The intersection of race and gender is not always a neat, well-defined one, but ignoring it’s definition for simplicity perpetuates oppression and inequality both along racial and gendered lines, as Elsa Barkley Brown and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham argue in their respective essays. The two writers have different arguments and evidence for the problems of ignoring racial lines in analyzing “women’s history”, but they also convey a common message – that the current form of historical analysis and “white” feminism is not universal or appropriate.
Higginbotham argues that race, class and gender are not all-consuming concepts, and the fact that two people of the female gender are both “women” does not necessarily unite them if, for instance, one is a middle class white and the other is a working class black. She cites evidence that black women during and after slavery were not even always considered women, and were especially not considered “ladies”, and introduces Dolores Janiewski’s work as showing that black women were not protected in the workplace with conditions “suitable for ladies.” Black women and white women were entirely different, and thus it is impossible to discuss women’s history when black women dealt with an entirely different history than white women, and in fact were not even always defined as women in the same way. Race and gender do not exist without each other, and implying a homogeneity among all women ignores the many historical differences that black women have faced, and through which black women have defined their own gender differently from white women.
Brown’s key idea is that simply recognizing and even addressing the differences between women is not enough, because the experiences of different races and classes of women are not separate – rather, as she says, “white women live the lives they do in large part because women of color live the ones they do” (298). Their different experiences are influenced and even caused because the other type of experience is happening. She defines history as “asymmetrical” and “nonlinear” and describes how acknowledging differences does not do justice to telling the story of women as a whole, or of any particular subset of women, because it doesn’t present how much the lives of different women affect the lives of other women.
Brown effectively uses the words of Lusiah Teish to give a literal meaning to the phenomenon that she thinks is missing from studies of women’s history – simultaneous story-telling, the “gumbo ya ya” of Teish’s family gatherings. The stories of white middle class women cannot be told alongside the stories of black working class women, but during, through, and because of. This is as important to the history of white women as it is to the history of black women; for example, though it is more common to explain black working class women’s lives as they are affected by white middle class women’s lives, white middle class women’s changing abilities to go outside the home and work voluntary or public-sector jobs was made possible only because black women moved in to take over private sector jobs in areas such as cleaning, food, and personal services. Thus it is impossible to explain one without the other, and they must all be told simultaneously in some way or another. She gives the example of Anita Hill as a situation in which the failure to simultaneously address gender, race, and class, and instead create an image of the “universal woman”, caused the cause of this “universal” woman to fail.
The problem of the “privileged” class of women – white, middle-class, heterosexual women – and the need to always differentiate any type of woman that varies from this norm is another that Brown critiques. These histories cannot be told at the same time if historians and writers continue to have one type of woman as the norm and recognize differences only inasmuch as they create different groups, and not acknowledge how each experience influences the others – that by having white, middle-class, heterosexual women be the norm, any other women – black, Latina, homosexual – cannot be the norm and must be a different or “deviant” type whose experiences are affected by the norm, but not vice-versa.
Both Brown and Higginbotham address the fact that one reason for the failure to create a full history of women that doesn’t just ignore or acknowledge differences but involves them is that feminist writers and historians fear that they will give up the “women’s voice” – in writing, politics, and history – if they focus too much on differences. To be a stronger force, women must unite and leave differences behind to focus on what brings them together – historical oppression, sexual harassment and abuse, etc.
Atha Fong’s essay on blues singer Ma Rainey looked at the influence that Rainey had in the 1920s and beyond in opening avenues of discussion for black and white audiences to address the issues of black women, and blacks in general, as they faced racial, gendered, and class struggles. According to Fong, Rainey’s popularity as a performer, the emotionality of her lyrics, and the intensity of the messages in her songs all led audiences to face and discuss issues that had previously not been brought into public view.
Fong’s thesis about the influence that Ma Rainey had in causing audiences to confront issues such as domestic violence and sexuality seeks to add to the discussion of both blues music and black feminism, making it a compelling topic with many possible sources. Fong mentions many issues that Rainey sang about – abusive relationships, traveling as an independent woman, and sexual freedom – and discusses how they were new and controversial as song lyrics. The essay successfully introduces the various accomplishments of Ma Rainey and addresses her multiple audiences.
Fong adds complexity to her own argument, and to the topic of black feminism in blues music, by pointing out that some black intellectuals may have actually disapproved of her performances and lyrics because they reaffirmed the white stereotype that black women have primitive, sensual, open sexualities. This point – about the contradiction between fighting oppression of black women by being open, honest, and independent about sexuality versus trying to adhere to the white norm of purity and modesty through silence – could have been expanded into an essay of itself, and this essay about Ma Rainey could have benefited through an extended discussion of Rainey’s actual effects on the forward progress of black women.
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