are black in societies where whiteness is seen as the ‘norm’, one is more likely to
observe that women may also be poor, disabled, illiterate, etc. Black feminism alerts
us to the dangers of privileging one identity over others.
The assumption that the family is problematic for women is invariably made
without taking account of the particular features of the black family that, in the
USA for example, is often headed by women who also have to work outside the
home. Barrett and McIntosh have conceded that their own study of the family
ignored the very different structures that exist in the families of Afro-Caribbean
and Asian people in Britain (Bryson, 1992: 254). As for rape and sexuality, quite
different assumptions are made of black women, and in Whelehan’s view, black
women suffer from poorer mental health than their white counterparts (Whelehan,
1995: 117).
Black feminists have argued that it is not just a question of disadvantages
accumulating alongside one another – as independent entities – so that a black
woman may suffer from gender, ethnic and class attributes. It is a question of
developing a theory of oppression in which these ‘multiple oppressions’ reinforce
one another, and lie at the root of stereotyping. Indeed, it is remarkable how similar
class, racial and gender stereotyping are. This warns us against absolutising one
kind of oppression, and opens the way to multiple alliances – of some women with
some men for specific purposes. As the African-American writer bell hooks has
argued, black feminism stresses the value of solidarity – which unites similarity
and difference – over the oppressively homogenous notion of sisterhood (Bryson,
1999: 35).
Whelehan has noted that during the 1970s it was commonly felt by radical
feminists that analysis of related issues needed to be shelved, so that full attention
could be given to the question of women. As she comments, this kind of argument
ignores the fact that women can also suffer oppression as a result of their class,
racial, gender and sexual orientation (Whelehan, 1995: 111). Not only does black
feminism provide a challenge to a theory of domination, it poses a challenge to
political theory as a whole. It invites a reconceptualisation of the notion of power
and freedom, since those who are the subjects of black feminism have no, in Bryson’s
words, ‘institutionalised inferiors’ (1999: 34). Given the fact that there are relatively
few black feminist academics, black feminism also poses the challenge of mobilising
the considerable knowledge which the community has but has not produced in what
Whelehan calls ‘high theoretical’ form (1995: 120).Problems with black feminism
Liberal, socialist and radical feminist critiques
Liberal feminists are concerned about what they see as the divisiveness of black
feminism as a distinct variety of feminist argument. Black feminists are rightly
opposed to racism but the answer to exclusion and marginalisation is to expand
the notion of the individual so as to incorporate groups like blacks whose experience
of repression has been very different.Chapter 14 Feminism 327