Giving Visibility to Women to Better the Movement for Racial Justice
America has a long history of relying on the fruitful labor of women, whilst simultaneously rejecting their existence. The roots of this dismissiveness can be traced to the very systems and values that this country was founded on and are upheld by this country: capitalism, racism, ableism, the patriarchy, to name a few. Yet, it remains to be a surprise to many when this oppression is brought to light in the context of existing oppressed groups, specifically black people. There was a sentiment that was expressed during the class discussion of Black Feminism that centered around the fact that it is common to view infringements on one’s multiple identities can be a attacked only one at a time. This mindset is harmful but unfortunately has been the tone set by preceding movements organized to better the conditions of black Americans in regards to dealing with the oppression of identities besides race. It is important to make note of the very issue that oppression is not only limited to the traditional actor, the rich white male, but can take many shapes and forms, which is inclusive of those who are traditionally stigmatized to a certain extent. It remains, though, that black women have historically always been the ones to take up the laborious task of effectively organizing for their interests, yet their efforts have constantly been appropriated for a man to occupy the leadership positions and they fade into the backdrop. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin is a very good example of this sentiment in the sense that while it is a beautifully composed narrative of the troubles of being a black person in the US, there is a noticeable lack of women in the book which is strikingly similar to the previously explained themes of black women lacking visibility. It signals that the pattern of denying black women roles in which their efforts can be attributed back to them, is rare in terms of history; but can be beneficial in finding successes through unity. Black women should not have to resort to infrapolitics within the movement for black lives, as movements like the black feminist movement arose to show that women’s rights are everyone’s rights, therefore need visibility to maintain an inclusive movement.
As it is rather unsurprising that black women have been left out of discourses that apply to their identities as black and women, in The Fire Next Time it can be argued that the
illustration of the experiences of a black woman are minute but also relegated to traditional gender roles. This statement is divisive in a sense, but it also holds a lot of truth when considering that there are very little instances, in comparison with the various mentions of the black male experience, where the reader will find Baldwin take the black woman’s experience into account. This is not to say that there is no mention of women at all in the book, but that their roles besides being caregivers and needing protection are not simply enough. Take the meeting with Elijah Muhammad into account, where he is cognisant of the division in gender when he is at Muhammad’s house.Upon arrival to the residence, he notices that the women are sitting on the opposite side of the room and playing with a baby and the men are sitting with him having a discussion, until Muhammad walks into the room. He mentions how Muhammad acts a little flirtatious towards the women and they are responsive to it. The way he portrays this is interesting because while it is evident that he is knowledgeable of the simplistic role of the woman in the Nation of Islam, he doesn’t really expand on the experience as a . This is in stark contrast to the time that he spends expanding on the tumultuous experience of being a young black man. It is interesting to compare his dear regards for his nephew, in his letter My Dungeon Shook, where he takes the time out to speak on the transitional experiences of growing up as a black man, but he doesn’t pay much mind to the women that exist around him, what he does tell him to do is reiterate the amount of love his mother and grandmother have for him. This is a constant theme throughout the book, in which the portrayal of women in this book are loving but also somewhat patronizing. One could argue that it could be that there is a difference in experiences, that the absence of the female characters could be attributed to the fact that men had more visibility to Baldwin. That lack of visibility, however, does not reflect on the amount of agency practiced by black women in the past.
Looking at the actions of black women through an infra-political lens may be helpful in understanding the not visible but powerful roles that black women have played in the movement for black lives. As discussed in class, infrapolitics was introduced as a concept of examining resistance tactics of oppressed individuals acting within their means, which often was a method used by women who were confined to repressive jobs and could not participate in other organizing methods. Robin D. G. Kelley’s We Are Not What We Seem explains the spaces dominated by infrapolitical action as, “the social and cultural institutions and ideologies that ultimately informed black opposition placed more emphasis on communal values and collective uplift than the prevailing class-conscious, individualist ideology of the white ruling classes.” This draws on a sentiment voiced during our class about the women’s era, in that the organizing model that these working class women embodied focused on what could be done in the confines of their positions rather than a traditional model that had centralized authority. Black women looked for more reform, rather than political rights. They did not seek to overturn hierarchies because they were barely recognized because of persisting gender roles. Although there was a move to during the progressive era to tried to change language from strict gender roles. Another common theme during this period was the aspiration of a level of respectability to achieve racial equality, which was gained significant participation by black women. While there were many black men that championed this ideal and created the “Talented Tenth”, women adhered to this hierarchy but also took the ideal a step further by using the idealism of respectability as a motivation to promote the theory of racial justice through furthering education. This is a widely touted solution to many problems, that was championed by women by the likes of Anna Julia Cooper and the motives were to get an education, move to south, challenge respectability politics (unfortunately not the level they were perpetuating) and challenge white womanhood morality through different representations of womanhood. While this provides an opportune framework for upward mobility, it was arguably limiting to those who did not have the resources to pursue this course of action. This was also inherently exclusionary of the working class women who were already organizing within their positions of marginalization and disregarding to the contexts in which they already existed within, whether it was class, family life, geographical location, etc.
This exclusionary behavior has persisted regardless of recognition of the exclusionary themes that have existed in organizing in the movement for black lives. While the root of problem could be attributed to being socialized in systems that inherently oppress people. In attacking this issue, one can draw from Audre Lorde’s Age, Race, Class, and Sex to understand that without able to acknowledge that relying on traditional lines separating certain identities is weak, there is an inherent discord in a resistance movement. Audre argues that rejecting difference denies one the ability to be able to be apart of an effective movement that is inclusive of all because it is led through the perspective of the higher ups . This is true for the many walks of lives that are covered in the movement for racial justice in the US, because with a traditionally male leadership, it has shown that many of the interests of women were disregarded. It can be argued that while using this perspective provided more unified and streamlined framework to draw objectives from, but is exclusionary of the many people that benefit from this movement.
It is imperative that to continue an effective movement for black lives, that there is a move to be more inclusive not only of the laborious community of women that have been building the movement since the beginning. Black women have gone on to create more inclusive spaces and movements, such as the Black feminist movement and the womanist movements to organize. However if these perspectives are not recognized on a leadership level,
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