Sisters In The Struggle: Why Are Black Feminists Ignored?
The Occidental media have provided a platform for white heterosexual feminists such as Geraldine Ferraro and Gloria Steinem to pollute the media with their racist and misandrist views about Barack Obama. The quandary is black feminists views are being ignored by the mainstream and the black media. The truth is the media networks don’t want the public to know the views of black feminists. The Occident ignores black feminism as being “invisible” this is their method of “marginalizing” and “silencing” the views of black women.
Essence Magazine is the only mainstream black publication that has provided a social and political context into the views of black feminism during this presidential campaign. The only black feminist that has been granted press is Alice Walker. Once again black feminism is treated as an afterthought as though mainstream white feminism is the “only” feminism and that’s false. The black media should be providing black feminists with a platform especially right now. I think it is crucial that black feminist perspectives be given center stage.
The vast majority of the newsrooms in the Occident are still controlled by the mythical norm. Since race is a social construction the mythical norm has forced Barack Obama into a corner and demonized him for being a black man. The racist and misandrist anti black male articles flooding the media are not by “chance”. The articles are carefully planned in editorial meetings by racist editors, managing editors, editor in chiefs and reporters.
I am surprised that Alice Walker did not criticize her “friend” Gloria Steinem for her disgusting racist and sexist attitudes. Steinem’s January 2008 NY Times opinion piece was abhorrent. Walker did say that there is a racial divide in feminism though. bell hooks has been very vocal in her work about Gloria Steinem and I applaud bell hooks for speaking the truth. Steinem focuses on gender and acts as though race and class is not an issue.
However, I wonder why are established black feminist scholars such as bell hooks, Barbara Smith, Patricia Hill Collins and Dionne Brand are ignored? I think black feminism can provide some insight for the masses as to why some black women are supporting Obama over Hillary Clinton and it isn’t just about race. One of the tactics mainstream white heterosexual feminism attempts to play is to force black women to choose between their race and gender.
The mainstream has only focused on Hillary Clinton’s “gender” as a potential disadvantage yet the Occident doesn’t want black feminist thoughts or views to be explored. The reason is black feminism is the key that would smash the “hype” surrounding Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is no feminist heroine she is a privileged white heterosexual woman that gained political power through the mythical norm, the marriage market, and white skin privilege.
After all, one of the prevailing myths is that the white heterosexual feminist movement speaks for all feminists and that’s a lie. In fact, one the biggest problems in feminism is the fact the mainstream white heterosexual feminists attempt to displace black feminists and feminists of colour. My sister told me Hillary Clinton is “not her sister”. I think a real opportunity is being lost when black feminism isn’t given center stage.
It is a powerful yet racist example of white heterosexual female skin privilege when white mainstream feminists refuse to acknowledge their social advantage. Another issue is the Occident ignores the fact Hillary Clinton has social, economic, and political advantages due to whiteness. The western media are so focused on Obama’s blackness yet chooses to ignore Clinton’s white skin privilege this is absolutely deleterious and perfidious.
Gayblackcanada 
You know, O…I’ve often wondered the same thing myself…Alice Walker has as powerful a voice as Gloria Steinem, yet it is Gloria who gets the title and Ms. Alice who gets whatever is left over…
I have no answer except for my opinion that feminism is a “white female movement” that black women have attached themselves to. Again, just my opinion, but with all the other issues Black women face, feminism seems to have taken a back seat. That is not a good thing, seeing as how we are losing our young girls to misogyny and sexual degradation and a host of other things…
And I dare not get started on HRC…Lord knows I’d be here all night…
@MarvalusOne I cosign with your statement. I totally agree about HRC that lady is getting on my nerves.
Alice Walker is the queen of feminism. I’m sorry, the vast majority of so-called white feminists are more concern about being equal to white men in socio-economic terms than in bringing in full equality for all women. Alice Walker is more than commited to social justice and economic equality for all people and all women regardless of class, race, sexual orientation, and religion.
My late grandmother was a feminist. She lived through all the hell that came her way in the form of Jim Crow, segregated workplace, in addition to raising her 13 kids. Why don’t mainstream feminists talk about this? That’s because of white female privilege and the marriage market that benefits them more than other women.
I wish I could talk about the inability of mainstrem feminists to embrace feminists of color and working class/poor women. That will be my later article in my blog.
May Grandma rests in peace.
Stephanie B.
It’s sad to read that sisterhood has been forgotten and instead feminists would rather divide and degrade other women.
You don’t think Michelle Obama has gained from the marital marketplace?
When have white feminists ever supported Michelle Obama? When the media were bashing Michelle Obama I don’t recall the NOW Organization supporting her? I do remember the silence though that’s what I remember from the mainstream feminist organizations.
I think the Combahee River Collective was right black feminism is very important.
Michelle Obama worked hard for her success the woman graduated from Princeton and Harvard. Michelle Obama also was making MORE MONEY then Barack a few years ago at her high profile job at a Chicago Hospital.
As a white feminist I couldn’t agree more with the post and with most of the posters. White feminists need to educate themselves and stop favoring middle class privileged theorists and listen to the voices of ALL feminists; African American, Latino, Asian, African, Lesbian, Straight….
bell hooks definition of Sisterhood from the 1980’s is still the gold standard as far as I’m concerned, and her anxieties over class and race issues within the feminist movement that the media privileges are worse today because the post-modern movement in academia treats all voices ‘equally’.
The trouble is that ‘equality’ cannot be achieved when one set of voices has been heard for nearly a century and others only allowed the barest platform for two decades (at best). Post Modernism assumes we can all start from the same place which is simply not the case.
Sorry for the length of the post, I just wanted to let you know that there are white feminists in Academia who know that they must educate themselves and work to stop the classism and racism that the white middle class feminist movement encourages.
PS Sisterhood is NOT a term which means you don’t question; it is a term which means engaging in debates and questions that make you uncomfortable, that expand your mind, and that allow you to reshape the world–it is not the privileged maintaining their status, but a mindset which dismantles privilege.
So exactly when do we talk about the issues concerning race, within race? Like the fact that in Los Angeles for example it is Latinos v.s. Blacks? In Brampton, Canada it is South Asians v.s. Blacks? What about the racism from racial minorities towards other racial minorities? When are we gonna look at homophobia and sexism in racial minorities honestly instead of deflecting it as a “white thing”.
Why is that any kind of criticism about racial minorities always ends off as being racist? Does this mean then that we should not criticise Israel for it’s treatment of Palestine? The Bible says Israel belongs to the Jews. Do we let that argument rest, just because they’ve been through a holocaust? Do we also let Irish people be as they want whether that’s detrimental to themselves and others because of what England did to them?
Race dialogue, really needs to move forward rather than remain in the same tired, place of victimhood. This by the way is being said by a racial minority. Oh wait, but if you’re a racial minority who makes some kind of critique of one’s own problems within the community, it must be because I’ve got a case of Malinche, or else I’m a self hater, or else I’m white washed.
It’s convenient the way any kind of dissent in regards to race has been blocked with the same old argument. To call on Israel is to be anti-semite, and to call on the reality that Black men got the vote before ANY woman is racist. So when do we talk about Condoleezza Rice, and Lois Farrakan?
I think the greatest danger to the plight of Black Women in general and Black Feminists in particular is the idea that equality is something that will be “given” to us by White Men, Mainstream Media, The Government/Law or anything else. It seems to me that the ultimate reality is that we a trapped in the mode of fighting for a system and fighting to be included in a system that is hostile to us as being different. No matter what level of success a minority, man or woman, achieves within the anglo dominated power structures of the world, we are always being measured by their standards, whether it’s their standards of beauty, standard or behavior, or whatever. To some degree, the victory of a Barack Obama, Condaleeza Rice or Colin Powell are hollow, because there’s nothing in their backgrounds that show the true struggle or plight of massess of blacks, or any other minority groups for that matter. Even the minorities that achieve “success” undeniable come from some type of background that gave them an advantage, like attendance at Ivy League schools etc. They also had to minimize their own “blackness” in order to be perceived as less of a threat. It’s the reason why someone like Al Sharpton could never be elected president – he’s “too Black”. With Blacks, it has/is/will continue to be a case where our over all value in this anglo dominated society is called into questions. Just think about situations like hurricane Katrina, where the population the suffered was largely Black. This is the reality of where we really stand. We are really foolish in a way to think that we will be included or “heard”. Our value was once that of slaves, which was economic – and the story has not change. If the angle power structure can not use us for some type of economic or political gain, then we are invisible. When I look someone like HRC – I feel that she wanted to use Blacks to get to the White House, through their votes – and that’s all, trying to follow in the footsteps of her husband – and how the “Black” vote helped him get into the White House.
As a woman of color I take serious issue with this division of “black” feminism and “white” feminism. Feminists should work together united as a one movement to cure the ills of society perpetrated against ALL women. This idea that there is some sort of difference between being black and a feminist and being white and a feminist is the reason why feminism has failed to gain any momentum in recent years. There is a war and our body is the battlefield. We need to come together to control our own sexuality and bodies, and I think that the black feminists insistance on being a movement separate from “white” feminism,( which is just feminism in general) is the reason why we have failed in our goals. Please distinguish which of following is part of the following is part of the black feminist movement and the white feminist movement.
-right to control one’s reproductive organs
-awareness against domestice violence and rape culture
-financial assistance for single mothers
-renounciation of sexual objectification
-financial equality in the work place
-longer maternity for working mothers
These are issues that effect ALL women. We can only make a difference if we stop this senseless division and unite together as women.
Britt–totally agree with you. The “Black” women are NOT ignored. Alice Walker is revered.