Black Feminism: Examining the intersectionality of race and gender

 Black women, historically, have been doubly victimized by the twin immoralities of Jim Crow and Jane Crow. Jane Crow refers to the entire range of assumptions, attitudes, stereotypes, customs, and arrangements that have robbed women of a positive self-concept and prevented them from participating fully in a society as equals with men.  Black women, faced with these dual barriers, have often found that sex bias is more formidable than racial bias. If anyone should ask a Negro Woman in America what has been her greatest achievement, her honest answer would be, ‘I survived!’”(Guy-Sheftall)

            

          As a child it was easy to relate to the struggle of racial inequality. With family members to retell their own memories of legal segregation and police brutality, I believed nothing could be more important and damaging to our society than racism.  My own personal encounters with racism reinforced this attitude, therefore soon I believed that my race was the most important aspect of my social identity.  However, being racially conscious provided me with the critical thinking tools that later helped me recognize the existing gender notions and expectations that are embedded within our society. My perspective as a black person changed, because I realized that I was no longer just a black person, I was a black female. I am not equal with black men, because I am a woman nor am I equal with white women, because I am black.  As a woman of color, “these dual barriers” of race and gender often collide and intersect which often influence my life experiences.  The range of societal “assumptions, attitudes, stereotypes, customs, and arrangements” that I am confronted with are influenced by both notions of race and gender, because I am both black and a woman. Before I had believed that race worked independently to disempowered me.  However with time, it was evident that the intersectionality of my race and gender not only disempowered me but also carried a burdened weight thus proving that they are the most salient aspects of my identity.

            My family’s continuous effort to educate me about racial issues compelled me to believe that my race was the most salient aspect of my identity.  My grandfather was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army but these days he is known as one of America’s longest held political prisoners.  As a child I looked forward to his phone calls from prison, because his stories exciting and different from my own reality.  

Whether they were stories about serving children during the Panthers Free Breakfast Program or the time he felt helpless while watching his older brothers getting brutally beaten by the police, his memories were a unique educational experience.  Our society has the tendency to “distances itself from physical structures whose purpose is to hide uncomfortable truths” however, I was enough to have a family who did not shy away from telling me these uncomfortable truths (Wideman 180). My grandfather, in addition to the rest of my extended family were all politically involved during the 1960’s movement and therefore were subsequently involved in a lot of racial justice work. Growing up with a family that had been so dedicated to issues pertaining to race, compelled me to unconsciously believe that race was the most significant humanitarian issue and therefore the most salient aspect of my identity. They had dedicated their entire lives fighting for racial justice. If this issue was so important to my family, I was convinced that it must be important for my life as well.

            When I moved from a black neighborhood in Queens, New York to a predominately white suburb in Massachusetts, my social encounters with my peers and adults reinforced all that my family had told me about the existing forms of racism today. For instance, when I had asked my 5^th grade teacher how I could improve my grade from a B to an A, she told me I should not worry about my grades.  According to her, I was such a great athlete and talented musician, I did not need high grades to succeed later in life because academics were not for me.  That same year, a new student (who also happened to be non-white) enrolled into my school and terrorized me throughout the school day.  When my mother came to the school to talk to the faculty about this situation, one of them had said, “this is what you people do and I am not getting involved”.  Needless to say I encountered more racism like this throughout my middle school years, even when I transferred to a private school.  Although the racism I encountered was not as life threatening as the stories my grandfather told me, it still reinforced this attitude that because I was an African American, I was not only not welcomed, but in fact rejected from their community. Therefore I would not receive the same protection or help as my peers received.  Gonzales describes perfectly how these rejections feel: “Rejection strips us our self-worth; vulnerability exposes us to shame.  It is our innate identity you find wanting. We are ashamed that we need your opinion, that we need your acceptance” (Anzaldua, 88).  My race had made me feel rejected, inferior, isolated, and targeted.  Since it was my innate identity (my blackness) that others had an issue with, it was easy to decide that my race is the most salient aspect of my identity. In a predominately white community, my race was the most noticeable to others and because I was not the norm I was constantly confronted with attitudes that implied that I was less capable or inferior.   However, it was not before long where similar hurtful experiences about my gender made me realize that I had another equally important aspect of my identity.

            The critical thinking skills that I had learned to help me detect racism helped me notice that the gender notions and implications was another reason why I felt disempowered. As a child, others had considered me to be a tomboy; I had loved sports, loved to climb tress, enjoyed being rough and aggressive. As a child, I was not yet in tuned with my feminine side which supposedly made me passive, love dresses and flowers.  Needless to say, I was teased about my boyish behavior, but because I was not raised to be as sensitized to sexism as I was with racism, I barely noticed it.  My family was progressive and very educated on various topics in the social justice realm, but they were not so adamant to teach me about gender issues. Of course, they told me that once upon a time woman could not vote and that women are marginalized and discriminated against too.  However, I did not hear much about present day gender notions and how it affects us today. I mostly discovered that gender issues existed  through my own personal encounters and frustrations with other people.  I was tired of getting teased for doing what I liked to do or not receiving the same recognition that boys did even if we did the same thing. As I grew older I began to see how in our society, “what men do is valued more highly than what women do, because men do it, even when their activities are very similar or the same” (Lober). In the classroom, teachers appreciated the boys’ work over mine and other girls. Boys had the freedom to be argumentative in classroom without being ridiculed as too aggressive. I felt devalued in a different way and I began to realize that it was due to my sex. I could argue and raise good points in class, but I was not labeled smart as the other kids.  Instead I was labeled as angry and too talkative. To a certain extent, these dynamics become normalized which is why at some point I became more reluctant to speak during class. It was not until high school did I notice that our own notions about gender influenced these dynamics within the classroom.

            By the time I understood that my race and sex were the most salient aspect of my identity, I was also beginning to recognize that these two aspects intersect and provided me with unique perspective and experiences because I am woman of color.  While in high school, I volunteered with New York 2 New Orleans, an anti racist student led organization focused on rebuilding the Lower Ninth Ward.  As I was cleaning a back yard I was told by another black male volunteer (who later became a leading organizer of the organization) that he had little respect for black women. He said that he had never seen black women do anything productive or positive for the black community.  According to him, black women were lazy and hindered the progress others were making for the black community.  Needless to say I was shocked, hurt, and furious.  It was a nasty assumption that implied that black women do not contribute to the growth or the empowerment of their own black community.  So since I was a black female, I was inherently disgraceful to him. It was hurtful considering how I had dedicated all of my time to Black focused clubs and organizations to ensure that I participated in rebuilding, protecting, and helping my black community. It was even more hurtful to be told by another black person that because I am a black woman he immediately sees me as ignorant, lazy, and worthless.  I felt powerless because even though I knew I was doing my part, it was two uncontrollable aspects of my identity that cursed me with such awful assumptions. I had expected that our similarity in race would be the force to pull us together and support each other, but instead it was the combination of my gender and race that pulled us apart.

            The intersectionality of race and gender has taught me that disempowerment is not one-dimensional. In Mapping Margins by Kimberley Crenshaw writes that, “women of color experience racism in ways not always the same as those experienced by men of color, and sexism in ways not always parallel to experiences of white women, dominant conceptions of antiracism and feminism are limited, even on their own terms”.  When I was told I by another black volunteer that it was hard for him to appreciate my work it was because I was a black female, not just a female.  He did not feel this way about the white female volunteers on our trip, but instead only me. While reflecting on the intersectionality of race and gender in her own life, Jordan Jordan explains that “race intersects with gender, because they are both often judged and categorized at first sight”.  I can completely relate to Jordan’s theory because it was not solely my gender that made my work less valuable, it was the combination of my gender notions and race notions that made my work less valuable. It was those two aspects of my identity that were judged and categorized in a certain way first. As Crenshaw said before, I had experienced racism and sexism together in a unique way that neither black men nor white women could relate to. This lack of a racial perspective is the reason why “not many of my peers could grapple with feminism outside the realm of Whiteness” (Jordan Jordan). Encounters like these exposed me to a new dimension of disempowerment that is created through the intersecting forces of my race and gender.

            My experiences with race, gender, and the way in which these aspects of my identities intersect have greatly influenced my political perspective. When it comes to politics, I always think from a perspective that considers how this political issue would affect marginalized groups of people such as, people of color and women.  Identity politics can be very empowering because while working with groups like the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement you are working toward a goal that will ultimately help the black community.  However, identity politics can be restrictive and it is challenging to be inclusive of all different struggles, even when the differing struggles are between people that one would typically see them within the same marginalized group.  Kimberly Crenshaw points out that “the problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite- that it frequently conflates or ignores intra group differences”.  My own experiences with intersectionality have helped me pursue identity politics in a way that does not ignore the differences among groups. I know that as women, we collectively have a common struggle.  However, I do understand that non-white women have a different struggle because they are confronted with racial discrimination.  It takes having a perspective that is not one dimensional, but instead building perspective that is complex and recognizes the intersectionality of race, class, and gender. 

            Originally, I believed racism was the greatest evil our society faced.  It took several encounters with gender and the intersections of race and gender for me to believe otherwise.  I assumed my race was the most salient aspect of my identity because I believed it was the aspect of my identity that impacted my life the most.  However, it took feeling disempowered because of both my race and gender simultaneously for me to understand that my race alone did not affect my life experiences. These issues of intersectionality do not only pertain to only me but for many others. And although intersectionality complicates the one-dimensional way our society perceives social justice, it will push us to a more realistic perspective of the existing social inequalities our society has today. One cannot simply fight against racism without addressing issues of sexism and class, because those who are victims of racial oppression may also be victims of sexism and classism oppression.  Although it’s more complicated we will finally be organizing to meet the needs of all people rather than just one part.

           

Works Cited

Anzaldúa, Gloria. "La conciencia de la mestiza." Borderlands: La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Press. 1987. 77-91.

Crenshaw Willliams, Kimberlé. "Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color."  Critical Race Theory:  The  Key Writings That Formed The Movement.  Eds. Kimberlé Crenshaw, Neil Gotana, Gary Peller and Kendall Thomas.  New York:  The New Press, 1995.  357-383.

Guy-Sheftall, Beverly. Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-AmericanFeminist Thought. New Press, The, 1995. Print.

Lorber, Judith. "The Social Construction of Gender." Women's

            Voices, Feminist Visions. Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing Company. 2001. 121-124.

Wideman, Daniel. "Free Papers." Outside the Law: Narratives on Justice in America. Eds. Susan   
             Richards Shreve and Porter Shreve. Boston: Beacon Press, 1997. 173-183.