Separating race and gender

Higginbotham argues that the feminist movement has embraced a “single womanhood” ignoring the fact that race, like gender, plays a very large role in determining social and power relations.  Brown states that, “all women do not have the same gender” because race, class, time, and place all affect one’s “womaniness”.  However, it is not sufficient to merely notice that white and black women live different lives; the white woman lives the way she does because the black woman lives her life in a certain manner, and vice versa.  That is to say, the lives of white women are shaped by race as well.  Yet, even today, “woman” is equivalent to “white woman”.  Brown compares this assumption about “gender” to assumptions about sexuality – it is commonly assumed that everyone is heterosexual, so one’s sexuality only merits mention if one is gay.  Likewise, it is only when the woman is a minority that any mention of race occurs.  This is due to how minority women, especially black women have been classified as “other” – promiscuous if not wholly barbaric and surely incapable of ever being a “lady”.   

While, there is no doubt that differences exist between white and black women, perhaps [white] feminists only attempted to minimize such differences in order to gain the unity needed to build a powerful movement.  Even with such intentions assumed, Brown poignantly points out with the example of Anita Hill that denial of these differences has come back to stymie feminists.  The feminists who rallied to support Hill did not recognize the fact that she had “experienced sexual harassment not as a woman who had been harassed by a man, but as a black woman harassed by a black man.” This failure allowed Clarence Thomas, and his supporters a monopoly on the “race card”.  They were able to demonize Hill, the victim, due to her “blackness” because after all “black woman cannot be rapped” – for it is widely known they are always the initiators of any sexual encounter.  The ability of Thomas to frame the discussion around such stereotypes allowed him to win the PR battle and secure his confirmation to the Supreme Court despite the vehement opposition of feminists.

I agree with much of what Higginbotham and Brown argue and think it would be interesting to extend such concepts about the intersectionality of race and gender.  As Higginbotham mentioned we know very little about how black feminist leaders thought about Black Nationalism – there is no single “blackness” rather black women’s “womaniness” must be separated from their “blackness”.