Tag Archives: intersectionality

Time to Stop Deferring the Dream of Black Women

Laurie and Debbie say:

We’re coming in at the very end of an inspiring project, #HerDreamDeferred, sponsored by the African-American Policy Foundation and a host of other social justice organizations.

Black women have long mobilized against the multiple forms of discrimination they have faced in the pursuit of better lives for themselves, their families, and the well being of their communities. Black women’s activism has been marked by their high levels of civic engagement, robust voting participation, and their leadership of racial justice movements.  Black women have led campaigns against lynching,   segregation, voter suppression and state violence. They have also been at the forefront of movements against sexual violence, sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination in the workforce, and have led efforts to expand the contours of reproductive freedom and political representation.  Yet even as Black women’s advocacy continues to reflect commitments to an inclusive vision of racial and gender justice, many of the specific challenges that Black women face are relegated to the margins of racial justice campaigns.   

Acknowledging the centrality of Black women to our history and social fabric while recognizing the uniquely gendered and racialized challenges they face is critical if we are to build  movements that are fully inclusive and successful. 

One of the movers and shakers behind this project, which finishes tomorrow (April 3) with a radio interview on the topic of “Are Racism and Patriarchy Making Us Sick? Black Women, Societal Inequity and Health Disparities,” is Kimberlé Crenshaw. In an interview with Carla Murphy at Colorlines, Crenshaw calls the lack of information about Black girls and women an “information desert.” She says:

The fact of the matter is that our communities are made up of the life chances of men and women. Many of the circumstances that we’ve come to accept as justifying an exclusive focus on men and boys are in fact directly related to the social-economic challenges facing their mothers—and those [in turn] are directly related to some of the challenges facing girls. …

We shouldn’t back into this idea of racial justice by thinking that programs that go to boys will somehow solve the most critical problems and we can allow girls to receive trickle-down impact. Trickle-down racial justice doesn’t work anymore than trickle-down economics….

As long as people believe that black women and girls are doing fine—which they will as long as black women and girls are excluded from public dialogue—then the call for inclusion will be heard by some as a call to exclude or marginalize the boys. We just have to fight back and say that’s a silly argument. We’re the last people that should be endorsing a zero-sum mentality for social justice.

These are important truths, rarely spoken and even more rarely heard. Whether or not black women and girls are “doing fine,”  is difficult to find out, because of the information desert. What’s more, nothing about “black women and girls” is universally or even stereotypically true; looking at real black women and girls is the only way to find out what’s happening across a broad spectrum.

Crenshaw and her colleagues view #HerDreamDeferred as a way to start a conversation that desperately needs to be started. When asked what they hope to accomplish, she says:

We hope to raise awareness about the social and economic status of black women and its relation to the well-being of the black community as a whole. And we’re starting with the assumption that there is a desire to lift up members of our community who need attention, and that the real issue is that people are just not aware of it. So this is a beginning.

This assumption is at least as important as the crucial conversation about black women and girls. You can go months in America without ever hearing anyone say that we believe, or assume, or even hope that people care about each other, that there’s a social desire to address this kind of problem, that anyone in the country (except for a few “bleeding hearts”) gives a damn about anyone outside of their own families.

You will hear a hundred news stories about how people hurt each other before you read one about how people work together. If you Google “Detroit water liens deferred,” you will not find this story anywhere, even though it was a national outpouring of phone calls and emails, supporting strong local action, that won this temporary victory. Heartwarming news is “dog finds family,” or “girl selling lemonade gives money to charity.” The big, life-changing ways in which people pitch in every day to make things in their school, or their neighborhood, or their church, or their friend network more fair are kept under the radar. Because we never hear about them, we don’t believe in them. And because we don’t believe in them, we often don’t act in accordance with our impulses to be part of a movement towards fairness. (And, just to be clear, black women and girls have been in the forefront of so many efforts to make things more fair for everyone.)

In fact, that’s what Kimberlé Crenshaw and #HerDreamDeferred are doing right now.

HAES, Intersectionality, Inclusion, and Bravery

Debbie says:

Jessica Wilson is the most exciting HAES (health at every size) blogger I have come across in a long time. Blogging at My Kitchen Dietitian from my home town of Oakland, California, she identifies herself as a thin woman of color, not the most common description of a size-acceptance-friendly dietitian.

She doesn’t mince words and she doesn’t cut corners. Browsing through her blog, I find:

There is no limit to the number of people willing to tell us what our bodies need to be “healthier”. They are screaming it from daytime and prime time television, from books, from home shopping networks, from newspapers and magazines. They are offering up these shoulds and shouldn’ts, in a way that seems like they’re doing us a favor. As long as we follow their rules we’ll be so much better off!

Upon examination these people tend to have a few things in common. They are usually 1. White, 2. Cis gendered and heterosexual, 3. Higher SES [socio-economic status], 4. Have often self-appointed themselves the expert of everyone’s needs on the planet (Dr. Oz anyone?). 5. Have never met me.

Let me tell you, as a queer person of color, I am totally over straight white folks in self-appointed power telling me what I need to do in order to live my life, and be “healthy” as defined by the aforementioned stranger.

I think that this paternalism is just one aspect of the bigger issue here; as a nation our health literacy is in the toilet. With the constant barrage of “right” and “wrong” ways to do things—each of which contradict each other—we are completely without the knowledge to know that our body has individual needs and how to clue into them.

She also addresses the question how HAES intersects with racism. Responding to a list from Dr. Linda Bacon of the advantages of thin privileges (you can see the list at the link), she says:

I … wondered if there was another thin person of color, like me, in the room and how they felt about that list. Was there anyone in the room at the NAAFA conference who, like myself, has walked into a clothing store and been asked to leave their bag at the door only to find other white shoppers with their bags? Was there anyone in the room who has been followed around a store to ensure payment for desired items, as I have? I wondered how it would have felt to listen to that speech as a fat person of color, and reflect on the ability to find a loving and supportive partner in a culture of thin privilege and white supremacy. Was there anyone in the room who needed to buy two airplane tickets to travel and experience a public hair pat-down by TSA, as I have, because they wore their hair naturally? Did anyone in the room wonder about the way that thin privilege intersects with other identities? Thin privilege definitely makes life easier for me, for Dr. Bacon, and many others, I am not questioning that. To fully address fat oppression in our society, though, I believe the conversation needs be broadened from the one-dimensional topic I have found it to be.

She says she has been told by others that bringing in race is “muddying the waters.” On the contrary, any conversation about privilege that doesn’t bring in other kinds of privilege (such as a conversation about gender privilege that doesn’t address ability) is an incomplete conversation. Wilson is not muddying the waters, she is opening the floodgates in ways they need to be open. Without a commitment to intersectionality, we can’t even look at the real problems we face.

In November and December, she plans a series of blogs about the intersection between HAES policies and weight-loss surgery patients, and she is being very clear (while also being perfectly polite) that she doesn’t intend to sugarcoat or ignore any misuse or dismissal of these patients by the HAES community.

She’s the best resource I’ve come across in a long time, and a welcome addition to my blog reading. Watch for more links to her blog and posts about her in the months to come.

Thanks to Marcia for the pointer!