Resolving the Tension between White and Black Feminists
Through a Study of Biracial Women
by April D. Spreeman
December 2004/January 2005
Being a white woman, a black woman, and a feminist is fascinating! I, like my other biracial1 feminist sisters are in a category all our own and view women’s rights from a biracial feminist perspective. We are unique in America because we lack traditional racial identity. In the feminist community we have been pressured to choose between white or black feminist perspectives. This is a reality and it must be discussed with great urgency within the feminist community because few are familiar with this issue or feel that it would not pertain to them and/or strengthen their particular issues. Currently, there is a digressive conflict between white and black feminists that has not been resolved; I believe that this tension between white and black feminists could eventually be settled if they conducted a thorough study of biracial women in the United States, because biracial women represent the literal integration between both white and black thought. Before I continue, one must examine the tension that exists between white and black feminists in order to gain a clear understanding of this dilemma.
In their book, Common Differences: Conflicts in Black and White Feminist Perspectives, Gloria I. Joseph and Jill Lewis examine “the ways in which racial and sexual factors interact in the oppression of women”(4). The main conflict between Black and White Feminists which is discussed in their book is about the debate whether race or sex is the major source of oppression that has separated Black and White women in both current and past liberation struggles. According to Gloria I. Joseph, feminist perspectives are women’s perspectives based on personal experiences. An excellent analogy given is her fictional scenario between three women:
Three women are standing before a covered mirror. At a given signal the cover will be removed and the following question will be put to them:
Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
what is the greatest oppressor of us all?The mirror is unveiled and all three see their reflections bouncing back.
Woman number one sees her Blackness. “It is my Blackness that is most dominant. That is what makes for my oppression. And who oppresses Blacks? Whites. So it is White racism that is the greatest oppressor. Yes, racism oppresses!” So thinks woman number one.
Woman number two says, “I see myself as female, and as such, dominated and controlled by men. Men and their sexism oppresses women, so sexism is the greatest oppressor of all.”
Woman number three observes her reflection and sees her gender, race, and class. “My femaleness, my color, and my class are sources of exploitation. Who is exploiting me? The question deserves serious consideration. An immediate response will not do.” (10)
This excerpt could not be closer to explaining the heart of the conflict between white and black feminists. On one hand, black activists feel that their top oppressor are white people who are racist, while on the other hand, white feminists would agree that their chief oppressor is the white man and his sexism. In this sense, one could see where the tension lies. Race is the main factor for a black feminist while sexism is the main factor for a white feminist.
There is no perfect definition of feminism because feminism encompasses such a wide scope of perspectives. Feminism is an exhaustive, wide-range, social phenomena that cannot be simply termed “feminism” per se. Defining feminism is a difficult task, because when one defines feminism, there is the likelihood that a group of women, not previously mentioned, will be left out. The most general definition of feminism is the fight for equal quality and treatment for women.. This definition would appear to leave no woman left behind, but the reality is that there are women who are left out in women’s studies. The women I am alluding to are biracial women.
While white and black feminists are determining what aspects of feminism they believe would enhance their already existent racial identity, biracial women, in the quest for a sense of racial identity, find that studying feminist perspectives are enlightening and therapeutic. In other words, biracial women use feminism as a means to gain identity. In the collaborative book Biracial Women in Therapy: Between the Rock of Gender and the Hard Place of Race, psychologist Nancy Nishimura introduces feminist therapy for biracial women in three main tenets: 1) the personal is political, 2) relationships should be egalitarian, and 3) the female perspective should be valued. These three tenets deserve to be discussed in further detail (139).
The personal political tenet that Nishimura refers to is one that “addresses how oppression, sex-role stereotyping, and institutionalized sexism are key factors in the problems that women face.” The second tent, egalitarian relationships, refers to:
. . .the acknowledgment there has historically been a power differential between men and women as well as between majority and minority groups to which counselors wish to bring balance. (Gilbert, 1980;Worell & Remer, 1992) In feminist therapy, the counselor strives to model equality through the counseling relationship. For the biracial woman, such an interaction would be powerful in that being really “heard” and having her personhood and life experience accepted and validated is, for the most part an uncommon experience. . . . Therefore, a biracial woman would not be viewed as a racial misfit or a socially marginal person. (Nishimura 141)
The third tenet, valuing the female perspective, refers to:
. . . encouraging women to appreciate their diverse and complex experiences as well as their unique perspectives on life (Brown & Brodsky, 1992; Worell & Remer, 1992) . . . Biracial women, because of their different racial/cultural backgrounds, physical features, and life experiences, may on the one hand be viewed as “exotic” or “fascination”, but then be criticized for not “fitting in” or for being “too good” in relation to the norm regarding how a suitable romantic partner should look or behave (Root, 1994). These women have most likely received numerous negative messages throughout their lives, and it is important that counselors fully appreciate and acknowledge their unique worldview. (Nishimura 142)
Feminist psychotherapy provides an identity option for biracial women where there is none racially given to them in society.
Psychotherapy is often one of the only means available for biracial women to be able to cope with the fact that they are at odds with society. As Nishimura says, they are considered racial misfits. Because of this social constraint towards biracial women, there are few that actually identify themselves as biracial. Most of them associate themselves with black women because of the one drop rule. The one drop rule has stood the test of time despite its racist beginnings. The one drop rule, culturally adopted among both whites and blacks during the era of Jim Crow, stated that a person born with at least one drop of black blood was deemed black in society. There is no biological basis for the one drop rule, but it is a social norm that continues today even though Jim Crow laws have been abolished. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau, receiving heavy opposition from civil rights activists, disagreed to allow a multicultural or multiracial category as a racial option during the 2000 U.S. Census. They did however, allow for a person to identify themselves as more than one racial ethnicity. Let us say for instance that one is black and white, than according to the U.S. Census options, a person can check both the black and white bubbles on the Census form. This option given by the Bureau would seem to have given biracial women a legitimate option. There are those, however, who disagree that it was an option at all. According to civil rights activist and Harvard professor Stephan Thernstrom, in his article “One Drop-Still: A racialist’s Census” had this to say:
The Office of Management and Budget has just issued guidelines governing how all federal agencies are to employ the racial and ethnic data gathered on the 2000 Census. Those guidelines reveal that the civil rights lobby lost the battle but won the war. When it comes to figuring out the racial composition of the population for purposes of “civil rights monitoring and enforcement” (i.e., to set quotas, goals, or targets in education, employment, and public contracting and to determine whether racial minorities can claim that their right to political representation has been “diluted), the complex identifications of racially-mixed Americans will be ignored.
Based on this information, it is quite evident, that our own government refuses to recognize a person as multiracial, because it would lessen the chance that a minority who considers themselves all of one race (not racially mixed) would not receive special opportunities that are normally given to them if they are not considered of one particular race. In sum, both blacks and whites get to make the decisions for racially mixed people, while racially mixed people have no say whatsoever. As is evident, racially mixed women have few options in society.
The plight of the racially mixed woman is a subject few feminists focus on, but they should. There are several reasons why. For one, biracial women are forced into a social environment which makes them the subject of a high amount of dualistic identity problems due to the strain cast down upon them in the United States. Biracial women must adapt in order to fit in; thus, must do this in different ways compared to whites or blacks. For a white feminist it would be a challenge to reconcile her own possible enmities that might exist against black women. The same situation could easily hold true for a black feminist. The black or white feminist would be forced to not consider the biracial individual to be black or white, but both.
The second reason why feminists should conduct a study of biracial women in the U.S. is because there is very little feminist research written about them. As I conducted my research for this paper, there were more resources which focused on solely sexism, racism, or both—but never dealt with the subject of biracial women. I admit, there were many sources that focused on the topic of interracial unions between blacks and whites, or of interracial people, but biracial women, who are the possible product of an interracial union between two races is surprisingly overlooked. The only book which contained information solely on the issue of biracial women was a psychology book. I also browsed online for books or articles focusing on the subject of biracial women, from a feminist perspective, but the data acquired was sparse.
Finally, the last and most important reason why biracial women need to be studied by feminists is because they unlock the key toward dissolving the digressive conflict between black and white feminists. Like segregational housing in the U.S., so are feminist studies. Whether they do it consciously or not, white feminists do not factor in biracial women into their research. The same thing could be said about black feminists, for they consider biracial women as being black and not something all together different. In this sense, feminists defeat the purpose of all they stand for: women. These feminists, like our government, and like our society in general, consider biracial women to be a subject of controversy that should either not be touched on or is not a subject matter worth discussing. This problem needs to be addressed vigorously, because the tension between black and white feminists still exists and will continue to exist if their studies are not integrated in some form or fashion.
Footnotes
1 For our purposes, the type of biracial women I am referring to are those that share both black and white ancestries in the United States.
Works Cited
Joseph, Gloria I., and Jill Lewis. Common Differences: Conflicts in Black and White Feminist Perspectives. Garden City: Anchor Press/Double Day, 1981.
Nishimura, Nancy. “Counseling Biracial Women: An Intersection of Multiculturalism and Feminism.” Biracial Women in Therapy. Ed. Cathy A. Thompson and Angela R. Gillem. Birminghampton, NY: The Hawthorn Press, 2004. 133?145.
Thernstrom, Stephen. “One Drop Still: A racialist’s Census .” Article, 17 Apr. 2000. The Manhattan Institude of Policy Research. Manhattan. 8 Nov. 2004 <http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_national_review-one_drop-stil.htm>.
Copyright © 2004 April D. Spreeman and The Multiracial Activist. All rights reserved.