On The Universality of Race

A response to Higginbotham and Barkley Brown from David Waldstreicher

An awareness of intersectionality, or the overlapping and sometimes competing elements of a person's identity and the way society perceives that identity, is extremely important when creating contemporary and historical works. Both Higginbotham and Barkley Brown identify race as a key difference in the experiences of women and an important factor in feminist works. However, race and it's intersectional implications are hardly standardized. Race can be interpreted and presented in various different ways. If the experiences of women can't be universalized, then racialized gender experiences should not be universalized as well. The phenomenon of passing and the “politics of respectability” complicates the idea of a black women's experience and scholarship.

In some ways, passing isn't relevant to modern analyses of race. The passing I discuss in my work, "Reading the Runaways," takes place in the context of survival, slavery, and an extremely restrictive and discriminatory society. Runaway servants and slaves would pass to evade capture, donning nice clothes, adopting specific mannerisms and speech patterns, and presenting themselves as cosmopolitan and capable in order to blend in with their surroundings. Some of these runaways would alter their hair or appearance to pass as a member of another race.

Higginbotham and Barkley Brown's articles discuss the importance of race as a marker. Higginbotham addresses race as a powerful social construction rooted in myth but capable of uniting disparate economic groups. However, neither author addresses scenarios where race and racial markers are ambiguous. For example, Higginbotham asserts that black women were denied access to the social marker of “lady” due to their race, in the same way that runaways were denied recognition of their value as skilled laborers and professionals. But what would have happened if Catherine Brown or Ida B. Wells (two women thrown out of the “ladies” car on a train ride) had been able to pass as white? Their experience in the “ladies” car would likely have been very different, disrupting the idea that black women couldn't access the status of a “lady.”

The idea of passing to fit in and avoid scrutiny persists, although not on such a high-stakes scale. Indeed, passing seems to have become wrapped up in the “politics of respectability.” According to Higginbottom, respectability refers to a set of restrictive norms regarding the sexuality, public behavior, dress, speech of black people, imposed internally and externally, in order to gain acceptance from the dominant class. Respectability was seen as a powerful tool for some civil rights activists, because unlike those who passed, “respectable” blacks overtly connected the markers of whiteness and the dominant class with blackness. This also complicates the idea of a black woman's experience, as respectability might mitigate the effects of racism and sexism.

In her discussion of respectability, Higginbotham notes the potential for difference within black feminist scholarship, as respectability represents a point of contention between some black women. Both authors should embrace this, and other differences, such as those created by gender presentation, sexual orientation, or the ability to pass for another race, as they collect and analyze the experiences of black women into Barkley Brown's model of asymmetrical storytelling.