Fighting Essentialism with Essentialism

The readings elucidate the paradoxical quality of racial identity to be a manipulative tool of both oppression and resistance. Whether racial identity is used to oppress or resist, each strategy has the potential to act in opposition to the desired result. Waldstreicher demonstrates this in his analysis of the advertisements about runaway slaves posted in newspapers before the American Revolution. He argues that slaves used the same skills considered valuable assets in their bondage to escape slavery and secure a living as free persons. As Waldstreicher points out, the owners were forced to reveal the talents of their runaways in their posts for better luck in finding them, but also took care to simultaneously demonize those same qualities to prove the inferiority of slaves and thus justify the institution of slavery. Elsa Barkley Brown and Higginbotham discuss how the feminist movement, in its attempt to resist gender and sexual repression, perpetuate racial oppression in its neglect of the intersectionality of race with other identities, and more specifically in Higginbotham’s essay, of how race determines the creation and shifting of other identities. They emphasize the movement’s error of amalgamating the experiences of all women into one common struggle. 

Higginbotham expresses the paradox of resisting imposed racial identities in her examples of how Black individuals felt pressure to succeed, often by assimilation, because they were expected to represent their entire racial category. She mentions the internalization of white patriarchal norms, used to repress white women’s sexuality, by Black women who were trying to eradicate the racial and sexual stereotypes held against them. Their plight led them to a resistance strategy in which they participated in their sexual and racial oppression. She further elaborates that the struggles Blacks faced due to racism and sexism, unified them under a nationalistic ideology. Yet, in claiming a common struggle and cause, she argues, the essentialist strategy helped solidify the homogenization of Black people which is the function of race itself. Individuality is then further undermined, possibly making the dismantling of oppressive identities more difficult. Elsa Barkley Brown uses the sexual harassment case involving Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas to explain the dilemma faced by Black women who have been sexually degraded. Anita represented a history of Black women who had to choose between standing against sexual oppression or staying silent to avoid reinforcing the racial and sexual stereotypes put against all Black women. People of color are caught between choosing an individual identity or martyrdom, suffocating their individuality when the betterment of the race calls for it. 

The paradox is flipped when contrasting Higginbotham’s analysis of race in the modern era to Waldstreicher’s study of identity in the colonial era. Higginbotham argues that race is the framework for which other identities and social relations are based. Higginbotham accuses feminism, a resistance movement against gender based oppression, for reinforcing racism and patriarchy, by ignoring the power relations determined by the intersections of race, class, and gender. Waldstreicher claims that race alone was not an accurate marker for social status in terms of who was slave, free, or indentured servant. According to him, the escaped slaves’ capacity to assimilate and manipulate Western perceptions of status threatened to uproot white supremacist justifications for the enslavement of colored people. The question I have is when did race become a strong marker of identity and status if it was not as salient during this time period and how? Were women runaway slaves able to perform identity as easily or fluidly as men? I could also use clarification on the economics of print culture Waldstreicher talks about.