Words of Fire

by Beverly Guy-Sheftall

  To do otherwise is to deceive ourselves. The experiences of a few exceptional black women, as typically portrayed in the classroom, serve to deny the reality of oppressive structures. This approach does not help students develop an appreciation for the role of race, class, and gender in people’s lives. As we attempt to bring women of color out of the margins, we must be prepared to challenge students’ tendency to romanticize a few heroines.

  These two practices, teaching about women of color as tangents to the “generic” woman and examining the lives of exceptional women of color, work to justify and perpetuate the marginalization of women of color in women’s studies scholarship. Approaches such as these retard the field of women’s studies and complicate the task of integrating women into the high school and college curricula. While these approaches might represent a step or phase in the process of changing the curriculum, we must also remain clear on the larger goals and objectives of curriculum transformation. As pointed out earlier, each step in transformation brings its own set of problems and contradictions into the classroom. If we are not clear about our ultimate goal, we may become discouraged and retreat before new problems. In the end, we seek a curriculum that teaches an awareness and appreciation of the diversity of human experiences as well as the commonality of the human condition.

  If a course is structured around the dominant-group experience and people of color are marginalized, faculty members lose the opportunity to critically address social structure—that is, the ways in which the institutions of society shape our options and influence our behavior. Transforming the curriculum requires explicit discussions of the roles of gender, race, and class in shaping the lives of everybody. This is accomplished by exploring the diversity of the experiences of men and women in the United States and around the world. For example, being female means privileges and the accompanying restrictions of dependency for some women, while for others it means poverty and the burden of supporting themselves and dependents.

  Within this framework, no norm or modal case is taken for granted. If one teaches the sociology of the American family, it is with an eye on examining the diversity of family forms and lives. In family studies, only a minority of today’s families fit the supposed norm of the 1950s and 1960s, of a full-time-employed father and a mother at home with the children. Therefore, it is easier and more accurate to look at the variations of family forms and discuss which factors obstruct or support specific types of family structures. Faculty members might even find that students, who are well aware of the variety of families, might be motivated to explore the factors behind this diversity. This perspective is the core of a recent textbook about the sociology of the family, Diversity in American Families, by Maxine Baca Zinn and D. Stanley Eitzen.16 The book, which elaborates how race and class, major structures of inequality, affect specific family forms, is well received by students because it does not hold up any single type as the norm by which all other families are judged.

  RACISM, DIVERSITY, AND CLASSROOM DYNAMICS

  Racism is a pervasive classroom problem that has to be addressed. One approach is to inform students that racism often takes the form of misinformation about racial-ethnic groups. Discussions of how misinformation is systematically taught in the schools and the media, and in informal ways from friends, parents, and the like, may relieve individual students from feeling guilty for holding racist notions. Students should be encouraged to think critically about the information they get regarding their own group and others’ groups, so that they will learn to question broad generalizations like “All whites are middle class” and “All blacks are poor.” Information that sheds light on the diversity within a group is more likely to be correct.

  Students should be encouraged to think critically about information that devalues or dehumanizes members of specific groups. For example, any idea that some people (usually blacks, Latinos, or Native Americans) are more comfortable with hunger, poverty, and the like than other groups (usually white Americans) implies that the former are “less than human.” Any information that students received that has the effect of dehumanizing a group can be identified as racist and therefore not a fact of the social world.

  These are just a few ideas to help faculty think about combatting racism in the classroom. Correct information and changing teaching methods will do a great deal to challenge the racism embedded in our educational system —where there are a limited number of legitimate lines of inquiry and where “inquirers are only allowed to ask certain questions.”17 ...

  The routes individual faculty members take to enhance classroom dynamics will vary widely, but there can be some goals we all share. Part of the task of the college instructor is to create an environment where there can be an honest and open exchange about the material and where students can do what they are rarely asked to do—learn from each other.

  CONCLUSION

  Curriculum transformation is a challenge in which all faculty can participate. As we pursue short- and long-term goals, it is important to be mindful of the several tasks involved in the process: securing information, integrating material into our teaching, and establishing a supportive classroom. Do not become discouraged by the slow progress. Establishing support for faculty can be critical in the success of projects. Join with other colleagues in learning new materials and experimenting in the classroom. The presence of support groups can help faculty members reflect on their progress and motivate them to take new risks. Faculty who accept this new challenge may find a rejuvenated interest in teaching their students.

  ENDNOTES

  1 Patricia Hill Collins, “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought,” Social Problems 33 (December 1986): 14—32.

  2 Elizabeth K. Minnich, Transforming Knowledge (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990).

  3 Eugene F. Wong, “Asian American Middleman Minority Theory: The Framework for an American Myth,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 13 (Spring 1985): 51—88.

  4 Margaret Andersen, “Curriculum Change in Higher Education,” Signs: Journal of Women and Culture in Society 12 (Winter 1987): 222—54.

  5 Maxine Baca Zinn, Lynn Weber Cannon, Elizabeth Higginbotham, and Bonnie Thornton Dill, “On the Costs of Exclusionary Practices in Women’s Studies,” Signs: Journal of Women and Culture in Society 11 (Winter 1986): 290—303.

  6 Sandra Morgen, “To See Ourselves, To See Our Sisters: The Challenge of Re-envisioning Curriculum Change” (publication from the Research Clearinghouse and Curriculum Integration Project, Center for Research on Women, Memphis State University, 1986).

  7 Morgen, “To See Ourselves,” 12.

  8 Bonnie Thornton Dill, “Our Mothers’ Grief: Racial-Ethnic Women and the Maintenance of Families,” Journal of Family History 13: 412-31.

  9 Morgen, “To See Ourselves.”

  10 Linda Burnham, “Has Poverty Been Feminized in Black America?” in For Crying Out Loud: Women and Poverty in the United States, ed. Ann Withorn and Rochelle Lefkowitz (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1986), 69—83.

  11 Elizabeth Higginbotham, “We Were Never on a Pedestal: Women of Color Continue to Struggle with Poverty, Racism and Sexism,” in For Crying Out Loud: Women and Poverty in the United States, ed. Ann Withorn and Rochelle Lefkowitz (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1986). 97—109.

  12 Morgen, “To See Ourselves.”

  13 Ann Bookman and Sandra Morgen, eds., Women and the Politics of Empowerment (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988).

  14 Ellizabeth Clark-Lewis, “ ‘This Work Had an End’: The Transition from Live-in to Day Work” (working paper no. 2, Southern Women: The Intersection of Race, Class and Gender, Center for Research on Women, Memphis State University, 1985); and Judith Rollins, Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985).

  15 Gloria T. Hull and Barbara Smith, “The Politics of Black Women’s Studies,” in All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s S
tudies, ed. Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith (Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1982), xxi—xxii.

  16 Maxine Baca Zinn and D. Stanley Eitzen, Diversity in American Families (New York: Harper & Row, 1987).

  17 Vicky Spelman, “Combatting the Marginalization of Black Women in the Classroom,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 10 (Summer 1982): 15—16.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Discourses of Resistance: Interrogating Mainstream Feminism and Black Nationalism

  By and large within the women’s movement ... white women focus upon their oppression as women and ignore differences of race, sexual preference, class, and age. There is a pretense to a homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist. ... As white women ignore their built-in privilege of whiteness and define woman in terms of their own experience alone, then women of color become “other,” the outsider whose experience is too “alien” to comprehend.

  —AUDRE LORDE, Sister Outsider

  ... there is a dangerous trend observable in some quarters of the movement to program [black women] out of their “evil” ways into a cover-up, shut-up, lay-back-and-be-cool obedience role.... She is being encouraged—in the name of the revolution no less—to cultivate “virtues” that if listed would sound like the personality traits of slaves.... We rap about being correct but ignore the danger of having one-half of our population regard the other with such condescension and perhaps fear that that half finds it necessary to “reclaim his manhood” by denying her her peoplehood. We have much, alas, to work against.... [we must] face the task of creating a new identity, a self, perhaps an androgynous self, via commitment to the struggle.

  —TONI CADE, The Black Woman

  INTRODUCTION

  Black feminist discourse is inherently oppositional because it runs counter to mainstream points of view both within and without African American communities. Being oppositional, especially if you’re black and female, requires courage and tenacity. Being feminist exposes you to criticism, hostility, and even outright misogyny. Feminist ideologies also provide you with a particular worldview that is useful for negotiating the difficult terrain of North America. They help you understand the seemingly inexplicable and rage against the evil that all oppressed people suffer. They enable you to imagine a world that does not exist but should. And, finally, they connect you to particular women throughout the globe who share your commitment to a better world, and to women throughout history who dreamed, kept the faith, and passed their sisterly wisdom on.

  Pauline Terrelonge

  Pauline Terrelonge’s essay “Feminist Consciousness and Black Women” is a response to the widely held belief within the black community that racism rather than sexism is the major burden of African American women. She also discusses male privilege within the black community, a concept that is at odds with the myth of the powerless black male and the liberated black woman. One of the questions she explores in great detail is why large numbers of black women, given their material reality, have not developed a feminist consciousness. Her embrace of feminism provides a counterdiscourse to the many voices in the black community that discourage black women from becoming feminists.

  FEMINIST CONSCIOUSNESS AND BLACK WOMEN

  Like the Populist movement at the turn of the century, and the Prohibition and Antiwar movements of subsequent decades, the contemporary feminist movement is having an enormous impact on black America. It is not so much that black people have embraced the feminist movement, or that they have even begun to identify with it. Rather its effect is seen in the controversy it has engendered within the race concerning the exact status of black males and females, and what the ideal role of each should be. A common (and, some would argue, the dominant) view within the black community at the present time is that blacks have withstood the long line of abuses perpetrated against them ever since their arrival in this country mainly because of the black woman’s fortitude, inner wisdom, and sheer ability to survive. As a corollary to this emphasis on the moral, spiritual, and emotional strength of the black woman in offsetting the potential annihilation of the race, proponents of this view stress the critical role that she plays in keeping the black family together and in supporting black males. Indeed, many blacks regard the role of uniting all blacks to be the primary duty of the black woman, one that should supersede all other roles that she might want to perform, and certainly one that is essentially incompatible with her own individual liberation.1 Pursuit of the latter is generally judged to be a selfish goal, detrimental to the overall welfare of the race. In short, sexism is viewed by many blacks, both male and female, to be a factor of minimal importance in the overall oppression of the black woman. The brunt of culpability for her unequal condition is accorded to racism.2

  The object of this essay is to challenge this point of view. It is my belief that the foregoing view of black female subordination expresses a narrow perspective on the nature of social oppression in American society, and because of this, the solutions that are commonly proposed—e.g., correcting the imbalance in the black sex ratio, or building stronger black families—are doomed to serve as only partial palliatives to the problems facing black women.

  The first fact that must be grasped is that the black female condition in America has developed in a society where the dominant economic form is the market economy and the sole purpose of economic activity is the making of a profit on the part of large corporations. Because profit maximization is the superordinate goal to which all other social goals are merely subsidiary, labor is a premium. Labor must not only be made as highly productive as possible, but also be obtained at the cheapest possible cost. The manipulation of the labor market is essential to attain these dual goals and provide for the effective functioning of the American economic order.

  A major strategy for manipulating labor has been the maintenance of a sexual division of labor, i.e., a situation where certain roles are designated as male, others as female. The allocation of societal functions according to gender has been based on certain biological factors that objectively differentiate the sexes and the way those factors are interpreted through the ideology of sexism. The fact that women bear children has been used to justify their relegation to the domestic sphere. Their ability to reproduce has been made a duty, to which have been added the responsibilities of nurturing the offspring, serving the spouse, and performing or supervising all domestic-related chores. It is easy to see how the pattern of female responsibility for the domestic sphere is useful to the economic system; it has allowed certain critical societal functions to be performed without the need of providing monetary remuneration.3

  It is generally recognized that the ideology of racism has functioned to maintain blacks in a subordinate economic state.4 Less readily recognized, however, are the similarities of the process of racial subordination to that of female subordination. In both cases the rationale for subordination resides in characteristics ascribed by the large capitalist interests, which are almost totally white male. Moreover, both forces—sexism and racism—create an occupationally segregated labor market, thereby giving rise to a situation where there are male jobs and female jobs, white jobs and black jobs.

  From a cursory view, the white female has appeared historically to enjoy a privileged status; after all, as a result of sharing the bedrooms of white males, to her fall many of the material privileges and benefits of the society. But it is essential to recognize that rarely has she achieved these amenities on her own merit; nearly always it has been through the efforts and good graces of her spouse. The apparent freedoms and material well-being enjoyed by many white women depend not on women earning them but on women fulfilling a nurturant and supportive role and, of course, maintaining a distinctive sexual identity through a socially defined image of female attractiveness. Thus, beauty and sexual attractiveness are essential to woman’s economic survival, and maintaining these assets has become a major concern, second only to fulfillment of her domestic functions. />
  The cult of the home, like so many other aspects of white America, has unfortunately permeated the culture of Afro-America. While the cult in black society has been subjected to indigenous permutations,5 in essence it bears close similarities to the white pattern, as would be expected in view of the fact that the economic forces affecting the larger society also impinge on the black subculture. Thus, within Afro-American culture (and I emphasize within), maleness creates privileges—that is, certain freedoms and rights are attached to being male. Certain sexually specific behaviors are part of the black socialization process. The result is that marriage among blacks is just as much a union of unequals as it is in the larger society; child rearing, domestic chores, and custody of children are largely female concerns. Hence, it is erroneous to argue that the domestic patterns of white society are not replicated in the black community. The “housewife” model may not fit completely, but it is closely approximated in the sense that black women must bear the brunt of the domestic-related chores, even when they also work outside the home.

  What has historically differentiated black women from most white women is the peculiar way in which the racial and sexual caste systems have interfaced. Throughout their history in America, black women have had to face a condition of double dependency—(1) on their spouses or mates, and (2) on their employers. Although these dependencies have also been the lot of many employed white women, proportionately fewer of the latter faced both of them. Double dependency has practically always been the onus of black women. Moreover, because of the racial caste system, a significant proportion of black married women, both historically and contemporaneously, have not had the economic support of their husbands —because their husbands are either absent or underemployed or unable to find employment. What is significant about the fact that so many black women have had to contribute to their families’ financial support is that society’s reaction to their plight has been sexist. Because they are more economically independent of a male breadwinner than is the societal norm, many black women have been made to feel that they usurped the male role, as though they—and not society—were ultimately responsible for the black man’s inability to be the main breadwinner.