“Ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm!” These are the words shouted by black feminist Sojourner Truth at the Women’s Convention in Ohio on May 29, 1851 (Stanton). Sojourner’s speech is one of the earliest surviving records of black feminism, which shouted against men’s powers and conveyed that women could also achieve things that only men, at that time, were thought capable of (Stanton). Sojourner said, “I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no men could head me” (Stanton). Her speech pierced through the patriarchy that white-dominated feminism is against and is often quoted by feminists even today. However, before that speech, Sojourner was not applauded like that. On the contrary, when Sojourner walked into the convention, whose audiences were mostly white feminists, “a buzz of disapprobation was heard all over the house,” and, as Matilda Gage, the president of the Women’s Convention recalled, half a dozen people had asked Gage to not let Sojourner speak (Stanton). Why was Sojourner, a feminist, unwelcomed by other feminists? Where does this lack of welcome come from? Obviously, the answer lies in Truth’s race, as slavery was still alive in 1851. However, even in today’s world, where racism has been diminished greatly, black and white feminists still rivals against each other. There must be reasons more complex than just racism.
In “Bad Feminist: Take One” by Roxane Gay, the incident where a white blogger, Amanda Marcotte, was accused of copying ideas from a colored blogger was discussed. The feminist community then had a debate on this matter so intense that the black feminists were “labeled ‘radical black feminists’ and were accused of overreacting and ‘playing the race card’” by white feminists (843, Gay). Gay interpreted this accusation as a kind of essential feminism. She points out that people conceive feminism through a series of stereotypes and misconceptions, which makes up essential feminism. These misconceptions include that feminists should have “anger, humorlessness, militancy, unwavering principles” and that they “don’t cater to the male gaze, [they] hate men, hate sex, [and] focus on career” (840, Gay). These misconceptions make essential feminism a distortion of true feminism. One more aspect of essential feminism is racial exclusiveness. Gay points out that essential feminism excludes black feminism. According to her, supporters of Amanda Marcotte are promoters of essential feminism where black feminists are ignored, and that white feminists are the only voice of feminism.
While distorted, this essential feminism is so pervasive that it replaces what real feminism means. As a matter of fact, the word feminism means “advocacy of equality of the sexes and the establishment of the political, social and economic rights of the female sex” which includes all females regardless of their race (“feminism”). The question, then is what makes white feminists have “such willful ignorance, such willful disinterest in incorporating the issues and concerns of black women into the mainstream feminist project?” (843, Gay). In other words, why do white feminists form this kind of essential feminism that is against black feminism?
One explanation is that white feminists are ignorant of feminism itself: their feminism is only a world they create to satisfy their own understandings—a world without black women in it. This idea is elaborated in the essay “Being Lovingly, Knowingly Ignorant” by Mariana Ortega. Ortega defines a concept called “arrogant perceiver”, who belongs to the dominating social status. It is these “arrogant perceivers” that define the social standard; they define what is good and what is not. In the case of essential feminism, the arrogant perceiver is the patriarchy while in the case of essential feminism against black feminism, the arrogant perceiver is the white feminists. Ortega shows that, after acknowledging that feminism movements require a “harmonious community of agreement”, the arrogant white feminist perceivers ruled out the black feminists, as they found the black feminists “different and [a threat] to destroy the homogeneity of their community” (59, Ortega). This action, according to Ortega, was a false consideration and ignorance under the racism influence. Now the difficulty that Sojourner Truth encountered at her speech at the women’s convention can be explained—the white female audiences, who are the arrogant perceivers, defined black female unsuitable to speak at the convention.
However, the arrogant perceiver theory can not explain the case where the white feminists accused black feminists for using the race card, since the white blogger “borrowing” a black woman’s idea implies that the white community do want to know about the colored community. This incidence is categorized by Ortega as a subtler and more dangerous case called loving, knowing ignorance. White feminists today, unlike their precedents who completedly refused the ideas coming from outsiders, have grown to be more accommodating. They “look and listen”, but they don’t “check and question” (60, Ortega). They seem to adopt a “loving eye”, wanting to know about black feminists and constantly quoting black feminists’ works into their own. However, white feminists always end up misunderstanding what black feminists really want, as they lack enough knowledge and experience on what black feminists have been through. White feminists think they know “all of it”, so they begin to “simplify, invent and expect the world to be a specific way rather than investigating it, asking questions to know more about it” (60, Ortega). Eventually, Ortega pointed out that white feminists distort the reality that “accords more with their own desires and expectations than with the actual state of affairs,” which is no different than arrogantly perceiving it (62, Ortega).
“Romanticizing the experience of women of color”, white feminists distort the reality that black feminists face with their “loving, knowing ignorance” (65, Ortega). The white blogger and her supporters in Gay’s essay are perfect examples of this ignorance. They definitely “looked and listened”, since the blogger borrowed the idea of a colored person, and they engaged in a debate with black feminists. But during the process of looking and listening, they simplified the problem and reduced it to black feminists “playing the race card” instead of “checking and questioning” what the issue really is about (843, Gay). This loving, knowing ignorance in today’s feminism world contributes to essential feminism, since the ignorance overlooks what black feminists really experience and demand. In return, the essential feminism makes more and more people lovingly and knowingly ignorant. As essential feminism overwhelms the true, inclusive feminism, more people are committing to the prejudiced and exclusive essential feminism, one that prevents them from “looking and listening”, let alone “checking and questioning.” There begins the cycle of misunderstanding. The more this loving and knowing ignorance continues to distort the reality, the deeper the gap between the white and black feminists gets, and the more entrenched the essential feminism becomes.
The ignorance and arrogance of white essential feminism towards the black feminism are based on one fact: white is dominant and black is marginalized. Therefore, understanding why black people become the disesteemed group can help understand this ignorance and arrogance. The historical analysis of race provided in “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book” by Hortense Spillers sheds light on racial subjugation by genealogy of gender and race. Spiller points out that African black culture was interrupted by the European invaders during the 16th to 19th centuries where the slavery system was formed, which incurred “massive demographic shifts [and] the violent formation of modern African consciousness” (68). Since the slavery system forced African men to work, the child would follow the mother’s name and social status instead. Then, Spillers points out that “African American women, the mother, the daughter, becomes historically powerful and shadowy evocation of a culture synthesis --- the law of the mother” (80). In other words, African Americans form a culture of matriarchy.
However, during 16th to 19th centuries, matriarchy means powerlessness. White patriarchy guaranteed the political influences by regulating that only male could vote until 1919 when women suffrage became a universal condition. Women were expected to take care of children and stay inside home rather than to work. The patriarchal culture entitled only men to have labor rights, and the economic equality of women was therefore lost. The problem was further complicated when the two communities clashed together. As the white overpowers the black community in the United States, African American males were forced to stay away from their families, enforcing matriarchy into the African American community in a white-dominating patriarchal society, distancing black and white communities even further.
In some way, sexism and racism reciprocate with each other and magnify the subjugation of black people. Hence, after African Americans were physically abducted by white people through the Middle Passage, they became mentally and socially succumbed to white patriarchy. This physical and mental black subjugation constituted “an American grammar”. It has not disappeared long after slavery was abolished. Instead, it is weaved into both black and white American cultures, and by extension, black white feminism cultures as well.
This American grammar by slavery leaves white feminists in a privileged position without them realizing. Being privileged as white people, white feminists easily forget their whiteness, as it has not brought them disadvantage but rather convenience. However, being unprivileged as a woman in this patriarchal society, white feminists fall victims of unfair career wages, forbidden abortion rights, less political influences, etc. Busy fighting for these rights, white feminists focus on their identity as a woman and forget their identity as a white woman. They then easily assume gender inequality are issues for every woman which, in truth, are issues for white women only. Black women’s issues remain unnoticed, constituting essential feminism.
As Elizabeth Spelman said, “It is the nature of privilege to find ever deeper places to hide” (Ortega, 56). White feminists who accuse the black blogger of overreacting fail to realize their privileges, as they assumed, lovingly and knowingly that black feminists’ experiences are the same as theirs. This privilege creates frivolousness, making them seem inconsiderate and ignorant sometimes such as accusing the victim of “playing the race card” (843, Gay).
Ignorance and privilege are both instances where white feminists make assumptions that black people should subjugated to the same feminism principle as theirs. As Gay said, “it doesn’t allow for the complexities of human experience or individuality” (840, Gay). There is an ongoing debate over the classification of gender and race in the feminists’ community. Modernist discourses “promote an ‘either/or’ competition between the oppressive system of sexism and racism” (Schramm). They believe that “the power of human reason, and a keen interest in science” drive them to believe the dichotomy of culture just like what the things are in science (Schramm). Many modern white feminists fall in this category, since they believe race is a completely irrelevant factor in feminism. They lovingly, knowingly and ignorantly fail to notice their privileges, which blind white feminists to assume black feminists’ issues are just like white feminists’ issues.
In the contrast, the postmodern view of race and gender relationship is to deconstruct the “either/or” competition and forms an intersection theory. Donna Haraway in her book Modest Witness points out that female subject is not a “‘fixed subject’ but also a ‘nomadic’ subject” and they “overlap with variables such as class, race, age, lifestyle, and sexual preference” (Schramm). They believe race and gender and other variables are interlocked. The oppression of each other can not be understood in isolation from each other. We can still recall the intersection of gender and race from the history where, in Spillers theory, sexism and racism intertwined with each other and created the black subjugation.
But this intersection theory is what most of white feminists fail to understand. If white feminists could understand this theory and recognize the historical legacy of slavery system, then white feminists may understand they are privileged as whiteness. If they could notice their privilege, they could stop assuming what black feminists have experienced, and begin to “look, listen, check and question” (60, Ortega). If white feminists could begin to check and question, then they could see the issues of black feminists, which are different from those of their own but still issues regarding feminism. If so, then the essential feminism towards black feminism is erased and the day of rebalance of the uneven power distribution to black feminists will come.
Work Cited:
"feminism, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, December 2016. Web. 12 February 2017.
Gay, Roxane. “Bad Feminist: Take One” The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose. Ed. Laura Buzzard, et al. Broadview Press. 2016. Print.
Ortega, Mariana. “Being Lovingly, Knowingly Ignorant: White Feminism and Women of Color.” Hypatia, vol. 21, no. 3, 2006, pp. 56–74. www.jstor.org/stable/3810951.
Schramm, Susan L. "Intersection of Gender and Race." Women in Higher Education: An Encyclopedia, Ana M. Martinez Aleman, and Kristen A. Renn, ABC-CLIO, 2002. Credo Reference
Spillers, Hortense J. “Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Diacritics, vol. 17, no. 2, 1987, pp. 65–81. www.jstor.org/stable/464747.
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Susan B. Anthoney, and Matilda Joslyn Gage. "History of Woman Suffrage." Archive.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2017.