Words of Fire (95 page)

Rather than be glad that the ability to love has not been destroyed altogether in us, some critics complain about the “rightness” of its direction, hiding behind such shockingly transparent defenses as “but what will white people think of us?” Since “white people” are to a large extent responsible for so much of our worst behavior, which is really their behavior copied slavishly, it is an insult to black people's experience in America to make a pretense of caring what they think.

Much of the criticism leveled against me and my work by black men (and some women) has been delivered in arrogance (“I haven't read the book or seen the movie, but....”), ignorance (“I don't think any black people back then had wallpaper....”), bad faith (“I think the author just doesn't like black men; after all, she was married to a white one....”), and without love.
^k
In the end, this simple injustice will be an undeserved burden and worrisome puzzle to our children, our next generation of rebels and poets (dare they create from the heart? think with their own brain? make decisions that in a treacherous world inevitably involve risk or invite attack?), many of whom write to me frequently about both the film and the book and exhibit a generosity of heart and a tolerance of spirit sadly lacking in some of their parents.

 

“S
ticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” I remember well that childhood saying, a saying that, even as an adult, I have had more than one occasion to use. I think that my mother taught it to me when I was three years old, when for the first time that I was conscious of, I was called a “nigger.” There is no confusion in my head about that incident when a little white boy called me that name; and perhaps it does not matter if my mother taught me that saying on that occasion or on some other. The point is that I, like all folks who are cast in the state of “the other,” was told early on to stay there; and the message was delivered by many means, including name-calling. Declaring that “names will never hurt me” was just one of several defenses that I was taught to deal with being black and female in America.

What is the relevance of that childhood saying to this brief comment on Beverly Guy-Sheftall's collection of the writings of African American feminists? In the most obvious sense, it has everything to do with the long and ongoing struggle of African American women who have used multiple ways of saying (using another expression that I grew up with): “Don't be calling me out of my name.” Or, put another way, I speak here of the struggle of we African American women to “name ourselves.”

In offering an epilogue on this book, I turn our attention to the very title, which places together the terms “African American” and “feminist.” In this pathbreaking collection of articles, Dr. Guy-Sheftall has taken us from the early 1830s to contemporary times. Only since the seventies have black women used the term “feminism.” And yet, it is that concept that she uses to bring into the same frame the ideas and analyses of Maria Stewart, Sojourner Truth, and Frances E. W. Harper of the early nineteenth century, and the work of women such as the late Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, and bell hooks, who stand on the threshold of the twenty-first century.

Once again, I think of that childhood saying in recalling that the word,
the term, “feminism,” is one that large numbers of African American women believe will hurt them. How often I hear a black woman say that she strongly believes in the equality of women and men,
but
she adds, she is not a feminist. At Spelman College, it is not uncommon for one of our students to speak of her deep commitment to a full professional life in which she is paid as well as any man who does a similar job.
But
, adds the young sister, I am not a feminist.

Why is it that among so many contemporary African American women there is a dread of being called feminist? It seems to me that it is not at all because of what a feminist perspective can do for black women, but because of what black women falsely assume that feminism will demand of them. Fueled by media misrepresentations and exaggerations of what feminism is and what feminists do, black women, and indeed many women of color, assume that in order to be a feminist, one must put the struggle against racism after the struggle against sexism. This notion of either/or, the assumption that you must choose only one form of oppression against which you will struggle, is neither necessary nor helpful. Racism, sexism—sometimes we African American women cannot clearly tell where one ends and the other begins. But given the multiple ways in which racism and sexism are “cut from the same cloth,” we cannot afford to fight the oppressions to which we are subjected on only one front. I like to make the analogy that if both of your arms were tied behind your back as you prepared to swim, would you choose to have only one released?

Another factor, not totally unrelated, which continues to prevent the involvement of large numbers of black women in the feminist movement is the extent to which white women have not dealt with their racism. Black women argue that they cannot participate in a movement in which they are devalued because of their race. A corollary is when white women assume that their own realities of what it means to be a woman are the only realities in existence.

Surely the single most tenacious misconception about feminism is that to be a feminist is to hate men. Black women, like white women, know what it is to be the victim of male chauvinism, by black men as well as white men. But an enormous difference in the experiences of black and white women is that black women also witness countless ways in which their fathers, brothers, sons, husbands, lovers—indeed every black man they know, is also victimized by racism. And so African American women feel a bond with black men, which comes from being called that same name, from being denied access to similar opportunities, from so often receiving the poorest of what America has to offer in terms of jobs, education, health care, and housing.

And then there is the question of lesbianism. African American women are certainly not immune to the extensive presence of homophobia in
American society, and indeed with African American communities. With the media and certain fundamentalist groups still implying that feminism and lesbianism are synonymous, large numbers of women of every racial and ethnic group turn away from a movement that is in their interest because they assume it was created by, and is currently dominated by, lesbians.

With such resistance to being associated with feminism, what choices do African American women have, especially when the very issues that feminism addresses are not the exclusive possession of white women? White women do not have a monopoly on the issues of equal pay for equal work; of men sharing with women the responsibilities of nurturing children and “keeping house”; of women's being in charge of their own bodies and their reproductive powers; of bringing to an end the physical and sexual abuse of women. These are the issues of all of us women folks of all racial and ethnic groups, of every sexual orientation, of various ages and economic conditions, of women who are fully abled and those who are differently abled.

One response of African American women has been to insist on defining their struggle for gender equality through the use of words other than feminism. This is the approach taken by Alice Walker in using the word “womanist” and asserting that womanist is to purple as feminist is to lavender.

The alternative approach for black women who see the relevance to their lives of issues associated with the term feminism is the one Beverly Guy-Sheftall has taken in this volume. She has boldly and convincingly illustrated a long history of feminist thought among African American women. She has claimed the name. She has refused to cut off contemporary African American women from the long line of sisters who have righteously struggled for the liberation of African American women from the dual oppressions of racism and sexism. This is the extraordinary value of this book. It is the very first collection of readings on the evolution of black feminism in the United States.

As each African American woman brings closure on reading this volume, having felt the enormous courage, insight, and tenacity of early black feminists of the 1830s, down to the writings of sisters of these very days in which she lives, perhaps it will be possible for each to say, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”

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