by bell hooks
Ain’t I a Woman
A classic work of feminist scholarship, Ain’t I a Woman has become a must-read for all those interested in the nature of black womanhood. Examining the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism among feminists, and the black woman’s involvement with feminism, hooks attempts to move us beyond racist and sexist assumptions. The result is nothing short of groundbreaking, giving this book a critical place on every feminist scholar’s bookshelf.
A cultural critic, an intellectual, and a feminist writer, bell hooks is best known for classic books including Feminist Theory, Bone Black, All About Love, Rock My Soul, Belonging, We Real Cool, Where We Stand, Teaching to Transgress, Teaching Community, Outlaw Culture, and Reel to Real. hooks is Distinguished Professor in Residence in Appalachian Studies at Berea College, and resides in her home state of Kentucky.
Ain’t I a Woman
Black Women and Feminism bell hooks
First published 2015 by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Gloria Watkins
The right of Gloria Watkins to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First edition published by South End Press 1981
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
hooks, bell, 1952-
Ain’t I a woman : Black women and feminism / bell hooks. — [Second edition].
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. African American women—Social conditions. 2. Sexism—United States.
3. Feminism—United States. I. Title.
E185.86.H73 2014
305.48’896073—dc23
2014022890
ISBN: 978-1-138-82148-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-82151-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-74326-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For Rosa Bell, my mother—
who told me when I was a child that she had once written poems—that I had inherited my love of reading and my longing to write from her.
Contents
Title
Contents
Preface to the New Edition
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Sexism and the Black Female Slave Experience
2. Continued Devaluation of Black Womanhood
3. The Imperialism of Patriarchy
4. Racism and Feminism: The Issue of Accountability
5. Black Women and Feminism
Selected Bibliography
Index
Preface to the New Edition
Growing up I knew that I wanted to be a writer. From girlhood on books had offered me visions of new worlds different from the one that was most familiar to me. Like exotic and strange new lands, books brought adventure, new ways to think and be. Most importantly they brought a different perspective, one that almost always forced me out of my comfort zones. I was awed that books could offer a different standpoint, that words on the page could transform and change me, change my mind. During my undergraduate college years, contemporary feminist movement was challenging sexist-defined roles, calling for an end to patriarchy. In those heady days, women’s liberation was the name given to this amazing new way of thinking about gender. As I had never felt like I had a place in traditional sexist notions of what a female should be and do, I was eager to participate in women’s liberation, wanting to create a space of freedom for myself, for the women I loved, for all women.
My intense engagement with feminist consciousness raising compelled me to confront the reality of race, class, and gender difference. Just as I had rebelled against sexist notions of a woman’s place, I challenged notions of women’s place and identity within women’s liberation circles, I could not find a place for myself within the movement. My experience as a young black female was not acknowledged. My voice and the voices of women like me were not heard. Most importantly, the movement had exposed how little I knew about myself, my place in society.
I could not truly belong in the movement so long as I could not make my voice heard. Before I could demand that others listen to me I had to listen to myself, to discover my identity. Taking women’s studies courses had shined a spotlight on society’s expectations of females. I had learned many new facts about gender differences, about sexism and patriarchy and the ways these systems shaped female roles and identity, but I learned little about the role black females were assigned in our culture. To understand myself as a black female, to understand the place set for black females in this society, I had to explore beyond the classroom, beyond the many treatises and books my fellow white female comrades were creating to explain women’s liberation, to offer new and alternative radical ways of thinking about gender and women’s place.
To forge a place for black females in this revolutionary movement for gender justice, I had to deepen my understanding of our place in the large society. Even though I was learning so much about sexism and the ways sexist thinking shaped female identity, I was not being taught about the ways race shaped female identity. In classes and in consciousness-raising groups when I called attention to the differences created in our lives by race and racism, I was often treated with disdain by white female comrades who were eager to bond around shared notions of sisterhood. And there I was, this bold young black female from rural Kentucky, insisting that there were major differences shaping the experiences of black and white women. My efforts to understand those differences, to explain and communicate their meaning, lay the groundwork for the writing of Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism.
I began researching and writing during my undergraduate years. It amazes me that more than forty years have passed since I began the work. Initially my search for a publisher led to rejection. In those days no one really imagined there to be an audience for a work about black women. In general, black folks then were far
more likely to denounce women’s liberation, seeing it as a white woman thing. As a consequence, black female individuals who eagerly embraced the movement were often isolated and estranged from other black folks. We were usually the only black person in predominately white circles. And any talk of race was viewed as shifting the attention away from the politics of gender. No wonder then that black females had to create a separate and distinct body of work that would bring together our understanding of race, class, and gender.
Mating radical feminist politics with my urge to write, I decided early on that I wanted to create books that could be read and understood across different class boundaries. In those days feminist thinkers grappled with the question of audience: who did we want to reach with our work? To reach a broader audience required the writing of work that was clear and concise, that could be read by readers who had never attended college or even finished high school. Imagining my mother as my ideal audience—the reader I most wanted to convert to feminist thinking—I cultivated a way of writing that could be understood by readers from
diverse class backgrounds.
Finishing the writing ofAin’t I a Woman, then years later seeing the work published in my late twenties, marked the culmination of my own struggles to be fully self-actualized, to be a free and independent woman. When I entered my first women’s studies class, taught by the white woman writer Tillie Olson, and listened to her talk about the world of women struggling to work and parent, women who were often held captive by male domination, I cried as she cried. We read her seminal work I Stand Here Ironing and I began to see my mama and women like her, all raised in the fifties, in a new light. Mama married young, while still in her teens, had babies young, and though she would never have called herself a woman’s libber she had experienced the pain of sexist domination, and that led her to encourage all her daughters, all six of us, to educate ourselves so that we would be able to take care of our material and economic needs and never be dependent on any man. Sure we were to find a man and marry, but not before we learned to take care of ourselves. Mama, who was herself held captive by the bonds of patriarchy, encouraged us to break free. It is fitting then that an image of Rosa Bell, my mother, now graces the cover of this new edition.
More than any other book I have written, my relationship to my mother informed the writing of Ain’t I a Woman and inspired me. Written when contemporary feminist movement was still young, when I was young, this early work has many flaws and imperfections, yet it continues to serve as a powerful catalyst for readers who are eager to explore the roots of black women and feminism. Even though mama has died, no day passes that I do not think of her and all the black women like her, who with no political movement supporting them, no theory of how to be feminist, provided practical blueprints for liberation, offering generations coming after them the gift of choice, freedom, wholeness of mind, body, and being.
Acknowledgments
Eight years ago, when I first began research for this book, discussions of “Black Women and Feminism” or “Racism and Feminism” were uncommon. Friends and strangers were quick to question and ridicule my concern with the lot of black women in the United States. I can remember a dinner where I talked about the book and one person, in a big booming voice choking with laughter exclaimed, “What is there to say about black women!” Others joined the laughter. I had written in the manuscript that the existence of black women was often forgotten, that we were often ignored or dismissed, and my lived experience as I shared the ideas in this book demonstrated the truth of this assertion.
In most stages of my work I had the help and support of Nate, my friend and companion. It was he who said to me when I first returned home from libraries angry and disappointed that there were so few books about black women that I should write one. He also searched for background information and assisted me in a number of ways. A tremendous source of encouragement and support for my work came from fellow black women workers at the Berkeley Telephone Office in 1973-74. When I left there to attend graduate school in Wisconsin, I
lost contact with these women. But their energy, their sense that there was much that needed to be said about black women, and their belief that “I” could say it, has sustained me. During the publication process, Ellen Herman of South End Press has been a great help. Our relationship has been political; we have worked to bridge the gap between public and private, making the contact between writer and publisher an affirming experience rather than a de-humanizing one.
This book is dedicated to Rosa Bell Watkins who taught me, and all her daughters, that Sisterhood empowers women by respecting, protecting, encouraging, and loving us.
Introduction
At a time in American history when black women in every area of the country might have joined together to demand social equality for women and a recognition of the impact of sexism on our social status, we were by and large silent. Our silence was not merely a reaction against white women liberationists or a gesture of solidarity with black male patriarchs. It was the silence of the oppressed—that profound silence engendered by resignation and acceptance of one’s lot. Contemporary black women could not join together to fight for women’s rights because we did not see “womanhood” as an important aspect of our identity. Racist, sexist socialization had conditioned us to devalue our femaleness and to regard race as the only relevant label of identification. In other words, we were asked to deny a part of ourselves—and we did. Consequently, when the women’s movement raised the issue of sexist oppression, we argued that sexism was insignificant in light of the harsher, more brutal reality of racism. We were afraid to acknowledge that sexism could be just as oppressive as racism. We clung to the hope that liberation from racial oppression would be all that was necessary for us to be free. We were a new generation of black women who had been taught to submit, to accept sexual inferiority, and to be silent.
Unlike us, black women in 19th century America were conscious of the fact that true freedom entailed not just liberation from a sexist social order that systematically denied all women full human rights. These black women participated in both the struggle for racial equality and the women’s rights movement. When the question was raised as to whether or not black female participation in the women’s rights movement was a detriment to the struggle for racial equality, they argued that any improvement in the social status of black women would benefit all black people. Addressing the World Congress of Representative Women in 1893, Anna Cooper spoke on the status of black women:
The higher fruits of civilization cannot be extemporized, neither can they be developed normally in the brief space of thirty years. It requires the long and painful growth of generations. Yet all through the darkest period of the colored women’s oppression in this country her yet unwritten history is full of heroic struggle, a struggle against fearful and overwhelming odds, that often ended in a horrible death; to maintain and protect that which woman holds dearer than life. The painful, patient, and silent toil of mothers to gain a fee, simple title to the bodies of their daughters, the despairing fight, as of an entrapped tigress, to keep hallowed their own persons, would furnish material for epics. That more went down under the flood than stemmed the current is not extraordinary. The majority of our women are not heroines—but I do not know that a majority of any race of women are heroines. It is enough for me to know that while in the eyes of the highest tribunal in America she was deemed no more than chattel, an irresponsible thing, a dull block, to be drawn hither or thither at the volition of an owner, the Afro-American woman maintained ideals of womanhood unashamed by any ever conceived. Resting or fermenting in untutored minds, such ideals could not claim a hearing at the bar of the nation. The white woman could at least plead for her own emancipation; the black women doubly enslaved, could but suffer and struggle and be silent.
For the first time ever in American history, black women like Mary Church Terrell, Sojourner Truth, Anna Cooper, Amanda Berry Smith and others broke through the long years of silence and began to articulate and record their experiences. In particular they emphasized the “female” aspect of their being which caused their lot to be different from that of the black male, a fact that was made evident when white men supported giving black men the vote while leaving all women disenfranchised. Horace Greeley and Wendell Phillips called it “the Negro’s hour” but in actuality what was spoken of as black suffrage was black male suffrage. By supporting black male suffrage and denouncing white women’s rights advocates, white men revealed the depths of their sexism—a sexism that was at that brief moment in American history greater than their racism. Prior to white male support of suffrage for black men, white women activists had believed it would further their cause to ally themselves with black political activists, but when it seemed black men might get the vote while they remained disenfranchised, political solidarity with black people was forgotten and they urged white men to allow racial solidarity to overshadow their plans to support black male suffrage.
As the racism of white women’s rights advocates surfaced, the fragile bond be
tween themselves and black activists was broken. Even though Elizabeth Stanton in her article “Women and Black Men,” published in the 1869 issue of the Revolution, attempted to show that the republican cry for “manhood suffrage” was aimed at creating antagonism between black men and all women, the break between the two groups could not be mended. While many black male political activists sympathized with the cause of women’s rights advocates, they were not willing to lose their own chance to gain the vote. Black women were placed in a double bind; to support women’s suffrage would imply that they were allying themselves with white women activists who had publicly revealed their racism, but to support only black male suffrage was to endorse a patriarchal social order that would grant them no political voice. The more radical black women activists demanded that black men and all women be given the vote. Sojourner Truth was the most out-spoken black women on this issue. She argued publicly in favor of women gaining the right to vote and emphasized that without this right black women would have to submit to the will of black men. Her famous statement, “there is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored woman; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before,” reminded the American public that sexist oppression was as real a threat to the freedom of black women as racial oppression. But despite protests from white and black women activists sexism carried the day and black men received the vote.
Although black women and men had struggled equally for liberation during slavery and much of the Reconstruction era, black male political leaders upheld patriarchal values. As black men advanced in all spheres of American life, they encouraged black women to assume a more subservient role. Gradually the radical revolutionary spirit that had characterized the intellectual and political contribution of black women in the 19th century was quelled. A definite change in the role played by black women in the political and social affairs of black people occurred in the 20th century. This change was indicative of an overall decline in the efforts of all American women to effect radical social reform. When the women’s rights movement ended in the twenties, the voices of black women liberationists were stilled. The war had stripped the movement of its earlier fervor. While black women participated equally with black men in the struggle for survival by entering the work force whenever possible, they did not advocate an end to sexism. Twentieth century black women had learned to accept sexism as natural, a given, a fact of life. Had surveys been taken among black women in the thirties and forties and had they been asked to name the most oppressive force in their lives, racism and not sexism would have headed the list.
