America sees growth of ‘womanists’ rather than feminists
#BlackWomenAtWork probes growth in awareness of new forms of identity, especially among blacks, writes Mabinty Quarshie
When Bill O’Reilly insulted Rep Maxine Water’s hair and White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporter April Ryan to “stop shaking your head”, the comments by the two white men hit a nerve.
Black women — who often face a onetwo punch of racism and sexism in their daily lives — immediately took to social media using the hashtag #BlackWomenAtWork to air their grievances, including those about other women.
The struggle isn’t new. Decades ago, activist and writer Alice Walker coined a word that spoke to black women’s special dilemma in the struggle for equality. She used the term “womanist”.
A womanist, as Walker defined, is “a black feminist or feminist of colour. a woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually ... committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female”.
For many black women, the mainstream feminist movement hasn’t been — and still isn’t — enough.
“The things that black women need to push for are quite different than what we think of as the mainstream feminist movement,” said Sheri Parks, a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland and author of Fierce Angels: The Strong Black Woman in American Life and Culture.
Black women are more likely to experience violence, more likely to be paid less for their work and more likely to see fewer people who look like them in the media or holding political office. Even in feminist spheres in the past, black women’s stories were often co-opted.
“What looked like inclusiveness was to bring on women of colour and have their stories be part of the staging of feminism, while the real work didn’t necessarily address the concerns of those black women,” Ms Parks said.
While the “mainstream” feminist narrative ignored racism, civil rights and black power movements relegated women to domestic and supporting roles without acknowledging their labour, some historians say. During the 1963 March on Washington, no black women spoke on stage, even though women like Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Diane Nash and Dorothy Height were crucial to the organising that led to the success of the movement.
“The modern civil rights movement and the women’s movement evolved contemporaneously and black women were asked to choose between the two,” said Paula Giddings, historian and author of When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. She called this a “false choice” because black women cannot separate their race from their gender.
Fast-forward more than 50 years to the Women’s March on Washington, which drew millions of women to protests worldwide Jan 21. Though ultimately organised by women of colour, some black women felt conflicted about attending.
“For me and a lot of black women that I know, we didn’t participate in the Women’s March on Washington because I didn’t think the vagina hat really addressed the marginalisation that black people — black men and women — experience,” said Breahna Blakely, a biology graduate student at the Catholic University of America. “There’s a lack of relatability to nonprivileged people. I would like to see feminism take on racism. If we only focus on gender issues while ignoring the fact that women of different backgrounds face different issues, then we’re leaving out a whole group of people.”
This recognition of different backgrounds and the racism, sexism and classism that come with those identities is part of intersectionality, coined by law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, though the concept existed before that.
“We’re never going to come to a moment where all of us who claim to be feminists can agree about what the first priority of feminism is,” Prof Crenshaw said.
Intersectionality is key to larger conversations among Millennial women of colour as they decide whether to identify as womanists, feminists, black feminists, all or none. Womanism is similar to intersectional feminism in that they both acknowledge the ways that women navigate several identities simultaneously, with womanism focusing specifically on the experiences of black women and women of colour.
“I call myself a black feminist because I believe that I am included in the larger feminist framework. And there’s so many branches and types of feminism,” said Feminista Jones, a sex-positive community activist. “Womanism obviously took a turn for a more culturally based approach to feminism, but that doesn’t make it any less feminist.”
Ms Jones credits the internet with spreading awareness about womanism because black women are able to talk about their experiences as they did this week with the hashtag #BlackWomenAtWork.
“I think social media has really helped spread that message and helped [young women] become more aware of what it means to be a black woman in this world,” Ms Jones said. “I think they are realising we really have no choice but to embrace this idea of feminism.”
Social media is also key to organising. “I think that womanism is something that is becoming a more widespread term that is used to integrate both grassroots work and work that lives within the institution,” said Aurielle Lucier, co-founder of #ItsBiggerThanYou, a social justice organisation based in Atlanta. “Womanism, which is basically feminism with a focal point on the ways that white supremacy plagues women of colour specifically, is great in academia ... but it’s even more potent and more applicable on the ground focusing on women at their intersections — trans, queer, working-class, black and brown, immigrants, Muslims — within the context of working towards liberation through acts.”
Because black women have nearly always had a strong role in their families, womanism also includes the well-being of men, children and community.
“When black women talk about women’s movements and liberation, they’re always talking about more than themselves,” said Ms Giddings. “They’re always talking about the community at large.”
Although womanism was born out of the creation of Alice Walker, a Southern black woman, activists say it’s an inclusive ideology that seeks to empower everyone, not just women.
“Womanism is an alternative that doesn’t seek to overwrite feminism but to show another pathway that people can also have, another set of tools that people can also use in order to achieve these progressive, social and ecological goals that everyone says they are fighting for,” said Layli Maparyan, professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College and editor of The Womanist Reader. “Womanism is from women of colour, but it’s for everybody. It’s for the world.”