Ain’t I a Woman – bell hooks
The site at which Black
women experience subjugation has been historically, and continues to be, located
at the crossroads of, at the very least, their race and their gender. In her
book, Ain’t I a Woman, bell hooks
argues for the recognition of the intersecting oppressions Black women
encounter by analyzing the context of significant historical events in the
lives of Black people, and particularly Black women. In addition, she
emphasizes the hardship this divide of oppression causes Black women on a
regular basis as it at times requires them to choose between prioritizing their
Blackness or their being a woman. Hooks divides the book into five major
sections, Sexism and the Black Female, Slave Experience Continued Devaluation
of Black Womanhood, The Imperialism of Patriarchy, Racism and Feminism: The
Issue of Accountability, and
Black Women and Feminism in order to pinpoint the origins, and trace the
lineage of the very specific intersectional race and gender based oppression
experienced by Black women.
Hooks’ begins by focusing on
the ways in which Black female slaves, although not historically remembered so,
had to endure very harsh, anti-woman treatment, in addition to the racist one
that the Black men endured (7). While the male slaves were exploited for their
labor on the field, females slaves exploited for their labor the field, in the houses as a
caretakers or housekeepers, or as ‘breeders’ of new born slaves (28-9). While the male
slaves experienced intense physical brutality in order to achieve
submissiveness, female slaves endured this as well as well as sexual assault,
most prominent between the ages of 13-16, and the harming of their children;
relatedly, they were coerced into “prostituting themselves” in exchange for
their safety, safety of their children, food, and water (26).
It is important to note here
that this would not have been these women’s first encounter with sexist
behavior as that was something they most likely has already experienced at the
hands of Black men, rather, this might have been their first experience with
sexist behavior inspired also by racist hatred; thus, marking the start of a
race and gender based subjugation that continues to haunt the lives of Black
women in contemporary Eurocentric societies (87).
Although patriarchy did in
fact exist on its own in Africa, and African women were consistently subjected
to it, the slave owners introduced news ways of subjugating women (87-8). These
new forms of female subjugation when taken up by Black men, worked to create a
form of male bonding between Black and white men. So, as described by hooks,
while racism has always been a force that has worked to separate black men and
white men, sexism has always been a force that has united them (99).
Unfortunately for them, Black women continued to be the target of violence and
assertion of male dominance by both of these groups of men.
Black women’s subjugation
and violation continues to be diminished and minimalized through its being
referred to as a thing of the past, rather than as a thing with a long lasting
impact (30). This inaccurate claim works to discount the reality that the
violently sexist and racist brutalities that Black women endured throughout slavery
set a precedent for the now deeply rooted institutionalized marginalization and
sexual exploitation faced by Black women on a daily basis; contemporarily,
Black women continue to be used as means to an end for achieving the ultimate
levels of control and conformity, and thus profit, by those in power. It is
important to actively emphasize that, because of this, most Black women constantly
find themselves without allies that are sensitive to their intersecting
identities; they are often forced to either identify with their Blackness, in
which case their experiences with sexist behaviors are discounted, or they
identify with their woman-ness, in which cased their experiences with racist
behavior are discounted.
It is because of this sense of dysphoria felt
in both Black movements and women’s movements that there was a need for the
creation of specifically a Black feminism. Inspired by the likes of Sojouner
Truth, “a prominent abolitionist and women’s rights activist,” Josephine St.
Pierre Ruffin, a black woman activist, Fannie Barrier Williams, a Black woman
suffragette, and Anna Cooper, a Black feminist in support of higher education,
Black feminism centers around the lived experiences of Black women and addresses
both Black women’s race and gender (160-73). These Black women’s rights
activists differed from most of the white feminists in that they possessed the
lived experiences necessary to properly inform their activism, and performed
their activism in a manner that was non-exclusive of other populations.
Kerry Washington performing Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman”
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