it is not being able to share a two career marriage and take
skiing vacations and spend huge amounts of time with your husband and two lovely
children because you have a domestic worker who makes all this possible for you,
but who hasn't the time or money to do it for herself, it is not opening a
Women's Bank, or spending a weekend in an expensive workshop that guarantees to
teach you how to become assertive (but not aggressive); it is most emphatically not
about becoming a police detective or CIA agent or marine corps general.
But
if these distorted images of feminism have more reality than ours do, it is
partly our own fault. We have not worked as hard as we should have at providing
clear and meaningful alternative analyses which relate to people's lives, and at
providing active, accessible groups in which to work.10
It
is no accident that feminist struggle has been so easily co-opted to serve the
interests of conservative and liberal feminists since feminism in the United
States has so far been a bourgeois ideology. Zillah Eisenstein discusses the
liberal roots of North American feminism in The Radical Future of Liberal
Feminism, explaining in the introduction:
One
of the major contributions to be found in this study is the role of the ideology
of liberal individualism in the construction of feminist theory. Today's
feminists either do not discuss a theory of individuality or they
unselfconsciously adopt the competitive, atomistic ideology of liberal
individualism. There is much confusion on this issue in the feminist theory we
discuss here. Until a conscious differentiation is made between a theory of
individuality that recognizes the importance of the individual within the social
collectivity and the ideology of individualism that assumes a competitive view
of the individual, there will not be a full accounting of what a feminist theory
of liberation must look like our Western society.11
The
ideology of "competitive, atomistic liberal individualism" has
permeated feminist thought to such an extent that it undermines the potential
radicalism of feminist struggle. The usurpation of feminism by bourgeois women
to support their class interests has been to a very grave extent justified by
feminist theory as it has so far been conceived. (For example, the ideology of
"common oppression.") Any movement to resist the co-optation of
feminist struggle must begin by introducing a different feminist perspectives
new theory-one that is not informed by the ideology of liberal individualism.
The
exclusionary practices of women who dominate feminist discourse have made it
practically impossible for new and varied theories to emerge. Feminism has its
party line and women who feel a need for a different strategy, a different
foundation, often find themselves ostracized and silenced. Criticisms of or
alternatives to established feminist ideas are not encouraged, e.g. recent
controversies about expanding feminist discussions of sexuality. Yet groups of
women who feel excluded from feminist discourse and praxis can make a place for
themselves only if they first create, via critiques, an awareness of the factors
that alienate them. Many individual white women found in the women's movement a
liberatory solution to personal dilemmas. Having directly benefited from the
movement, they are less inclined to criticize it or to engage in rigorous
examination of its structure than those who feel it has not had a revolutionary
impact on their lives or the lives of masses of women in our society. Non-white
women who feel affirmed within the current structure of feminist movement (even
though they may form autonomous groups) seem to also feel that their definitions
of the party line, whether on the issue of black feminism or on other issues, is
the only legitimate discourse. Rather than encourage a diversity of voices,
critical dialogue, and controversy, they, like some white women, seek to stifle
dissent. As activists and writers whose work is widely known, they act as if
they are best able to judge whether other women's voices should be heard. Susan
Griffin warns against this overall tendency towards dogmatism in her essay,
"The Way of All Ideology":
...
when a theory is transformed into an ideology, it begins to destroy the self and
self-knowledge. Originally born of feeling, it pretends to float above and
around feeling. Above sensation. It organizes experience according to itself,
without touching experience. By virtue of being itself, it is supposed to know.
To invoke the name of this ideology is to confer truthfulness. No one can tell
it anything new. Experience ceases to surprise it, inform it, transform it. It
is annoyed by any detail which does not fit into its world view. Begun as a cry
against the denial of truth, now it denies any truth which does not fit into its
scheme. Begun as a way to restore one's sense of reality, now it attempts to
discipline real people, to remake natural beings after its own image. All that
it fails to explain it records as its enemy. Begun as a theory of liberation, it
is threatened by new theories of liberation; it builds a prison for the mind.12
We
resist hegemonic dominance of feminist thought by insisting that it is a theory
in the making, that we must necessarily criticize, question, re-examine, and
explore new possibilities. My persistent critique has been informed by my status
as a member of an oppressed group, experience of sexist exploitation and
discrimination, and the sense that prevailing feminist analysis has not been the
force shaping my feminist consciousness. This is true for many women. There are
white women who had never considered resisting male dominance until the feminist
movement created an awareness that they could and should. My awareness of
feminist struggle was stimulated by social circumstance. Growing up in a
Southern, black, father-dominated, working class household, I experienced (as
did my mother, my sisters, and my brother) varying degrees of patriarchal
tyranny and it made me angry-it made us all angry. Anger led me to question the
politics of male dominance and enabled me to resist sexist socialization.
Frequently, white feminists act as if black women did not know sexist oppression
existed until they voiced feminist sentiment. They believe they are providing
black women with "the" analysis and "the" program for
liberation. They do not understand, cannot even imagine, that black women, as
well as other groups of women who live daily in oppressive situations, often
acquire an awareness of patriarchal politics from their lived experience, just
as they develop strategies of resistance (even though they may not resist on a
sustained or organized basis).
These
black women observed white feminist focus on male tyranny and women's oppression
as if it were a "new" revelation and felt such a focus had little
impact on their lives. To them it was just another indication of the privileged
living conditions of middle and upper class white women that they would need a
theory to inform them that they were "oppressed." The implication
being that people who are truly oppressed know it even though they may not be
engaged in organized resistance or are unable to articulate in written form the
nature of their oppression. These black women saw nothing liberatory in party
line analyses of women's oppression. Neither the fact that black women have not
organized collectively in huge numbers around the issues of "feminism"
(many of us do not know or use the term) nor the fact that we have not had
access to the machinery of power that would allow us to share our analyses or
theories about gender with the American public negate its presence in our lives
or place us in a position of dependency in relationship to those white and
non-white feminists who address a larger audience.
The
understanding I had by age thirteen of patriarchal politics created in me
expectations of the feminist movement that were quite different from those of
young, middle class, white women. When I entered my first women's studies class
at Stanford University in the early 1970s, white women were revelling in the joy
of being together -- to them it was an important, momentous occasion. I had not
known a life where women had not been together, where women had not helped,
protected, and loved one another deeply. I had not known white women who were
ignorant of the impact of race and class on their social status and
consciousness (Southern white women often have a more realistic perspective on
racism and classism than white women in other areas of the United States.) I did
not feel sympathetic to white peers who maintained that I could not expect them
to have knowledge of or understand the life experiences of black women. Despite
my background (living in racially segregated communities) I knew about the lives
of white women, and certainly no white women lived in our neighborhood, attended
our schools, or worked in our homes.
When
I participated in feminist groups, I found that white women adopted a
condescending attitude towards me and other non-white participants. The
condescension they directed at black women was one of the means they employed to
remind us that the women's movement was "theirs" -- that we were able
to participate because they allowed it, even encouraged it; I after all, we were
needed to legitimate the process. They did not see us as equals. They did not
treat us as equals. And though they expected us to provide first hand accounts
of black experience, they felt it was their role to decide if these experiences
were authentic. Frequently, college-educated black women (even those from poor
and working class backgrounds) were dismissed as mere imitators. Our presence in
movement activities did not count, as white women were convinced that
"real" blackness meant speaking the patois of poor black people, being
uneducated, streetwise, and a variety of other stereotypes. If we dared to
criticize the movement or to assume responsibility for reshaping feminist ideas
and introducing new ideas, our voices were tuned out, dismissed, silenced. We
could be heard only if our statements echoed the sentiments of the dominant
discourse.13
Attempts
by white feminists to silence black women are rarely written about. All too
often they have taken place in conference rooms, classrooms, or the privacy of
cozy living room settings, where one lone black woman faces the racist hostility
of a group of white women. From the time the women's liberation movement began,
individual black women went to groups. Many never returned after a first
meeting. Anita Cornwall is correct in "Three for the Price of One: Notes
from a Gay Black Feminist," when she states, "... sadly enough, fear
of encountering racism seems to be one of the main reasons that so many black
womyn refuse to join the women's movement. "13
Recent focus on the issue of racism has generated discourse but has had little
impact on the behavior of white feminists towards black women. Often the white
women who are busy publishing papers and books on "unlearning racism"
remain patronizing and condescending when they relate to black women. This is
not surprising given that frequently their discourse is aimed solely in the
direction of a white audience and the focus solely on changing attitudes rather
than addressing racism in a historical and political context. They make us the
"objects" of their privileged discourse on race. As
"objects," we remain unequals, inferiors. Even though they may be
sincerely concerned about racism, their methodology suggests they are not yet
free of the type of paternalism endemic to white supremacist ideology. Some of
these women place themselves in the position of "authorities" who must
mediate communication between racist white women (naturally they see themselves
as having come to terms with their racism) and angry black women whom they
believe are incapable of rational discourse. Of course, the system of racism,
classism, and educational elitism remain intact if they are to maintain their
authoritative positions.
In
1981, I enrolled in a graduate class on feminist theory where we were given a
course reading list that had writings by white women and men, one black man, but
no material by or about black, Native American Indian, Hispanic, or Asian women.
When I criticized this oversight, white women directed an anger and hostility at
me that was so intense I found it difficult to attend the class. When I
suggested that the purpose of this collective anger was to create an atmosphere
in which it would be psychologically unbearable for me to speak in class
discussions or even attend class, I was told that they were not angry. I was the
one who was angry. Weeks after class ended, I received an open letter from one
white female student acknowledging her anger and expressing regret for her
attacks. She wrote:
I
didn't know you. You were black. In class after a while I noticed myself, that I
would always be the one to respond to whatever you said. And usually it was to
contradict. Not that the argument was always about racism by any means. But I
think the hidden logic was that if I could prove you wrong about one thing, then
you might not be right about anything at all.
And
in another paragraph:
I
said in class one day that there were some people less entrapped than others by
Plato's picture of the world. I said I thought we, after fifteen years of
education, courtesy of the ruling class, might be more entrapped than others who
had not received a start in life so close to the heart of the monster. My
classmate, once a close friend, sister, colleague, has not spoken to me since
then. I think the possibility that we were not the best spokespeople for all
women made her fear for her self-worth and for her Ph.D.
Often
in situations where white feminists aggressively attacked individual black
women, they saw themselves as the ones who were under attack, who were the
victims. During a heated discussion with another white female student in a
racially mixed women's group I had organized, I was told that she had heard how
I had "wiped out" people in the feminist theory class, that she was
afraid of being "wiped out" too. I reminded her that I was one person
speaking to a large group of angry, aggressive people; I was hardly dominating
the situation. It was I who left the class in tears, not any of the people I had
supposedly "wiped out."
Racist
stereotypes of the strong, superhuman black woman are operative myths in the
minds of many white women, allowing them to ignore the extent to which black
women are likely to be victimized in this society and the role white women may
play in the maintenance and perpetuation of that victimization. In Lillian
Hellman's autobiographical work Pentimento, she writes, "All my
life, beginning at birth, I have taken orders from black women, wanting them and
resenting them, being superstitious the few times I disobeyed." The black
women Hellman describes worked in her household as family servants and their
status was never that of an equal. Even as a child, she was always in the
dominant position as they questioned, advised, or guided her; they were free to
exercise these rights because she or another white authority figure allowed it.
Hellman places power in the hands of these black women rather than acknowledge
her own power over them; hence she mystifies the true nature of their
relationship. By projecting onto black women a mythical power and strength,
white women both promote a false image of themselves as powerless, passive,
victims and deflect attention away from their aggressiveness, their power,
(however limited in a white supremacist, male-dominated state) their willingness
to dominate and control others. These unacknowledged aspects of the social
status of many white women prevent them from transcending racism and limit the
scope of their understanding of women's overall social status in the United
States.
Privileged
feminists have largely been unable to speak to, with, and for diverse groups of
women because they either do not understand fully the inter-relatedness of sex,
race, and class oppression or refuse to take this inter-relatedness seriously.
Feminist analyses of woman's lot tend to focus exclusively on gender and do not
provide a solid foundation on which to construct feminist theory. They reflect
the dominant tendency in Western patriarchal minds to mystify woman's reality by
insisting that gender is the sole determinant of woman's fate. Certainly it has
been easier for women who do not experience race or class oppression to focus
exclusively on gender. Although socialist feminists focus on class and gender,
they tend to dismiss race or they make a point of acknowledging that race is
important and then proceed to offer an analysis in which race is not considered.
As
a group, black women are in an unusual position in this society, for not only
are we collectively at the bottom of the occupational ladder, but our overall
social status is lower than that of any other group. Occupying such a position,
we bear the brunt of sexist, racist, and classist oppression. At the same time,
we are the group that has not been socialized to assume the role of
exploiter/oppressor in that we are allowed no institutionalized
"other" that we can exploit or oppress. (Children do not represent an
institutionalized other even though they may be oppressed by parents.) White
women and black men have it both ways. They can act as oppressor or be
oppressed. Black men may be victimized by racism, but sexism allows them to act
as exploiters and oppressors of women. White women may be victimized by sexism,
but racism enables them to act as exploiters and oppressors of black people.
Both groups have led liberation movements that favor their interests and support
the continued oppression of other groups. Black male sexism has undermined
struggles to eradicate racism just as white female racism undermines feminist
struggle. As long as these two groups or any group defines liberation as gaining
social equality with ruling class white men, they have a vested interest in the
continued exploitation and oppression of others.
Black
women with no institutionalized "other" that we may discriminate
against, exploit, or oppress often have a lived experience that directly
challenges the prevailing classist, sexist, racist social structure and its
concomitant ideology. This lived experience may shape our consciousness in such
away that our world view differs from those who have a degree of privilege
(however relative within the existing system). It is essential for continued
feminist struggle that black women recognize the special vantage point our
marginality gives us and make use of this perspective to criticize the dominant
racist, classist, sexist hegemony as well as to envision and create a
counter-hegemony. I am suggesting that we have a central role to play in the
making of feminist theory and a contribution to offer that is unique and
valuable. The formation of a liberatory feminist theory and praxis is a
collective responsibility, one that must be shared. Though I criticize aspects
of feminist movement as we have known it so far, a critique which is sometimes
harsh and unrelenting, I do so not in an attempt to diminish feminist struggle
but to enrich, to share in the work of making a liberatory ideology and a
liberatory movement.