Racism was an issue far before sexism was; yet today we still struggle for equality in both departments. African-American feminists should not be discriminated against more than a white feminist. If we really want equality then we need to accept everyone no matter the color of his or her skin, his or her gender, or his or her sexuality. It can’t be that just women and men are equal; it needs to be that everyone is equal. If this does not happen then our problems will forever be problems. Lorde writes, “It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support.” We need to accept everyone in order to succeed. Both women and men must accept who they are and be happy with themselves, and it will be then when change and growth are truly possible.
“By ignoring the past, we are encouraged to repeat its mistakes.” These are the words of Audre Lorde and they just so happen to sum up why The Rag failed. Members of The Rag chose not to address issues within the group. Social and racial tensions were ignored, which ultimately led to the breakdown of the magazine. So much time and energy was solely focused on the individual rather than the group at hand. How did these women expect to change their campus and the world around them if they were only focusing on themselves? That never has worked. The feminist movement is so much bigger than just one person; it has to do with each and every one of us. The women in The Rag should have solved the problems within the group before moving on to larger issues. One cannot expect to solve other issues if he or she has not conquered his or her own problems. We should learn from the past, not forget about it. In fact, our past is one of our greatest resources; we can learn so many things from mistakes that have previously been made. We can take these mistakes and learn how to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.
One question that I find fascinating is why are white people seen as the norm? How and why did this happen? What would things be like if this was not the case? But, what-if’s do not matter in this case because we can’t go back in time and change the way things happened. Things are the way they are and only the people have the power to change the world. Peggy McIntosh writes, “Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow 'them' to be more like 'us.' I am a young white woman and I rarely have to worry about being discriminated against. I realized that I take my position in life for granted a lot of the time. There has never been a single time when someone has said something about my race as if it’s a bad thing. However, there have been times when people have made comments about my gender. Comments such as: Guys are so much better at sports then girls are and I got a better grade on this math test because boys are better at math than girls are. Those are just two examples and compared to how mean the comments could be, they’re not that bad. But, I have never been discriminated against my gender as well as my race. Both African-American feminists and white feminists are fighting for equality; neither should be discriminated against. We all need to come together if we want to achieve our goals. And in order to achieve gender equality all races need to be thought of and treated as equals. If not, our dreams of equality will never be fulfilled.
Anna said, "If we really want equality then we need to accept everyone no matter the color of his or her skin, his or her gender, or his or her sexuality." That is so true...equality on any front means equality on ALL fronts. Even more than that, equality means recognizing differences as one in the same. In other words, differences do not necessaryily need to be separated. As Audre Lorde said, "What this says about the vision of this conference is sad, in a country where racism, sexism and homophobia are inseparable." Though homosexuals and women are both seen as deviations from the "norm," this does not mean that they need to be viewed as two separate entities or two separate causes. To truly gain equality, we need to look past the specifics and see equality as a whole. My favorite quote from Lorde's piece is that "Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic."
ReplyDeleteI found Peggy McIntosh's "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," to be extremely interesting because it is so relatable for young women like myself who have, but perhaps have overlooked, the white privilege. McIntosh says, "whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow 'them' to be more like 'us'." Unfortunately, this seems to be true. In another class of mine we are discussing socioeconomic status and how it relates to equality in educational opportunities. In my high school, we had the ABC program, where black students from New York city came to live in my town and attend my school to have a better chance at college and ultimately success. Rather than seeing this as something that should be done for everyone who doesn't have an equal chance, white people treated the situation as though they were doing the students a favor.
McIntosh goes through a whole list of things that are daily effects of white privileges that most of us would likely overlook. Simple things like "I can do well in a challending situation without being called a credit to my race," are things that many white people never even consider. Something like this goes hand in hand with womens' rights. A man could likely say that he can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to his gender. This shows that these two differences are no so separable. Equality means equality for all. Period.
I think one of the recurring issues of the feminist movement has been its struggle to be inclusive without deviating from the party line. For example, in On the Rag the author writes that many of her colleagues balked at including the term ‘womanist’ in their title because womanism espouses fighting to end the oppression of non-white men, as well as working for equality for women. The tension seems to arise because the inception of feminism was sparked by inequalities faced by mostly white, middle to upper class women.
ReplyDeleteToday feminism struggles to break from the image of its predecessors in order to make room women outside that original demographic. And while I can’t imagine any feminist disagreeing with the statements echoed by the earlier posts on this blog—namely that hierarchies based in oppression and domination should be abolished—actively pursuing those beliefs would mean turning time and effort away from issues that are strictly women’s issues.
As such, women who seek to identity as feminists, but find themselves tied to other causes as well—such as fighting racism or homophobia—have difficulties pursuing both avenues without alienating or devaluing one fight or the other. However, perhaps by looking at patriarchy as a more inclusive set of values—where whiteness and heterosexuality are normalized in the same ways that masculinity is—it is possible to recognize movements such as the gay rights movement or anti-racism movements as more holistically intertwined with feminism than its primitive manifestations would suggest.
In particular, Lorde’s essay speaks about the ways in which feminism still functions in a largely patriarchal way, essentially using the tools of the very system it is trying to dismantle. By not recognizing the ways in which patriarchy oppresses other non-normalized groups, we as white women render ourselves as blithely privileged as we accuse men of being. As discussed earlier, one does not need to consciously act on oppressive or domineering impulses to marginalize non-majority groups. Rather, the system of patriarchy thrives precisely because of its invisibility and insidiousness.
If feminists seek to undo the patriarchal system, I feel it would be effective to do so in a way that undermines all facets of its oppression. Of course, actually accomplishing this task is something entirely different. For example, in the excerpt from “On the Rag” I cited earlier, arguments from both sides are understandable and valid. While I can understand feminists’ hesitance to re-brand their movement to ease anxiety about exclusivity, I can also understand the hesitance of black women to become involved in a movement that does not fully represent their interests.
However, I feel that these arguments are largely semantic and undermine the possibility of moving feminism away from the stigma of being only for white, middle-to-upper-class women. Until then, I have to agree that feminism is operating in—and espousing, whether intentionally or not—the very system that oppresses them. Patriarchy is about more than gender inequality; it is about the ways in which a certain kind of person has become normalized and valued at the expense of many others. As such, I think it would be in the best interest of feminism to become more inclusive while still ultimately pursuing women’s issues. Acknowledging that there are more wrongs in the system does not make injustices against women any less pressing, but rather weakens the case for the system itself.