Extract 3: ‘Ain’t I A Woman’ by bell hooks
This extract is part of our Series 1 Topic 2 Podcast on ‘Roots of Intersectionality.’ Find the podcast here.
Context
bell hooks is the pen name for Gloria Watkins, who was an American academic and social activist. She was prolific writer, and most of her works looked at the intersecting oppression caused by systems of race, gender and capitalism. ‘Ain’t i a woman?’ is a history of racism and sexism against black women, focusing on the specific misogyny faced by enslaved black women, and the historical legacy this left on black womanhood. The extract in the podcast reflects on why black woman did not get involved in the white feminist movement.
Year Published: 1981
Author: bell hooks, also known as Gloria Watkins
Gloria Watkins doesn’t capitalise her alias, ‘bell hooks.’ This book is named after a speech that a woman called Sojourner Truth made in the 1800s.
Extract
‘Most women involved in the recent move toward a feminist revolution assume that white women have initiated all feminist resistance to male chauvinism in American society, and further assume that black women are not interested in women’s liberation. While it is true that white women have led every movement toward feminist revolution in American society, their dominance is less a sign of black female disinterest in feminist struggle than an indication that the politics of colonization and racial imperialism have made it historically impossible for black women in the United States to lead a women’s movement.
[...]
Initially, black feminists approached the women’s movement white women had organized eager to join the struggle to end sexist oppression. We were disappointed and disillusioned when we discovered that white women in the movement had little knowledge of or concern for the problems of lower class and poor women or the particular problems of non-white women from all classes. Those of us who were active in women’s groups found that white feminists lamented the absence of large numbers of non-white participants but were unwilling to change the movement’s focus so that it would better address the needs of women from all classes and races. Some white women even argued that groups not represented by a numerical majority could not expect their concerns to be given attention. Such a position reinforced the black female participants’ suspicion that white participants wanted the movement to concentrate on the concerns not of women as a collective group, but on the individual concerns of the small minority who had organized the movement. Black feminists found that sisterhood for most white women did not mean surrendering allegiance to race, class, and sexual preference, to bond on the basis of the shared political belief that a feminist revolution was necessary so that all people, especially women, could reclaim their rightful citizenship in the world. From our peripheral position in the movement we saw that the potential radicalism of feminist ideology was being undermined by women who, while paying lip service to revolutionary goals, were primarily concerned with gaining entrance into the capitalist patriarchal power structure. Although white feminists denounced the white male, calling him an imperialist, capitalist, sexist, racist pig, they made women’s liberation synonymous with women obtaining theright to fully participate in the very system they identified as oppressive. Their anger was not merely a response to sexist oppression. It was an expression of their jealousy and envy of white men who held positions of power in the system while they were denied access to those positions. Individual black feminists despaired as we witnessed the appropriation of feminist ideology by elitist, racist white women. We were unable to usurp leadership positions within the movement so that we could spread an authentic message of feminist revolution. We could not even get a hearing at women’s groups because they were organized and controlled by white women. Along with politically aware white women, we, black feminists, began to feel that no organized feminist struggle really existed. We dropped out of groups, weary of hearing talk about women as a force that could change the world when we had not changed ourselves. Some black women formed "black feminist” groups which resembled in almost every way the groups they had left. Others struggled alone. Some of us continued to go to organizations, women’s studies classes, or conferences, but were not fully participating.’
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Although the contemporary feminist movement was initially motivated by the sincere desire of women to eliminate sexist oppression, it takes place within the framework of a larger, more powerful cultural system that encourages women and men to place the fulfillment of individual aspirations above their desire for collective change. Given this framework, it is not surprising that feminism has been undermined by the narcissism, greed, and individual opportunism of its leading exponents. A feminist ideology that mouths radical rhetoric about resistance and revolution while actively seeking to establish itself within the capitalist patriarchal system is essentially corrupt. While the contemporary feminist movement has successfully stimulated an awareness of the impact of sexist discrimination on the social status of women in the U.S., it has done little to eliminate sexist oppression. Teaching women how to defend themselves against male rapists is not the same as working to change society so that men will not rape. Establishing houses for battered women does not change the psyches of the men who batter them, nor does it change the culture that promotes and condones their brutality. Attacking heterosexuality does little to strengthen the self-concept of the masses of women who desire to be with men. Denouncing housework as menial labor does not restore to the woman houseworker the pride and dignity in her labor she is stripped of by patriarchal devaluation. Demanding an end to institutionalized sexism does not ensure an end to sexist oppression.’