“You have a Black President”: So What?

How do we think of the narrative of “you have a Black president”? What understandings of power, belongingness, and justice are embedded in this narrative? Janni Aragon and I take up these questions. We won’t be able to answer all of what is rolled into this narrative, but hopefully we can spark an ongoing critical conversation.

In a prior post, I wrote about my recent experiences with gendered-racism in this era of so-called post-racialism (this is part of the narrative “you have a Black president). Today, I want to focus on how such narratives hide the invisibility of Black women, particularly in the area of academic research. While I focus on academic research, we can also think of how this narrative hides the invisibility of marginalized and minoritized groups in health studies, such as HIV/AIDS and conversation on economic “recovery” among other issues.

            Simply put, Black women are disappearing as research subjects within our “leading” academic journals (Alexander-Floyd “Disappearing Acts” 2012) and within intersectionality research specifically. Many credit intersectionality research as an outgrowth of Black feminist standpoint theory and remind us that Black feminist standpoint theory is crucial to intersectionality, but in many cases a mere footnote or sentence makes this acknowledgment. However, as intersectionality travels and becomes increasingly popular, Black women are not being researched and if they are it’s in a rather limited manner. As a result of the often omission of Black women in research we have to ask: What story/stories is/are conveyed in not including Black women as research subjects? Finally, we have to ask what are the implications for our understanding of politics? Including Black women in our studies of politics, by centering their social, political, and cultural understandings, can broaden and (re)shape notions of how we study and ultimately understand politics.

I argue that this seen/not seen inclusion of Black women as research subjects, in intersectionality publications, is the result of the politics of research. Research is a political act and intersectional research is no exception. Researchers make decisions, which have political consequences, when they decide who can speak, whom they speak to, what they can speak about, what questions are asked, how we observe behaviors, and also how we measure such behaviors. The theories employed and the manners in which they are deployed and the method/methodological approaches utilized, like a picture, tell a story.

Black Woman and Intersectionality: The Politics of Research

As a concept intersectionality has gained increased popularity among some feminists and other scholars. This is occurring at the same time that Black women seem to be disappearing from political science scholarly works. The “early” works of Black feminists, specifically the works originating in the late 1980s/early 1990s, is sometimes cited—but not necessarily critically engaged by feminist scholars—and this is a form of distortion. Additionally, Black women are rarely treated as research subjects, particularly in intersectionality research. In my recent explorations of Black women as subjects in research length articles that employ intersectionality, I discovered that Black women are rarely, if at all, the sole subjects of such research projects, with and emphasis on the US. I focus on journal length articles as it allows me to identify trends and because “publications in leading journals are an important marker of professional status and a key conduit for the diffusion of ideas.” (Munck and Snyder 2007, 339) Additionally, the number of articles appearing in these journals serves as an indicator of the extent to which such studies are accepted by the scholarly community.

The data suggest that: research on intersectionality tended to treat Black women in a monolithic manner; only a certain group of Black women served as research subjects (primarily elected officials) and Black women were often researched in a comparative manner (particularly in comparison to other racial/ethnic groups of women). Comparative studies can be informative; however, they can also be limiting (see hooks 1991). Such studies can result in reinscribing differences and further marginalization as they can mask differentials in power relations between and within groups. This is not to suggest that all dimensions of comparative studies are inherently problematic for Black women.

Our analyses are also limited in terms of exploring how Black women create unique and specific narratives outside the formal institutions of politics. Consequently, questions such as: how are Black women who are not elected to office engaging and grappling with issues of intersectionality? How are they defining and responding to a multitude of issues that influence their daily lives? And, how are they defining themselves? tend to be ignored.

While we (Black women) are sometimes recognized vis-à-vis our contributions to intersectionality as a theory and concept, our scholarship and political work are blurred and if incorporated it is done in a manner that hints at a particular form of racial inclusiveness within a rather confined critical space. At the same time, it appears as if intersectionality as a method has become a catchall sort of term/method that includes everyone and everything. As a result of what we study and how we study Black women and even who is allowed to study Black women, the complexities of Black women’s politics remain underexplored. Excluded is the specialized knowledges produced by diverse Black women. This is what gets hidden in the narrative of “you have a Black president”.

This post is based on the article “Now you see me, now you don’t: My political fight against the invisibility/erasure of Black women in intersectionality research” published in Politics, groups and Identities (2013).

Works Cited

Alexander-Floyd, Nikol G. 2012. “Disappearing Acts: Reclaiming Intersectionality in the Social Sciences in

a Post-Black Feminist Era.” Feminist Formations 24 (1): 1–25.

hooks, bell. 1991. “Narratives of Struggle.” In Critical Fictions: The Politics of Imaginative Writing, edited

by Philomena Mariani, 53–61. Seattle, WA: Bay Press.

Munck, Gerardo L., and Richard Snyder. 2007. “Who Publishes in Comprative Politics? Studying theWorld

from the United States.” PS: Political Science and Politics 40 (2): 339–346.

My life in a “Post-Racial” World

It’s been a while since I last posted. It’s not because I haven’t wanted to. So much has happened that I wanted to comment on. However, I was working through my response to a number of racist-sexist emails and tweets I received in response to the Trayvon Martin Social Justice Award I organized.

I will not post the correspondences I received. What I will tell you is that some went so far as to wish death to my family and I. Some felt inclined to tell me that I was racist, ignorant…. I’m at the point where I actually feel sad for these individuals. Sad that they cannot see how what they “condemn” they actually perpetuate.

There were a few issues that I address before I speak to my experiences as a Black woman living in a so-called post-racial world.  My sister-colleague, Professor Janni Aragon, and I will blog about post-racialism around claims such as “We have a Black President” in the near future.

Silence Perpetuates Racism

I was asked why not name the award in honor of Martin Luther King. I smiled; it was clear to me that this individual seemed to have embraced a rather deracialized understanding of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. In the 1960s he was not a “hero” in the eyes of a few. Oh, but in this so-called post-racial society some seem to have forgotten this. In the whitening of Martin Luther King (whitening in the sense that his image is often used to assuage White guilt) some have forgotten that his message involved a form of radical racial justice. 

In deed I decided on Trayvon Martin because his death, in part, embodies the radical racial justice calls of Dr. Martin Luther King—not the sanitized recitation we engage in every January. For many of the young individuals I encounter, Trayvon Martin’s murder resonated with them. But some would never know that because like the White liberals Martin Luther took to task in his “Letter from Brigham Jail” they refuse to listen. They refuse to allow minoritized and marginalized individuals to speak. And when we speak they often work to discredit our claims.

As Martin Luther King Jr. articulated in his letter “I am in [all states and cities] because injustice is here.” Yet, some deny it’s existence because they want to believe that we are existing in a post-racial state, where racism in a thing of the past. Those of us who dare speak of racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression are told that we are simply agitators who need to stop engaging in “destructive” and “divisive” efforts. This is part of a muting/silencing project that must be resisted in the same way that Jim Crow laws were resisted.

Everyday I encounter stories of racism from the young people I serve. I see first hand how others go out of their way to tell them that they don’t belong. Black men are stopped and frisked, no not in NY, but on college campuses. They are treated as criminals because of the color of their skin. Students of color are called “nigger” and told to “go home” and that they "don’t belong.” Faculty members of color are treated with suspicion. If this is not racism, then clearly I don’t know what is.

Yet, their and my experiences are met with silence. We are told that while some individuals might be “bias” that life is better for us. I guess that we should be happy that we are no longer working on the plantation. However, I ask, when one is the recipient of such hate, when we are being terrorized on a daily basis, what exactly is better? And who is it better for?

Some are so caught up with defining racism by focusing on specific acts or at individual level behavior that they have lost sight of the fundamentals of racism. Racialized bodies might not be hanging from Southern trees. But that is not an indicator of a post-racial state. Racism may be direct, indirect, individual and/or institutional. Indeed as Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argues we don’ need racist actors to have racist outcomes.

Racism is not a simple bias neither is it simply prejudice. Yet, some continue to conflate racism with these concepts. Racism involves the transformation of prejudice and bias, at an individual and/or institutional level, passively or actively, through the exercise of POWER against racialized groups deemed as inferior.

Racism, in the words of, Carmichael and Hamilton is "the predication of decisions and policies on considerations of race for the purpose of SUBORDINATING a racial group and maintaining control over that group." (Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, pg. 3)

Many, in an attempt to put the legacy of slavery behind them in hopes of achieving the utopian post-racial state, ignore everyday racialized-gendered practices that terrorize some of us.

As I live through my current experiences with gendered-racism I find myself fighting to have my voice and the voices of those who experience systematic racism on an everyday basis heard. I cannot pretend that these past few weeks have been easy. I’ve had a range of emotions. However at the end of the day I’ve decided to speak—to break the silence that is complicit with notions of post-racialism

Post-racialism is designed to render us silent or to mute our claims. It is because it requires silence that indeed post-racialism perpetuates racism.  Here are just a few examples of how post-racialism perpetuates racism via silence:

• Silence does not allow us to challenge the deracialization of Martin Luther King’s dream. Consequently we accept for example “A Day of Service” often with little thought to issues of equality, justice, and peace.
• Silence allows us to ignore issues of joblessness, HIV/AIDS, food insecurity and their relationship to race. We become silent when we use universal terms for fear of offending.
• Silence harms us when we deploy terms, such as “colored” and “nigger” that are steeped in historical a legacy of racial harm and crime and then claim “innocence” or “ignorance” when we are asked why.
• Silence harms us when we allow racialized actions to take place on a consistent basis and then simply say “sorry” and engage in no actions designed to implement institutional change.

Silence is sometimes the best response. However silence can also be an act of racism. When we claim at an individual and/or institutional level that we are committed to anti-racism and we remain silent in the face of racism our actions beg the question: Who or what does our silence protect?

Audre Lorde poignantly wrote, “Your silence will not protect you.” None of us are protected when we remain silent in the face of racism. So how do we respond to the silences that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned us against? Those of us who experience racism, overt and covert, must speak. Yes, we are at times intimidated, but our silence does not promote change. It is only when we consciously work to unmask the often hidden structures of power, of which silence is one, can we begin to challenge power structures. Those in the majority, who benefit at various levels from privilege, directly and indirectly, must also break their silence. The pleas of ignorance or that it’s not my problem, or the claim that I’m not racist, are inadequate and are not enough! The onus of fighting racism must not be placed on the laps of marginalized and minoritized communities. It is a problem that we must all raise our voices against. We cannot lament on how our speech will be responded to and/or interpreted.

There is No Girlhood Here: Reading the Reading of Quvenzhane Wallis

"If you White you alright/ If you Black Step Back" the lyrics of this 1967 folk song captures the story line of Black and White girlhood. Some in society espouse the notion of multiculturalism to promote an ideal of post feminism and post racism. Post racialism and post feminism are ideologies that function to suggest that racial differences and gender discrimination are no longer salient (see McRobbie 2004). However, the discursive practices deployed actually work to reinscribe racalized and gender tropes and hierarchies. The recent tweet concerning the young actress Quvenzhane Wallis is by ONE incident that makes evident how the construction of Black girlhood embodies racalized and gendered tropes that strips them of their girlhood and by default their innocence even in a "post" racial and "post" gender society.

The underlying societal assumptions about Black girls and the women they become are particularly evident in the recent construction of this young girl. The construction of girlhood is not monolithic and is indeed shaped by various social processes and ideologies (see Jiwani, Steenbergen & Mitchell 2006). However, Black girlhood tends to be overlaid with the stereotypical construction of Black womanhood. From girlhood, the Black body is marked along racialized gender boundaries for a particular functioning in society. The dominant discursive practices tend to represent Black girls in a rather monolithic manner and portrays them as failing to conform to the ideals of virtue, piety and hard work—the antithesis of White girlhood and womanhood. Consequently, the construction of Black girlhood produces and reproduces a narrative that is familiar in terms of our understandings of race, class and gender.

When, and if, Black girls/teens are part of our public conversations, they are typically constructed as “pathological.” Consider that much of what appears in the public domain focuses on issues of teen pregnancy, poverty and welfare use, juvenile delinquency and (poor) school performance, for example. These conversations work to negativize black girls’ behavior.

The often-negative images imposed on Black women’s bodies are mapped onto the bodies of Black girls. Thus, there are really no "black girls," there are only "black women." Often, Black girls are thought of as: uncontrollable and womanish; poverty-stricken, living in violent and unstable homes, and as unredeemable. In essence, the Black girl is a failure in the making—a long-term potential societal problem. Construction of Black girlhood hints at anxieties in this new-so-called social and economic order. This manner of “seeing” Black girls is then used to justify her surveillance, both by the state and by private individuals. The now (in)famous tweet does just that. It says to Miss Wallis and other Black girls, no matter what you do, "we" have the power to define you regardless of your age. And since we have the right to exercise such power, "we" will keep you in your place, primarily by stripping you of the one political/cultural asset we give to children--innocence. 

Betty and Coretta: A Story of Black Gender Politics

Lifetime Network

This time of the year, Black History Month, usually finds me running through my cable guide. I’m not an avid consumer of this form of media. However, I make an annual trek to TV land during Black History Month because this is the time when I’m apt to find shows on the Black “experience”. So imagine my excitement when I learned about “Betty and Coretta”, to be aired on Lifetime Network. The icing on the cake for me was that it starred Angela Bassett (one of favorite actresses). In anticipation, and to ensure that I didn’t miss what I was sure would be the highlight of my TV viewing experience of the year, I asked my daughter to DVR the show.

Eight p.m. found me on the couch with my peppermint tea. I was curled up and ready. The opening captivated me.  This was my super bowl.  Mid way through the “documentary” saw my interest waning. By the end I felt betrayed. This was not a story of Betty and Coretta. 

In my anticipation I was looking forward to learning about the friendship between these women and their activism. Instead, I got a story that did not center their agency and one that told me of their activism only as an outgrowth of their husbands’ activism.  Some have critiqued "Betty and Coretta" in terms of  embellishment and the fact that the families might not have been consulted. Consequently, some have questioned the authenticity of the production. Maybe this is all true. However, I’m more concerned with the narratives deployed in the telling of the story.

“Betty and Coretta” seemed to be a story of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I was presented with a narrative of Black gender politics where the narratives of Black men are often privileged.

I understand that much of who these women are, real and imagined, is linked to the men they married. But must we not wonder who these women were prior to their marriages? Did they only understand politics and freedom via the lens of their husbands or might they have had their own conceptualizations? Did these women not have families, sisters, brothers, aunts, and uncles who might also have informed their activism? Did they not have political views on race, class, and gender prior to this? Where did these women come from? What were their childhoods like and how might this help to explain the friendship they forged? Did they have any correspondences with others outside of their families that might have helped us to understand how they made decisions?  These were the questions I pondered as the show progressed.

The narrative presented to us suggests that these women only found their voice after the untimely deaths of their husbands. In deed this was how I imagined the “Real Housewives of XX” to be and not a show on Dr. Shabazz and Mrs. Coretta Scott King.

While a number of narratives were deployed in the telling of the story of "Betty and Coretta", I focus on one narrative—that of the “strong” Black woman.There are two manifestations of this “strong” Black woman narrative that ran throughout the production. 

For one, the narrative speaks to the sacrificial Black woman. These women, via the notion of strength become the racial mothers for (Black) America. The normalization of the functioning of the Black woman as mother (biological and/or cultural) leads to the expectation that she will sacrifice so that others can make progress while simultaneously denying her needs and dreams.

Second, there is the narrative of  spiritual/supernatural strength. On the one hand, the story “denied” these women any connection to their Islamic or Christian faith. While allowing the men such a connection. This in indeed an interesting caveat, as we do not see how their beliefs influenced (or not) their activism. On the other hand, the women were constructed as supernaturally and spiritually strong. The spiritually/supernaturally strong Black woman is used to transcend worlds—present and past. The presentation of the women's stories allowed us to transcend Martin and Malcolm post-death. They allowed for the continuation of the dreams of these men. At times, the women who transcend spiritually become gods/icons themselves and serve as an affirmation of feminine power, and as a source of feminine solidarity. This is the narrative used to suggest the basis of the friendship between Betty and Coretta. While this notion of strength is used to construct the story of friendship, it does not permit these women a full display of their humanity.

Relying on these two scripts of the “strong” Black woman, while appearing to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Shabazz and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, show the continuation of the ideology of Black male privileging. Implicit, and often explicit, these strong Black women were depicted as protecting their men primarily because they are able to transcend all forms of punishment/harm/pain. They sacrifice themselves for the community and racial families, so that the dreams of their men might be manifest;  therein lies their value. Their story becomes valuable only in relation to the men some in the Black community hold as national heroes. 

There was a moment in the show when “Betty” said that Malcolm had left a series of problems that no matter what she did, she could not change. This I think could have been such a critical opening for us to understand her thinking. Instead, this thread was not weaved into the story in a substantive manner.

The construction of Betty and Coretta suggest that these women lacked activism/consciousness until after the deaths of their husbands. But we would never know because we were not afforded an opportunity to see these women. Consequently, I walked away frustrated. I had not learned anything about these women, but more about the construction of raced-gendered politics and practices.  

Born free and looking for justice: What “justice” means to me

 Won't you help to sing

This songs of freedom-

'Cause all I ever have:

Redemption songs;

Redemption songs;

Redemption songs.

Bob Marley

I wish I knew how

It would feel to be free

I wish that I could break

All the chains holding me

I wish I could say

All the things that I'd like to say

Say 'em loud say 'em clear

For the whole round world to hear

Nina Simone

Here I am, born after the so-called modern Civil Rights Movement. Here I am, a part of a generation that is close (in time) to this movement for justice; but most of my living “in” the Movement is done via readings and watching documentaries. Here I am a so-called beneficiary of the Civil Rights Movement. I stand in front of a college classroom, me a Black woman, an immigrant Black woman, a Black woman only a few generations past slavery and indentured servitude, as a college professor. Here I am the mother of a teen daughter who lives in a world that tells her that there is no racism. She is told this “lie” of post-racalism because for example, she does not see the possibility of herself in older Black women as there are no Black female teachers (or males for that matter) at her school. How then do I understand justice? How does my social identity and the context within which I reside shape my understandings of justice and freedom?

March on Washington

As a child, growing up in Barbados, I was fed a steady diet of Bob Marley. To this day, my mother owns every Bob Marley record. I can fondly remember me singing along to “Get up Stand up”, and “No woman, No Cry”. I am the point where I simply hear a few opening bars of a Marley song and I can start singing. I didn’t know that Marley’s music was about social justice. As a child, I didn’t know of or fully appreciate my mother’s commitment to justice. Marley’s music was simply something that was a part of our lives. Here commitment to social justice was simply a part of our lives. Then at the age of 16 I migrated to the US to attend college. At the age of 21, while in graduate school, I had an experience that reminded me of my so-called space in society. I was walking one morning and out ran a lady yelling “Nigger, Nigger.” She was clutching her robe and dressed in her house slippers. The anger I felt after this experience, coupled with the isolation I felt in higher education in general, left me wondering if there was ever a space for me in society. My experiences in higher education exposed me to racism and injustices in a way that I had not experienced before.

The injustices I experienced challenged my understanding of freedom. However, those songs my mother poured into me and that sense of self my parents cultivated served as the foundation for my response to the injustices I experienced. I didn’t always know how to name my experiences and how I wanted to respond to them. But the lyrics of Bob Marley, among others, and the teachings of my parents helped me to see my experiences as part of what I eventually learned was structural and institutional racism, sexism, and classism.

The words of my teachers and of random strangers caused anger; but they also prompted me to dig deeper into understanding intersectionality and justice.

The legacy of Black women, known and un-known to me, served as my “drinking gourd”. What is it that Black women sing about when they sing spirituals, the blues…? What is that yearning in their voice? It is a yearning to be free.

My digging led me to the likes of Nina Simone, to the works of Audre Lorde, Zora Neal Hurston, and Langston Hughes among others. I found the writings of Black women such as the Combahee River Collective, Dorothy Roberts, Nikol Alexander-Floyd and Beverly Guy-Sheftall. These women gave me a home for my raced-gendered-classed experiences. Through these various voices I have come to define a notion of justice.

Justice involves critically analyzing how the intersection of race, class, gender and sexuality work to constrain access, life choices, and understandings of self. Justice is not only about critical assessment of these intersecting oppressive structures; it is also about defining “my” reality. Although I use the term “my” I recognize that “my” incorporates all members of my larger community—those who are not free.

My struggle for justice is an on-going process. At this stage of my life I am confronted with teaching my teen daughter about justice—social, economic, cultural and political. My challenge stems from, in part that unlike me she is being raised in a majority environment—one that espouses a notion of color-blindness. She is one of two Black girls in her class. The irony of this color-blind ideology is that racism and the racial order is often hidden in plain sight. Injustice remains unchallenged as a result of silence. There is no community available for me to ground my daughter in—a community that reaffirms her Blackness in the way that I had as a child growing up in Barbados. That is just a part of the problem. Culturally she’s inundated with notions of beauty that often render her invisible. My attempts to counter the dominant narratives she confronts is often met with silence, mis-understanding, or a type of sympathy but very little action to actually change the environment in a critically manner. 

Often I’m left singing the words of Nina Simone, “I wish I knew how to be free”. I wish that I knew how it is for my daughters, biological and non-biological, to be free. Until then there is no justice.