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What has been and what should be the role of 'difference' in Black…
What has been and what should be the role of 'difference' in Black and feminist communities, according to Audre Lorde? Discuss with reference to the essays 'the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house and age race class and sex: women redefining difference'
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The master's tools
Stuart Hall p442 the Black experience is the collective experience of being othered and marginalized regardless of ethnicity etc
lives of american women: difference of race, class and age. The absence of these considerations weakens,any feminist discussion of the personal and the political
What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits oft hat same patriarchy? It means that only the most narrow that same patriarchy? It means that only the most narrow perimeters of change are possible and allowable.
Stuart Hall 447: a parallel to this being the study of race and Blackness in politics discussed through a lense at which all else is fixed p447 often Black politics are constructed around Black masculinity
Angela Davis WRC p 70 - 86; 71 during the abolisionist movement in the south women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton campained not to free Black men over fear of them overcoming women p71 Henry Wad argued not to merge sufferage and abolitionism as wasp women had more cause according to his racist self : a real historical example of white women getting into bed with white supremacy in an attempt to hold onto power. They later formed a separate movement after Frederick Douglas was like yeah no you're a racist
Kendall p164 describes how Megyan Kelly used feminism to prop her up against an interview with Trump but then her career was furthered and she continued to be successful on right wing news platforms whacking out casually racist arguments i.e. santa is white
Kendall p164 white women aren't passive beneficiaries of white supremacy they are active participants...p165white feminism tells white woment hat they have the right to occupy every space...but not to not force everyone else to comply with their whims
Kendall p 160 the patriachy sounds like a monolithic entity until you consider Black men don't have the capacity to oppress in the same way white men do
Age race class and sex
ageism gives way to another type of repression by ignoring older voices we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, by writing off older voices as out of touch we rob ourselves of the chance to learn
But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognise those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behaviour and expectation.
'mythical norm' white straight financially stable and Christian- it is those outside of this that face oppression, often ehite women focus on this as their oppression and fail to consider the ways in which they are privaledged by it, they also fail to consider further deviations from the norm and what that means for bipoc poor and queer women
Stuart Hall p 444: it is dangerous to have a largely white eurocentric academia relied on tp study the politics of representation
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Kendall p166 too otfen white women look to patricahy to protect them not realizing that the things they are turning for protection from are not what is oppressing them; they often focus on freedom from what oppressed them not oppression
Kendall p 162 Mainstream white-centred feminism hasn't just failed women of colour it has failed white women, by upholding white supremacy and women seeing progression as alligning themselves with the dominant group
Kendall p163, It's not feminism for all women, just those who think they are safe inside a patriarchal white supremist society
The role of difference
The role of difference in feminism for Lorde is so that the narrative isn't co-opted by white voices, whiteness holds supremacy therefore white women will always be at risk of using feminism to uphold white supremacy and erasing Black and Brown voices
Kendall p167oppression comes not from one direction but from many....you have to develop a framework that allows for not finding safety or solidarity with those who oppress people who look like you................. if white feminism is a weapon then if is the bandage, it can't stop the wounds but it can give the community a chance to heal on it's own