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Relating to Privilege: Seduction and Rejection in the Subordination of White Women and
Women of Color
Author(s): Aída Hurtado
Source:
Signs,
Vol. 14, No. 4, Common Grounds and Crossroads: Race, Ethnicity, and Class in
Women's Lives (Summer, 1989), pp. 833-855
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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RELATING TO PRIVILEGE: SEDUCTION
AND
REJECTION
IN THE
SUBORDINATION
OF
WHITE
WOMEN
AND
WOMEN
OF
COLOR
AIDA
HURTADO
Each
oppressed group
in
the United
States
is
positioned
in a
particular
and
distinct
relationship
to
white
men,
and
each
form
of
subordination
is
shaped
by
this
relational
position.
Men
of Color
and white men
maintain
power
over
women,
particularly
within
their
respective groups.'
However,
gender
alone does
not
deter-
mine
either a
superordinate
or
subordinate
position.
In a
highly
industrialized
society
run
by
a
complex
hierarchical
bureaucracy
and based on individualistic
competition,
many
socially
con-
structed markers
of
group
membership
are used
to allocate
power.2
For their
helpful
comments
on
earlier
drafts,
I
am
grateful
to:
Sucheng
Chan,
Sarah
Fenstermaker,
Patricia
Gurin,
Craig Haney,
Helene
Moglen,
Che
Sandoval,
Brewster
M.
Smith,
and
especially
Candace
West for her
encouragement.
1
A word
about ethnic labels used
in this
paper.
I use
people
of Color to refer
to
Chicanos,
Asians,
Native
Americans,
and
Blacks,
all of whom are native
minorities.
Therefore,
I
capitalize
Color
because
it refers to
specific
ethnic
groups.
I also
capitalize
Black
following
the
argument
that
it
refers not
merely
to skin
pigmenta-
tion
but to
a
"heritage,
a social
creation,
and often a
personal
identity
in
ways
at
least
as
meaningful
as do ethnic identities which are
conventionally capitalized"
(see
Barrie
Thorne,
Cheris
Kramarae,
and
Nancy Henley,
eds.,
Language,
Gender,
and
Society
[Rowley,
Mass.:
Newbury
House,
1983],
vi).
On the
other
hand,
white
is left
in
lowercase letters because
it
refers not
to
one
ethnic
group
or
to
specified
ethnic
groups
but to
many.
2
Erika
Apfelbaum,
"Relations of Domination
and Movements for
Liberation:
An
Analysis
of
Power between
Groups,"
in
The Social
Psychology
of
Intergroup
Rela-
[Signs:
Journal
of
Wo>meni
in
Culture
and
Society
1989,
vol.
14,
no.
4]
?
1989
b1 The
University
of
Chicago.
All
rights
reserved. 0097-9740/89/1404-0033$01.00
833
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Hurtado
/
RELATING
TO
PRIVILEGE
Class,
ethnicity,
race,
and
sexuality
are but a
few.
As we
develop
a
discourse
for
discussing
our
group memberships,
as our conscious-
ness
about the mechanisms
of
subordination
evolves,
and
as
previ-
ously
silenced
groups begin
to
speak,
we can
begin
to
have
a
picture
of
contemporary
forms of subordination and
their
psycho-
logical
effects.3
I
focus on
the
relationships
of white women and women of
Color
to white
men,
and how these
relationships
have
affected
feminists
from
both
groups.4
The conflicts and tensions between
white
feminists
and feminists of Color are viewed too
frequently
as
lying
solely
in
woman-to-woman
relationships.
These
relationships,
however,
are affected
in
both obvious and subtle
ways
by
how
each
of these two
groups
of women relate to white men
through linkages
that
Nancy
Henley
calls "the
everyday
social
relationships
that
glue
together
the
social
superstructure."5
tions,
ed. William
G.
Austin and
Stephen
Worchel
(Monterey,
Calif.: Brooks/Cole
Publishing,
1979),
188-204.
3
R.
W.
Connell,
"Theorizing
Gender,"
Sociology
19,
no.
2
(May
1985): 260-72,
esp.
264.
4
By
women of Color I mean nonwhite
women,
especially
Blacks,
Latinas
(e.g.,
Chicanas,
Puerto
Ricans),
Native
Americans,
and Asian Americans
(e.g.,
Japanese,
Chinese,
Pilipina,
Vietnamese).
I
do
not include
Jewish
women
because their
historical and cultural
experience
is
different from the women of Color
I
describe.
Jewish
women merit a
separate analysis, perhaps
within
the context
of
the
discus-
sion of the
heterogeneity among
white
feminists.
Women
worldwide share
common-
alities; however,
there are
very
important
cultural and economic differences that
should
not be
ignored.
I
focus on women
in
the United States in
order
to understand
the differences between
white
women and
women of
Color in this
country.
What the
implications
of
my analysis
are for women elsewhere
is
for
them to decide.
5
Nancy
Henley, Body
Politics:
Power, Sex,
and Nonverbal
Communication
(New
York: Simon &
Schuster, 1986),
21. In
discussing
these
linkages my language
emphasizes
differences-differences
among
women but
also the different relation-
ships
between various
groups
of women and white men. I do
not mean to
imply
that
these
groups
are
thought
of as undifferentiated
categories.
I
acknowledge
diversity
within them as I
examine,
for
purposes
of
this
paper,
the
more
important problem
of
the differences
in
relationship
that
white
women and
women of Color have to
white
men.
Readers from the social
sciences
will
recognize
this
problem
in
analysis
of
variance terms
in which
internal
diversity
must be considered
in
order
to know if
two
(or more)
groups
differ
from
each other.
Although
differences within
groups
are
intrinsic to the
statistical decision about differences
between
groups,
we social
scientists can
be faulted
for
using
language
at times that
implies
that
merely
statistically
different
categories
are
unitary
and universal. This
tendency
fosters
essentialist
thinking
about social
categories
when
in
fact members of
categories
always vary
in
the extent
to
which
they possess prototypic
features of
the
category.
See E. H. Rosch
for a
discussion of
psychological
research on
categories
and
Joan
W.
834
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Summer 1989
/
SIGNS
The structural
position
of women in the
United
States
In
the United
States, Blacks,
Native
Americans, Latinos,
and
some
Asian
groups
are
predominantly working
class.6
On
every
measure
of
standard of
living
(income,
years
of
education,
household
makeup)
they
are
positioned structurally
below the white
popula-
tion. This is
especially
the case for women in
these racial and
ethnic
groups.
The
common statistical
reporting practice
of
aggregating
the
socioeconomic statuses of
all
groups
of
women hides substantial
differences. A
recent
newspaper
article
reported
that
women
had
reached
70
percent
of
pay parity
with men
in
1987.' A
closer
examination of the statistics
quoted
showed that not
only
had the
headline
collapsed
differences
among
women,
it
had also
exagger-
ated
women's
gains
and so
reduced differences between women
Scott for
a
discussion of
the need for feminists to find a
way
of
analyzing
constructions of
meaning
and
relationships
of
power
that
call
"unitary,
universal
categories
into
question"
(E.
H.
Rosch,
"Natural
Categories," Cognitive
Psychology
4,
no.
3
[1973]:
328-50;
Joan
W.
Scott,
"Gender: A
Useful
Category
of Historical
Analysis,"
American Historical
Review
91,
no.
5
[1986]:
1053-75,
and "Deconstruct-
ing Equality-versus-Difference:
Or,
the Uses of
Poststructuralist
Theory
for Femi-
nism,"
Feminist Studies
14,
no. 1
[1988]:
33-51,
quote
on
33).
"
Asian
Americans,
as a
group,
are
stereotyped
as the "model
minority,"
a
group
to
be emulated
by
less successful
people
of
Color.
However,
close examination
of
the
statistics of
achieved
attainment indicates that
the
structural
integration
of different
Asian
groups (e.g., Japanese,
Pilipino,
Vietnamese,
Chinese)
is
at best
uneven
and
at
worst
deceptive.
Scholars in
Asian American studies have
highlighted
the
importance
of
taking
into account
bases
of
stratification
such
as
gender, foreign-born
versus
U.S.-born
nativity,
language
competency
in
English,
the
geographical
distri-
bution
of the
Asian
population
within
metropolitan
areas of
high income/high
cost-of-living
locales
(e.g.,
San
Francisco,
Los
Angeles,
Hawaii,
and
New
York),
historical
wave
of
immigration,
and number of
wage-earning family
members.
These
factors
in
combination
paint
a
very
different
picture
of
Asian American advance-
ment,
especially
for women.
For
example,
most Asian Americans
(especially
women)
are
overqualified,
as measured
by
formal
education,
and
underpaid
when
compared
to their white
male
counterparts.
For
presentations
of the intricacies of
measuring
the
structural
position
of
Asian
Americans,
see Bob
H.
Susuki,
"Educa-
tion and
the Socialization of Asian
Americans: A Revisionist
Analysis
of
the 'Model
Minority'
Thesis,"
Amerasia
Journal
4,
no. 2
(1977):
23-51;
Deborah
Woo,
"The
Socioeconomic Status of Asian
American Women
in
the Labor Force:
An Alternative
View,"
Sociological
Perspectives
28,
no.
3
(July
1985): 307-38;
Amado Cabezas
and
Carry Kawaguchi, "Empirical
Evidence for
Continuing
Asian
American
Income
Inequality:
The Human
Capital
Model and Labor Market
Segmentation" (paper
presented
at the
Fourth Asian American Studies Conference of the Association
of
Asian American
Studies,
San Francisco State
University,
March
19-21, 1987).
;"Women Reached
70% of
Pay Parity
with Men in
'87,"
San
Jose
Mercury
(February 2, 1988).
835
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Hurtado
/
RELATING TO PRIVILEGE
and
men. In
fact,
as
the
story
that
followed
shows,
in 1987 white
women reached 67.5
percent
of
pay parity
with white
men,
but
Black women reached
only
61.3
percent,
and
Hispanic
women
reached
barely
54.8
percent.8
White women tend to earn more
money
than women
of
Color
because as a
group
they
tend to
be able to
stay
in
school
longer
than
many
women
of Color.9 White women are more
likely
to
finish
high
school
(68
percent,
in
contrast to 52
percent
of
Black
women,
54
percent
of American Indian
women,
36
percent
of
Mexican
women,
and
39
percent
of
Puerto
Rican
women),
and
graduate
from
college
(13
percent,
in
contrast
to
8
percent
of
Black
women,
6
percent
of
Native
Americans,
and
6
percent
of
Hispanic
women).
White women
therefore
earn
substantially higher
incomes,
even
though
certain
groups
of
women
of Color
(e.g.,
Black
women)
are
more
likely
than white women to
stay
in the
labor
force
without
interruption.
In 1985
the
median income
for women of Mexican
descent
was
$4,556;
for Puerto Rican
women, $4,473;
for Vietnam-
ese
women, $4,694;
for
Japanese
women, $7,410;
for
Pilipina
women,
$8,253;
and
for Black women
$14,036.
That same
year,
the
median income
for white women was
$15,575."0
All
women
expe-
rience
job segregation,
but white women's
current educational
attainment
gives
them a
brighter
future
than that of women
of Color
(with
the
exception
of certain
groups
of
Asian
women)."
In the
past
8
I use
the
word
Hispanic only
when the
source cited uses
that label and does not
list
figures
for individual Latino
groups.
For
accuracy
I use the ethnic/racial labels
used
in
the
original
sources.
I
cite data
separately
for
different
groups
of women
when available.
9
Cynthia
M. Taeuber and Victor
Baldisera,
Women
in
the
American
Economy,
U.S. Bureau of the
Census,
Current
Population
Reports,
Series
P-23,
no.
146
(Washington,
D.C.: Government
Printing
Office, 1986).
'0
Joseph
J.
Salvo and
John
M.
McNeil,
Lifetime
Work
Experience
and Its
Effect
on
Earnings: Retrospective
Data
from
the
1979
Income
Survey
Development
Program,
U.S.
Department
of
Commerce,
Bureau of the
Census,
Current
Popula-
tion
Reports,
Series
P-23,
no.
136
(Washington,
D.C.: Government
Printing
Office,
1984).
"
Asian women as a
group
have
an
impressive
educational attainment
record.
However,
while education facilitates
mobility among
Asian American
women,
a
large proportion
of
them continue
to
be
in
clerical
or administrative
support jobs.
For
example,
in
1980,
close to a third
of native-born
Pilipinas
who were
college
educated continued to be
in clerical administrative
support jobs.
Deborah
Woo
indicates that for Asian American women:
"Education
improves
mobility
but it
promises
less
than
the 'American Dream.'
For
Asian
women,
it
seems
to serve less as
an
opportunity
for
mobility
than a
hedge against
jobs
as
service
workers and as
machine
operatives
or
assembly
workers-the
latter
being
an
area
where
foreign-
born
Asian women are
far more
likely
than
their
Anglo
male
or female
counterparts
to
concentrate.
The
single largest category
of
employment
here
is
as
seamstresses or
'textile
sewing
machine
operators'
in
garment
factories"
(Woo,
331-32).
836
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Summer 1989/ SIGNS
few
years,
the
college
enrollment
of
all
women fourteen to
thirty-
four
years
old has been
nearing
that
of
men. Close to half
(49
percent)
of all
graduate
students
in 1980 were
women,
compared
to
less
than a
third
(29
percent)
in
1970.
Although
the
graduate
school
figures
do not
include a
separate
category
for
women of
Color,
it is
safe to
conclude
that
given
the
high
school and
college graduation
rates
quoted
earlier,
the
women
who are enrolled
in
graduate
programs
are
predominantly
white women.12
Increasingly,
women are
becoming
the sole
supporters
of their
families.
The number
of
single-parent
families
has almost doubled
since
1970;
one in five
families with
children
is
now
maintained
by
a woman
(16
percent
of
all families
in
1985).
However,
women
of
Color
are
more
likely
than white women to maintain families
(44
percent
of Black
women,
23
percent
of
Hispanic
women,
and
23
percent
of Native
American
women,
compared
to 13
percent
of
white
women).
Furthermore,
women
of Color are more
likely
to
be
heads of households
living
in
poverty
(52
percent
of Black house-
holds and 53
percent
of
Hispanic
households,
compared
to
27
percent
of white
households),
more
likely
to be divorced
(35
percent
of
Black
women
compared
to
14
percent
of white
women),
and more
likely
to
have
larger
families
(40
percent
of Black
women,
60
percent
of
Hispanic
women
but
only
20
percent
of
white women
had four or more
people
to
support).
In
addition,
teenage
mothers
are more
likely
to be Black
women
than
white
women
(58
percent
of
teenage
mothers
are
Black
compared
to
13
percent
white).'3
These
measures reveal that women
of Color
stay
fewer
years
in
school,
have fewer dollars to
spend,
and bear more economic
burdens
than
any
other
group
in
this
country.
White women also
suffer
economically,
but
their economic
situation
is
not as
dire as
that of
women of Color.
More
specifically,
white women's relation-
ship
to white men
(the
highest
earners
in
society)
as
daughters,
wives,
or sisters
gives
them an "economic
cushion."'l
12
Taeuber and
Baldisera,
13-15.
13
Ibid.,
9-10.
"4
Phyllis Marynick
Palmer,
"White Women/Black Women:
The
Dualism
of
Female
Identity
and
Experience
in
the United
States,"
Feminist Studies
9,
no.
1
(1983):
151-70,
esp.
162. Given
these
data,
when I
discuss feminists of
Color
I will
treat them
as
working
class unless I
specifically
mention
otherwise.
When I
discuss
white
feminists,
I will treat them as middle class. Labels
are not
easy
to
assign
because of
the
complexity
of
human
experience
and because of the insidious and
changing
nature of
subordination.
My
purpose
is
not
to
provide
neat
categories
to be
used
regardless
of social context but rather to
provide
a framework for discussion
by
defining
the different
positions
of these
groups
of women to
white men. I believe
this
will
help
us to understand
the
differences
between
women
of
Color and white
women
in
general,
and
feminists in
particular.
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Hurtado
/
RELATING TO PRIVILEGE
The exclusion
of women of Color
in
feminist
theory
This cushion
has
influenced the
development
of
feminist
writing.
Academic
production requires
time and financial resources. Pov-
erty
hampers
the
ability
of all
working-class
people, especially
racial and
ethnic
groups,
to
participate
in
higher
education:
without
financial
assistance,
few low-income and racial/ethnic
students can
attend
universities;
without
higher
education,
few
working-class
and
ethnic/racial intellectuals can become
professors.
Not
surpris-
ingly,
therefore,
most
contemporary published
feminist
theory
in
the United States has
been
written
by
white,
educated
women.'5
The
experiences
of other women
(including
white
working-class
women)
are
absent
in much
of white
academic feminist
theory.'6
Much of
feminist
theory
focuses
on the condition
of
women
qua
women. Illustrative of
this
tendency
is the book Feminist Politics
and Human Nature
in which
Alison
Jaggar presents
an
impressive
and
comprehensive
review
of
contemporary
feminist
theory.
Jaggar
acknowledges
that
feminist
theory
fails to
integrate
race
into
its
analysis
of women's subordination.
While she laments this
failure,
she also
proclaims
that women of
Color have not
developed
"a
distinctive and
comprehensive
theory
of women's
liberation" and
that the
existing writings
are
"mainly
at
the
level
of
description."7
If
she does
not
dismiss
them
altogether, Jaggar
fits other
writings by
Black feminist theorists into her framework for white feminist
theory.
In
doing
so,
she
glosses
over
important
differences between
those feminists of Color
and white
feminists,
differences that
may
elucidate the race/class nexus so
lacking
in
white feminist
theory.
For
example,
she
notes that
"a
very
few
[Black
feminists]
are
radical
feminists,
though
almost none seem
to be
lesbian
separat-
ists," but
she does not discuss
why
this is so
beyond locating
it
within
choices that white
women
have
made.'8
So,
for
instance,
Jaggar
notes:
"Radical
feminism
...
was
sparked
by
the
special
experiences
of a
relatively
small
group
of
predominantly
white,
middle-class,
college-educated,
American women
in the
later
1960s.....
Today,
those who are attracted to radical feminism
still
tend to be
primarily
white and
college-educated."'9
Jaggar
also
fails
even to
speculate
about
why
Black feminists
might
be reluctant to
15
bell
hooks,
Ain't
I
a Woman? Black Women
and
Feminism
(Boston:
South End
Press,
1981).
16
Gloria I.
Joseph
and
Jill
Lewis,
eds.,
Common
Differences:
Conflicts
in Black
and White
Feminists'
Perspectives
(New
York:
Anchor,
1981).
17
Alison
Jaggar,
Feminist Politics
and
Human Nature
(Totowa,
N.J.:
Rowman
&
Allanheld,
1983),
11.
18
Ibid.,
11.
19
Ibid.,
83-84.
838
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Summer
1989/
SIGNS
separate
from
Black
men
while
simultaneously
recognizing
their
gender
subordination.
Recently,
white
feminist theorists
have
begun
to
recognize
the
theoretical
implications
of
embracing diversity among
women.
White
feminist
theory
is
moving
beyond
biological
determinism
and
social
categoricalism
to
a
conception
of
gender
as
a
process
accomplished
through
social
interaction.20
Rejecting
the
binary
categorization
of
"man"
and
"woman,"
this new
conceptualization
opens up
the
possibility
of
diversity among
women
and
men
and
the
possibility
of
many
feminisms.2'
However,
despite
these ad-
vances,
white
feminist
theory
has
yet
to
integrate
the
facts that
for
women
of
Color
race, class,
and
gender
subordination are
experi-
enced
simultaneously
and
that their
oppression
is not
only by
members
of their
own
group
but
by
whites of both
genders.22
White
feminist theorists
have
failed to
grasp
fully
what
this
means,
how
it
is
experienced,
and,
ultimately,
how
it is
fought."3
Many
white
feminists do
have an intellectual commitment to
addressing
race
and
class,
but
the
class
origins
of the
participants
in
the movement
as well
as
their
relationship
to white men
has
prevented
them,
as a
group,
from
understanding
the
simultaneity
of
oppression
for
women
of
Color.24
The historical context
Before the Civil
War
nearly
all white
women advocates
of
equal
rights
for
women were committed
abolitionists.
However,
as bell
hooks
indicates,
this
did
not mean
they
were all antiracist.25
White
abolitionists
did
not want
to
destroy
the
racial
hierarchy
or
provide
broad
citizenship rights
to freed slaves.
Instead,
they
were moti-
vated
by religious
and moral
sentiments
to
take a stand
against
20
R.
W.
Connell,
Gender
and Power:
Society,
the
Person and
Sexual Politics
(Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford
University
Press,
1987),
esp.
140, 264;
Candace
West and
Don
H.
Zimmerman,
"Doing
Gender,"
Gender
and
Society
1,
no.
2
(June
1987):
125-51,
esp.
126.
"
Leslie Wahl
Rabine,
"A Feminist Politics of
Non-Identity,"
Feminist
Studies
14,
no.
1
(Spring
1988):
11-31,
esp.
19.
22
Aida
Hurtado,
"Chicana Feminism: A Theoretical
Perspective" (paper
pre-
sented at
the
Third International
Conference on the
Hispanic
Cultures
of
the
United
States,
Barcelona,
Spain, June
7-10,
1988).
23
Patricia
Hill
Collins,
"Learning
from
the Outsider Within: The
Sociological
Significance
of Black
Feminist
Thought,"
Social Problems
33,
no.
6
(December
1986):
14-32.
24
Palmer
(n.
14
above),
esp.
154.
'5
hooks,
Ain't
I
a Woman?
(n.
15
above),
esp.
124.
839
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Hurtado
/
RELATING
TO
PRIVILEGE
slavery
as an institution.26
Because
many
white abolitionists
were
not
antiracist,
working
relationships
between
Black and
white
activists
were sometimes strained. When it
was
expedient,
white
women
in
the
abolitionist
movement would
compare
their
plight
to
that of
the slaves. Elizabeth
Cady
Stanton,
speaking
before the New
York
State
Legislature
in
1860 stated: "The
prejudice
against
Color,
of
which
we hear
so
much,
is
no
stronger
than
that
against
sex. It
is
produced
by
the same
cause,
and manifested
very
much in
the same
way.
The
Negro's
skin
and the woman's
sex are both
prima
facie
evidence that
they
were
intended to be
in
subjection
to
the white
Saxon man.
The few
social
privileges
which the man
gives
the
woman,
he
makes
up
to
the
(free)
Negro
in
civil
rights."7
Stanton,
unfortunately,
cast
her
argument
in
terms
that
pitted
white
women
against
Black men in
a
competition
for
privileges
that erased
Black
women
altogether.
The
strained
bonds
between
Black and white
women involved
in
the
fight
for
equal political rights finally
ruptured
after the Civil
War.
When
only
Black
men received the
vote,
Black and
white
activists
together
decried the
exclusion
of
women's
rights,
but their
protests
took different forms.
Black
suffragists
did
not
abandon
Black
men;
white
suffragists
quickly
abandoned Black
women.28
White women's
rights
advocates
like Elizabeth
Cady
Stanton,
who
had
never before
argued
woman
suffrage
on a
racially
imperialistic
platform,
in 1869
stated her
outrage
at the
enfianchisement
of
Black
men: "If
Saxon men
have
legislated
thus
for their own
mothers,
wives
and
daughters,
what
can we
hope
for at
the hands of
Chinese,
Indians,
and Africans? ... I
protest against
the enfranchisement of
another man of
any
race or clime until
the
daughters
of
Jefferson,
Hancock,
and Adams
are
crowned
with
their
rights."29
Black
suffragists
could
not afford such
disengagement
from their
group.
Instead,
many
Black women
leaders of the
time
fought
for
the
just
treatment of
all
people
with
the
recognition
that
women of
Color
experienced
multiple
oppressions
because
of their
gender,
race,
and
class.
Black
women
suffragists
struggled
with
white
26
Catharine
Stimpson,
"
'Thy
Neighbor's
Wife,
Thy Neighbor's
Servants':
Wom-
en's
Liberation and
Black
Civil
Rights,"
in
Woman in
Sexist
Society:
Studies
in
Power
and
Powerlessness,
ed.
Vivian
Gornick and Barbara K.
Morgan
(New
York:
Basic,
1971),
452-79.
2:
Elizabeth
Cady
Stanton,
Susan
B.
Anthony,
and Matilda
Joslyn
Gage,
eds.,
History
of
Woman
Suffrage,
2d ed.
(Rochester,
N.Y.: Susan
B.
Anthony,
1889),
1:456-57.
28
hooks,
Ain't I
a
Woman?
esp.
127;
Angela
Y.
Davis,
Women,
Race and Class
(New
York:
Random
House,
1981),
esp.
76-77.
'9
Elizabeth
Cady
Stanton,
Susan
B.
Anthony,
and
Matilda
Joslyn Gage,
eds.,
History
of
Woman
Suffrage
(Rochester,
N.Y.:
Charles
Mann, 1887),
2:222.
840
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Summer 1989/ SIGNS
suffragists
to obtain women's
right
to
vote
as
they
fought against
lynchings, poverty,
and
segregation.3"
In 1893
Anna
Cooper
ad-
dressed the Women's
Congress
in
Chicago
and
eloquently
outlined
the
position many
other Black
activists
were
advocating
at
that
time:
We
take our
stand
on
the
solidarity
of
humanity,
the
oneness
of
life,
and the unnaturalness and
injustice
of all
special
favoritisms,
whether
of
sex,
race,
country,
or
condition....
Least of all can women's
cause
afford to
decry
the
weak....
Not till the
universal
title
of
humanity
of
life,
liberty,
and the
pursuit
of
happiness
is
conceded to be inalienable
to
all;
not
till
then
is
woman's
lesson
taught
and woman's cause
won-
not the white
woman's,
not
the black
woman's,
not
the red
woman's,
but
the
cause
of
every
man and
of
every
woman
who has writhed
silently
under
a
mighty
wrong.31
Racial conflict
emerged
in the
suffrage
movement
for
many
reasons,
the most
important
of
which was
the
white
women's
privileged
relationship
to white
men.
Elizabeth
Cady
Stanton,
Susan B.
Anthony,
and
Lucy
Stone
were all married to
prominent
white
men who
supported
them
during
their
involvement
in
political
work,
while
Black activists
such
as
Sojourner
Truth,
Ida
B.
Wells,
and
Ellen
Craft were at birth owned
by
white men.32
Despite
the
abolition
of
slavery,
the difference between
the
relationship
of
white women
to white men and
of
women of Color to white
men
has
persisted
to the
present.
The
conflict that this difference causes
between
contemporary
white feminists and
feminists of
Color
is
but
a
replay
of
old divisions that are
perpetuated
with
amazing
consistency.
Like
their
political
ancestors,
contemporary
feminists
of
Color
do
not
attribute their
oppression
solely
to
their
gender
and
are reluctant
to
abandon
the
struggle
on behalf
of their racial/ethnic
group.
The
largest organization
of Chicana
academics
(Mujeres
Ac-
tivas
en
Letras
y
Cambio
Social)
explicitly
states their class and
ethnic
solidarity:
"We are the
daughters
of Chicano
working
class
families involved
in
higher
education.
We
were raised
in
labor
camps
and urban
barrios,
where
sharing
our resources
was the basis
30
Louise Daniel
Hutchinson,
Anna
Cooper:
A
Voicefrom
the South
(Washington,
D.C.:
Smithsonian
Institution
Press, 1982);
Dorothy Sterling,
Black
Foremothers:
Three
Lives
(New
York:
McGraw-Hill, 1979);
Ida B.
Wells,
CrusadeforJustice:
The
Autobiography
of
Ida
B.
Wells,
ed. Alfreda
M. Duster
(Chicago:
University
of
Chicago
Press, 1970).
31
Hutchinson,
87-88.
32
Sterling.
841
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Hurtado
/
RELATING
TO
PRIVILEGE
of survival....
Our
history
is the
story
of
working
people-their
struggles,
commitments,
strengths,
and the
problems they
faced....
We
are
particularly
concerned
with
the conditions
women
face at
work,
in
and out of the home. We continue our
mothers'
struggle
for social and economic
justice."33
Rejection
versus
seduction
Sojourner
Truth,
speaking
at
the
Women's
Rights
Convention
in
1851,
highlighted
the crucial
difference between women
of Color
and
white
women
in
their
relationships
to white men. Frances
Dana
Gage,
the
presiding
officer
of
the
convention,
describes
Sojourner
Truth
marching
down
the
aisle
to
the
pulpit
steps
where
she
addressed
her
audience:
At her
first
word there was
a
profound
hush....
"That
man
over
there
say
that
women needs
to be
helped
into
carriages,
and lifted over
ditches,
and
to have
the
best
place
every-
where.
Nobody
ever
helps
me
into
carriages,
or
over
mud-
puddles,
or
gives
me
any
best
place!"
And
raising
herself
to
her
full
height,
asked,
"And
ain't I
a woman?
Look
at
me!
Look
at
my
arm!"
(and
she bared
her
right
arm
to the
shoulder,
showing
her
tremendous
muscular
power).
"I have
ploughed,
and
planted,
and
gathered
into
barns,
and
no man
could
head me! And
ain't I a woman?
I
could
work
as
much
and
eat as much
as a
man-when
I could
get
it-and
bear
the
lash as well! And
ain't
I
a woman?
I
have borne
thirteen
children and seen them most
all
sold
off to
slavery,
and
when
I
cried out
with
my
mother's
grief,
none but
Jesus
heard
me!
And ain't I a
woman?"34
Now,
as
then,
white
middle-class
women
are
groomed
from
birth
to
be
the
lovers, mothers,
and
partners
(however
unequal)
of
white
men
because of
the
economic
and
social benefits
attached to
these
roles.35
Upper-
and
middle-class
white
women are
supposed
to
be the
biological
bearers
of
those
members of
the
next
generation
who
will
inherit
positions
of
power
in
society.
Women
of
Color,
in
33
Adeljiza
Sosa-Ridell,
ed.,
Mujeres
Activas
en
Letras
y
Cambio
Social,
Noticiera
de
M.A.L.C.S.
(Davis:
University
of
California,
Davis,
Chicano Studies
Program,
1983).
34
Stanton,
Anthony,
and
Gage,
eds.,
1:115-17.
35
Simone
de
Beauvoir,
The
Second Sex
(New
York:
Random
House,
1952),
xxiv;
Audre
Lorde,
Sister Outsider
(Trumansburg,
N.Y.:
Crossing Press, 1984),
118-19.
842
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Summer
1989/
SIGNS
contrast,
are
groomed
from birth to be
primarily
the
lovers, mothers,
and
partners
(however
unequal)
of
men of
Color,
who are also
oppressed by
white men.36 The avenues of
advancement
through
marriage
that are
open
to white women who
conform
to
prescribed
standards of middle-class
femininity
are
not
even a theoretical
possibility
for
most women of Color. This
is
not
to
say
that women
of
Color
are
more
oppressed
than white women
but,
rather,
that
white men use
different forms of
enforcing
oppression
of
white
women
and of
women
of
Color.
As
a
consequence,
these
groups
of
women have
different
political
responses
and
skills,
and at times
these
differences
cause
the two
groups
to clash.
Women
of Color came to the United
States either
through slavery
(e.g., Blacks),
conquest
of their
homeland
(e.g.,
Chicanas,
Puerto
Ricans,
American
Indians,
Pilipinas),
or
through
forced and
semi-
forced
labor
migration (e.g.,
Japanese,
Chinese).
Unlike
European
immigrants
who become
culturally
and
linguistically
assimilated
within
two
generations,
these
groups
of
women constitute
racially
distinct
groups.
Thus
even
if
a Black career woman were to
marry
a white
professional
man,
her
offspring
would
not inherit
the
power
positions
accorded to white sons and
daughters
of the same class.
Indeed,
some
argue
that
being
one-half Black
is
a
greater stigma
than
having
remained
within the
subordinate
group's
bound-
aries.37
However,
if
a
working-class
white woman were to
marry
a
white
professional
man,
her
offspring
would
automatically
acquire
6
Limitations of
space preclude
a discussion of the
relationship
between women
of Color and men of
Color. Women of Color have started to
portray eloquently
the
solidarity
as well as conflict
between
women and
men of Color. For an
especially
insightful
analysis
on
Chicanas,
see Beatriz
Pesquera,
"Work and
Family:
A
Comparative
Analysis
of
Professional,
Clerical,
and Blue-Collar Chicana Workers"
(Ph.D. diss.,
University
of
California,
Berkeley,
1985);
Denise
Segura,
"Chicanas
and Mexican
Immigrant
Women in the Labor Market: A
Study
of
Occupational
Mobility
and
Stratification"
(Ph.D. diss.,
University
of
California,
Berkeley,
1986);
Patricia
Zavella,
Women's
Work and Chicano
Families:
Cannery
Workers
of
the
Santa Clara
Valley
(Ithaca,
N.Y.:
Cornell
University
Press,
1987).
Suffice
it
to
say
that men of Color are also
influenced
by
the different
conceptions
of
gender
that
depict
women of Color
as
less
feminine
and
less desirable
than
white women
(see
Gloria
I.
Joseph,
"White
Promotion,
Black
Survival,"
in
Joseph
and
Lewis,
eds.
[n.
16
above];
and bell
hooks,
Feminist
Theory
from
Margin
to Center
[Boston:
South
End
Press, 1984]).
This is a
form of internalized
oppression
that
people
of
Color
have
to address-one that I believe has
been
belabored in the last
twenty years.
It must
ultimately
be
resolved
by
men
of Color rather than
by
women
(see
Albert
Memmi,
The
Colonizer
and the
Colonized
[New
York: Orient
Press,
1965];
and
Eldridge
Cleaver,
Soul on Ice
[New
York: McGraw
Hill, 1968]).
37
Malcolm X with the
assistance
of
Alex
Haley,
The
Autobiography
of
Malcolm
X
(New
York:
Ballantine, 1973);
W.
E. B. Du
Bois,
The
Souls
of
Black
Folk
(Millwood,
N.Y.:
Kraus-Thomson
Organization, 1973).
843
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Hurtado
/
RELATING TO PRIVILEGE
the
privileged position
of
the father.
In
certain
circles,
a white wom-
an's
humble
beginnings
are a source of
pride
because
they
reaffirm
the
dominant
hegemonic
belief
in
the
availability
of
equal oppor-
tunity.
White
men
need white women
in a
way
that
they
do not need
women of Color because
women of Color cannot
fulfill
white
men's
need for
racially pure offspring.
This
fact creates differences
in the
relational
position
of the
groups-distance
from and access
to the
source of
privilege,
white
men.
Thus,
white
women,
as a
group,
are
subordinated
through
seduction,
women
of
Color,
as a
group,
through rejection.
Class
position,
of
course,
affects
the
probability
of
obtaining
the rewards
of
seduction
and the sanctions
of
rejection.
Working-class
white women are socialized
to believe
in the advan-
tages
of
marrying
somebody
economically
successful,
but
the
probability
of
obtaining
that
goal
is lower for them than for middle-
or
upper-class
white
women.
Class
position
affects women
of Color
as
well.
Although
rejected by
white men as candidates
to
reproduce
offspring,
middle-class women of Color
may
be
accepted
into
some
white
middle-class
social circles
in
the well-documented
role of
token.38
Class
privilege
functions
to one
degree
or another
regard-
less
of
race,
and white
privilege
functions
to
one
degree
or another
regardless
of class.39
The dual construction
of womanhood
For the most
part,
white feminist
theory
has
difficulty
elucidating
the condition of
women
of Color
because much of this
theorizing
takes the
categories
of "women" and
"men" as
"in
no need of
further examination
or finer distinction."40
There is an
implicit
biological
determinism even
in
the works
of those
theorists
who
have
rejected
it.41 When
Sojourner
Truth,
baring
her muscular arm
asked "ain't
I
a woman?"
the
reply might
not have been
obvious,
38
Apfelbaum
(n.
2
above),
esp.
199;
Thomas F.
Pettigrew
and
Joanne
Martin,
"Shaping
the
Organizational
Context
for Black American
Inclusion,"
Journal
of
Social Issues
43
(1987):
41-78.
39
Elizabeth
Higginbotham,
"Race and
Class Barriers to Black
Women's
College
Attendance,"
Journal
of
Ethnic Studies
13
(1985):
89-107.
40
Connell,
"Theorizing
Gender"
(n.
3
above),
esp.
264.
41
Ibid.,
56-57,
identifies
Nancy
Chodorow's The
Reproduction
of
Mothering:
Psychoanalysis
and the
Sociology
of
Gender
(Berkeley
and Los
Angeles:
University
of
California
Press, 1978);
and
Juliet
Mitchell's Woman's Estate
(Harmondsworth:
Penguin,
1971),
as
examples
of
feminist
theory
with
implicit biological
assumptions
about
gender.
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Summer 1989/ SIGNS
even
though
she had borne thirteen
children.
The
answer
to
her
question
involves
defining
woman. The white women in
the room
did not have to
plough
the
fields,
side
by
side
with
Black
men,
and
see their
offspring
sold into
slavery, yet they
were
clearly
women.
Sojourner
Truth
had worked the
fields,
and she had
borne
children;
but she was not
a woman
in
the sense of
having
the same
experiences
as the white
women at the
meeting.
The
definition
of
woman
is
constructed
differently
for
white
women and for
women of
Color,
though gender
is
the
marking
mechanism
through
which the
subordination of each
is
maintained.42
White women
are
persuaded
to
become the
partners
of
white
men
and are
seduced into
accepting
a subservient
role
that
meets the
material
needs of white
men.
As
Audre Lorde describes it: "White
women face the
pitfall
of
being
seduced
into
joining
the
oppressor
under the
pretense
of
sharing
power.
This
possibility
does not exist
in
the same
way
for
women of color. The tokenism
that
is
sometimes
extended to us is not an
invitation to
join power:
our racial "oth-
erness" is
a visible
reality
that
makes
it
quite
clear. For white women
there
is
a
wider
range
of
pretended
choices and rewards for iden-
tifying
with
patriarchal
power
and
its
tools."43
The
patriarchal
invitation to
power
is
only
a
pretended
choice
for white
women
because,
as
in
all
cases
of
tokens,
their
inclusion
is
dependent
on
complete
and constant
submission.
As
John
Stuart
Mill
observed: "It
was not sufficient
for
[white]
women to be
slaves.
They
must be
willing
slaves,
for the maintenance of
patri-
archal order
depends
upon
the
consensus of women.
It
depends
upon
women
playing
their
part
...
voluntarily
suppressing
the
evidence that
exposes
the false
and
arbitrary
nature of man-made
categories
and the
reality
which
is
built on
those
categories."44
The
genesis
of the
construction
of
woman
for
Black women
is in
slavery.
During
slavery,
Black women were
required
to be as
masculine as men
in
the
performance
of work and were as
harshly
punished
as
men,
but
they
were also
raped.45
Many
Black women
were broken
and
destroyed,
but the
majority
who survived
"ac-
quired
qualities
considered taboo
by
the
nineteenth-century
ideol-
ogy
of womanhood."46 As
Davis
puts
it:
"[Black
women's]
aware-
ness
of their
endless
capacity
for
hard
work
may
have
imparted
to
42
West and Zimmerman
(n.
20
above), 125-377,
esp.
145.
43
Lorde,
118-19.
4
As
quoted
by
Dale
Spender,
Man Made
Language
(London:
Routledge,
Chapman
&
Hall, 1980),
101-2.
45
Davis
(n.
28
above),
esp.
5.
46
Ibid.,
esp.
11.
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Hurtado
/
RELATING TO PRIVILEGE
them
a confidence
in
their
ability
to
struggle
for
themselves,
their
families,
and
their
people."47
White men
perceive
women of Color
primarily
as workers and
as
objects
of
sexual
power
and
aggression.
Their sexual
objectifica-
tion of women
of Color allows white
men to
express power
and
aggression
sexually,
without the emotional
entanglements
of,
and
the rituals
that are
required
in,
relationships
with
women of
their
own
group.48
In
many ways
the dual
conception
of woman based
on
race-"white
goddess/black
she-devil,
chaste
virgin/nigger
whore,
the blond
blue-eyed
doll/the
exotic
'mulatto'
object
of sexual
craving"-has
freed women
of Color
from the distraction of
the
rewards of seduction.49 Women
of Color "do
not receive the
respect
and
treatment-mollycoddling
and
condescending
as it
sometimes
is-afforded to
white women."50
Identity
invention
versus reaffirmation
of cultural roots
A
prominent
theme
in the activities of the
white feminist
move-
ment has been
the deconstruction
of
patriarchal
definitions
of
gender
in
order to
develop
women's own
definitions
of
what
it
means to be
a
woman.51
This
is similar to the
process
of
decoloni-
zation that
minority groups
underwent
in the 1960s.52
In both
instances,
socially stigmatized groups
have
reclaimed their
history
by
taking previously denigrated
characteristics
and
turning
them
into
positive
affirmations
of self.53
For
example,
radical
feminism
glorifies
the menstrual
cycle
as a
symbol
of women's
capacity
to
47
Ibid.,
11. As the United States
expanded
to the west
by colonizing
native
peoples
and
importing
labor,
other women of Color
experienced
similar treatment.
Marta Cotera
documents that
among
the
martyrs
and
victims of social
injustice
were
such women
as
Juanita
of
Downiesville, California,
who was
lynched
in
1851,
Chipita
Rodriguez,
who was the
only
woman to
be executed
in
Texas,
and
countless
other Chicanas
who were killed
by
Texas
Rangers during
their raids
on Chicano
communities
(see
Marta
Cotera,
Chicana Feminism
[Austin,
Texas: Information
System
Development,
1977],
esp.
24).
48
Adrienne
Rich,
On
Lies,
Secrets and Silence:
Selected Prose
1966-1973
(New
York:
Norton, 1979),
esp.
291-95;
hooks,
Ain't
I a Woman?
(n.
15
above),
esp.
58;
Palmer
(n.
14
above),
esp.
156.
49
Rich,
esp.
291.
5
Joseph
(n.
36
above),
esp.
27.
51
Chodorow
(n.
41
above);
Nancy Friday, My
Mother/Myself:
The
Daughter's
Search
for
Identity
(New
York:
Delacorte,
1982).
52
Apfelbaum
(n.
2
above),
esp.
203.
53
Ibid.;
Henri
Tajfel,
"Social
Identity
and
Intergroup
Behavior,"
Social Science
Information
13
(1974):
65-93.
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Summer
1989/
SIGNS
give
birth,
while Black Liberation
uses
skin
color
in
the
slogan
"Black
is
Beautiful."5
White women are at
a
greater
disadvantage
than women of
Color
in
reclaiming
their
identity-or perhaps
it
is
more accurate
to
say,
in
inventing
their
identity.
Unlike
people
of
Color,
who can refer to
a
specific
event
in
history (e.g.,
slavery, military conquest)
as
the
beginning
of their
subordination,
white women
in
the
United
States
have
always
been subordinated
to
men,
and
hence
their
dependency
is not the
result
of
a
specific
historical event or
social
change.55 People
of Color
in the United States
retain
the
memory
of
the
days
before
slavery
or
conquest:
they
share
that
past,
a
tradition,
and sometimes a
religion
or
culture.56
White feminists
have to uncover
a
history
and
simultaneously
define what
they
want
to become
in the
future. With
patriarchal
ideology
so
deeply
ingrained,
it is difficult for white feminists
to
reconstruct
gender
in
adulthood.57
Existing
academic
paradigms,
emanating
from male
culture and
distorting
women's
experience,
are
virtually
useless for
this task.s5 With
few
academic,
historical,
and
cultural
paths
to
follow,
white feminists
have nevertheless
undertaken the task
of
redefining gender.
It is
to
their
credit
that
white
feminists
have
succeeded
in
building
feminist
theory
and
in
obtaining
concrete
political
results
when
they
started
with
little
more than an
intuitive dissatisfaction
with
their
subordination.59
As
part
of their
subordination,
most
white women
have
been
denied
equal
participation
in
public
discourse
with
white men.60
Shirley
Ardener
argues
that
(white)
women are
socialized
in the
"art
of conversation"
while
(white)
men are
trained
in the more
formal "art of
rhetoric" or the
"art of
persuasion."61
Socialization
to
a
feminine
mode
of
discourse
deprives
white
women of
a
political
medium
through
which to
voice
and
define their
oppression.62
In
1963,
Betty
Friedan called
this
the
"problem
that
has no name"
because
white middle-class
women's discontent
did not
fit
into
the
categories
of
the
problems
already
named
(by
men).63
In the
late
1960s,
consciousness-raising
groups
were formed
not
only
to delin-
54
Jaggar
(n.
17
above),
esp.
94-95;
Tajfel,
esp.
83.
55
de
Beauvoir
(n.
35
above),
esp.
xxi.
56
Ibid.
5s
hooks,
Feminist
Theory
from
Margin
to
Center,
esp.
47-49.
58
Dorothy
E.
Smith,
"A
Peculiar
Eclipsing:
Women's
Exclusion from
Man's
Culture,"
Women's Studies International
Quarterly
1
(1978):
281-95,
esp.
293.
59
Betty
Friedan,
The
Feminine
Mystique
(New
York:
Penguin,
1963),
esp.
11.
60
Smith,
esp.
281.
1
Shirley
Ardener,
Perceiving
Women
(New
York:
Wiley,
1975).
62
Spender
(n.
44
above),
esp.
78-79.
63
Friedan,
esp.
15.
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Hurtado
/
RELATING TO
PRIVILEGE
eate
women's discontent
but also to
develop
a discourse
for
discussing
it.64
Despite
their exclusion from
participation
in the "manufac-
turing
of
culture,"
white women
have not been
segregated
from
the
"makers of
culture"-white men.65
White middle-class
women's
relational
position
to white
men has
given
them at the
very
least a
spectator's
seat. For
example,
Dorothy
E. Smith relates how
women who become mathematicians
generally
discover
mathemat-
ics
by
accident
in
"sharing
a
brother's
lessons,
the
interest of a
family
friend,
the
paper
covered
with calculus
used to
paper
a
child's room-some
special
incident or relation
which
introduced
them
to the
territory
of
their
art."66 Elizabeth
Cady
Stanton
was
exposed
to
the white man's culture
by
her
father,
a
prominent,
conservative
judge,
who
taught
her law and
supported
her obtain-
ing
a
high
school
diploma
at the
age
of sixteen.6'
Most women
of Color
are
not
groomed
to
be the
parlor
conver-
sationalists
that white women are
expected
to be.
Working-class
women of
Color
come from cultures
whose
languages
have
been
barred
from
public
discourse,
as
well as from
the written
discourse,
of
society
at
large.
Many
people
of Color
speak
varieties
of
English
(e.g.,
Black
English)
not understood
by
most white
people.
None-
theless,
people
of Color
often
excel
in verbal
performance
among
their own
peers. They
embrace
speech
as one medium
for
expres-
sion. Older
women are
especially
valued as
storytellers
with
the
responsibility
to
preserve
the
history
of
the
group
from
generation
to
generation.68
Patricia
Hill Collins
argues
that a
rich
tradition
of
Black
feminist
thought
exists,
much of
it
produced
orally by
ordinary
Black
women
in
their
roles as
mothers,
teachers,
musi-
cians,
and
preachers.69
This
oral tradition
celebrates
the
open
and
spontaneous
exchange
of
ideas.
The conversation
of women
of
Color can be
bawdy, rowdy,
and
irreverent,
and
in
expressing
opinions
freely,
women of Color exercise
a form of
power.
What this means
is
that,
for white
women,
the first
step
in
the
search
for
identity
is
to confront
the
ways
in
which
their
personal,
individual silence endorses
the
power
of
white men that has
64
Spender;
esp.
92-94.
65
Smith,
esp.
282.
66
Ibid.,
284.
6
Davis
(n.
28
above),
esp.
48-49.
8
Tomas
Ybarra-Fraustro,
"When Cultures Meet:
Integration
or
Disintegration?"
(Stanford
University, Department
of
Spanish,
Stanford,
Calif., 1986,
typescript);
Beth
Brant, ed.,
A
Gathering
of
Spirit: Writing
and Art
of
North American
Indian
Women
(Montpelier,
Vt.:
Sinister Wisdom
Books,
1984).
69
Collins
(n.
23
above),
esp.
80.
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Summer 1989
/
SIGNS
robbed them of their
history.
For
women
of
Color,
the
challenge
is
to
use
their
oral
traditions for
specific political goals.
The
public/private
distinction
The
public/private
distinction that
exists
among
the white middle
class devalues "women's work" done
in
the home and
arbitrarily
upgrades
men's work
performed
in the
public sphere.7'
Throughout
the
history
of the white feminist movement
in the United
States,
white
women have
gained
political
consciousness
about
gender
oppression
by examining
their
personal
lives.
They
have
realized
that
what
happens
in
the
intimacy
of
their
own homes
is not
exempt
firom
the
political
forces that affect the rest of
society.-'
The
contemporary
notion that "the
personal
is
political"
identifies and
rejects
the
public/private
distinction as a tool
by
which women
are
excluded from
public participation
while the
daily tyrannies
of
men
are
protected
from
public scrutiny.
Yet the
public/private
distinction
is
relevant
only
for the white
middle and
upper
classes since
historically
the
American
state has
intervened
constantly
in
the
private
lives
and domestic
arrange-
ments
of
the
working
class. Women
of
Color
have not had
the
benefit of
the
economic
conditions that underlie the
public/private
distinction. Instead
the
political
consciousness of women
of Color
stems
from
an awareness that
the
public
is
personally political.72
Welfare
programs
and
policies
have
discouraged
family
life,
steril-
ization
programs
have restricted
reproduction
rights, government
has
drafted and
armed
disproportionate
numbers of
people
of Color
to
fight
its wars
overseas,
and
locally, police
forces and the criminal
justice system
arrest
and incarcerate
disproportionate
numbers of
people
of Color.73 There
is no
such
thing
as a
private sphere
for
people
of Color
except
that
which
they manage
to
create
and
protect
in an
otherwise hostile environment.
The
differences between
the concerns of
white
feminists
and
those
of feminists of
Color
are indicative
of these distinct
political
groundings.
White feminists'
concerns about
the
unhealthy
conse-
quences
of standards
for feminine
beauty,
their
focus on the
unequal
division of
household
labor,
and
their attention
to child-
70
Joseph
and
Lewis,
eds.
(n.
16
above),
esp.
33-35.
7'
Friedan
(n.
59
above),
esp.
326-32.
2
I
owe
this
insight
to
Candace
West,
personal
communication,
October
25,
1986.
73
Joseph
(n.
36
above),
esp.
20;
Craig
Haney,
"The State
of Prisons: What
Happened
to
Justice
in the
'80s?"
(paper presented
at the
American
Psychological
Association
Meetings,
Los
Angeles,
California,
August
1985).
849
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Hurtado
/
RELATING TO PRIVILEGE
hood
identity
formation
stem
from a
political
consciousness
that
seeks to
project private
sphere
issues into
the
public
arena.74
Feminists
of
Color focus instead on
public
issues such as affirma-
tive
action,
racism,
school
desegregation, prison
reform,
and voter
registration-issues
that
cultivate
an
awareness
of the distinction
between
public
policy
and
private
choice.
Because white feminists focus
on
politicizing
the
personal,
their
political
consciousness
about
gender oppression
emerges
primarily
from
examining
everyday
interactions
with
men.
As
Nancy
Henley
observes,
as
wives,
secretaries,
or assistants
to
white
men,
white women are
physically
integrated
around
centers
of
power,
which makes
it
necessary
for
powerful
white
men to
have
"frequent
interaction-verbal
and
nonverbal-with
women."75
These
frequent
interactions
promote
and reinforce
white
women's
socialization to
docility, passivity,
and
allegiance
to
white
men,
so
that white woman
experience
an
individualized
and internalized
form
of social control.76
As
a
result,
the
white
feminist
movement
is
the
only
political
movement
to
develop
its
own clinical
approach-feminist
therapy-to
overcoming oppression
at
the
interpersonal
level.77
In
contrast,
other
oppressed groups
in
American
society
"are
often
physically
separated, by
geography,
ghettos,
and labor
hier-
archies,
from
power
centers."78
People
of
Color;
as
a
group,
do
not
have constant
familial interactions with white
men,
and social
control
is
exerted
in
a
direct
and
impersonal
manner. Instead
of
developing
a
culturally specific
therapy,
ethnic
and racial
political
movements
in
the United States
fight
vehemently against
the use of
therapeutic
treatments which
depoliticize
and individualize their
concerns
by
addressing
social
problems
as
if
they
emerged
from the
psychology
of
the
oppressed.79
These
differences
in
political approaches
reflect differences
in
women's relational
position
to white men.
When
white middle-
class women
rebel,
they
are accused
of
mental illness and
placed
in
'4
See,
for
instance,
Susie
Orbach,
Fat Is a
Feminist Issue
(New
York:
Paddington,
1978);
Heidi
Hartmann,
"The
Unhappy
Marriage
of
Marxism
and Feminism:
Towards a More
Progressive
Union,"
in
Women
and
Revolution,
ed.
Lydia Sargent
(Boston:
South
End
Press, 1981),
18;
Chodorow
(n.
41
above);
and
Spender
(n.
44
above).
75
Henley, Body
Politics
(n.
5
above),
15.
76
Ibid.
"
Nancy Henley,
"Assertiveness
Training: Making
the
Political
Personal"
(paper
presented
at the
Society
for the
Study
of Social
Problems, Boston, Mass.,
August
1979),
esp.
8.
78
Henley,
Body
Politics,
15.
9
William
Ryan,
Blaming
the
Victim
(New
York:
Pantheon, 1971).
850
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Summer 1989/ SIGNS
mental institutions.80
When
people
of
Color
rebel,
they
are accused
of violence and
placed
in
prisons.8'
This difference in
treatment
is
related to the distance
of each
group
from
the
center of
power.
Political socialization
and survival skills
Women of
Color are
marginalized
in U.S.
society
from
the
time
they
are
born.
Marginalization
is
not a status conferred on them as
they
step
outside
the confines
of
ascribed
roles,
but
as
Audre Lorde
poignantly
describes,
it is
a condition of their lives
that
is
commu-
nicated to them
by
the
hatred of
strangers.
A
consciousness of this
hatred and the
political
reasons behind
it
begins
in
childhood:
I
don't like to talk about
hate.
I
don't like to remember the
cancellation
and
hatred,
heavy
as
my
wished-for
death,
seen
in
the
eyes
of so
many
white
people
from the
time
I
could
see. It
was echoed
in
newspapers
and
movies and
holy
pictures
and comic books and Amos
'n'
Andy
radio
programs.
I
had no tools to dissect
it,
no
language
to name it.
The AA
subway
train
to Harlem.
I clutch
my
mother's
sleeve.... On
one side of me a man
reading
a
paper.
On
the
other,
a woman in
a
fur
hat
staring
at me. Her mouth twitches
as she stares and then her
gaze drops
down,
pulling
mine
with
it. Her
leather-gloved
hand
plucks
at
the line
where
my
new
blue
snowpants
and
her
sleek fur coat meet.
She
jerks
her
coat
closer to
her.
I
look.
I
do not see
whatever
terrible
thing
she
is
seeing
on the seat between
us-probably
a
roach.
But she
has
communicated her horror to me.
It
must
be
something
very
bad
from
the
way
she
is
looking,
so
I
pull my
snowsuit
closer to me
away
from
it,
too. When
I
look
up
the woman
is
still
staring
at
me,
her
nose holes and
eyes
huge.
And sud-
denly
I
realize there
is
nothing
crawling up
the seat between
us:
it is
me
she
doesn't
want her coat to touch
....
No
word
has been
spoken.
I'm
afraid to
say
anything
to
my
mother
because
I
don't know
what
I've
done.
I
look at the
sides
of
my
snowpants,
secretly.
Is
there
something
on
them? Some-
thing's
going
on here I
do not
understand,
but
I will
never
forget
it. Her
eyes.
The flared nostrils. The hate.82
80
Charlotte Perkins
Gilman,
The
Yellow
Wallpaper
(New
York:
Feminist
Press,
1973);
Barbara Ehrenreich
and
Deirdre
English,
eds.,
For Her Own
Good:
150 Years
of
the
Experts'
Advice to Women
(Garden
City,
N.Y.:
Anchor, 1978).
81
Alfred
Blumstein,
"On
the
Racial
Disproportionality
of
United States Prison
Populations,"
Journal
of
Criminal
Law and
Criminology
73
(Fall 1983):
1259-81.
8'
Lorde
(n.
35
above),
147-48.
851
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Hurtado
/
RELATING TO PRIVILEGE
Experiences
such as these force women of Color to
acquire
survival
skills
as
early
as
five
years
of
age.83
Many
children of Color serve
as
the official
translators
for
their
monolingual
relatives
in
disputes
with
companies
and
agencies unresponsive
to
poor, working-class
people.
Early
interaction with the
public sphere helps
many
women of
Color to
develop
a
public
identity
and the
political
skills
to fend off state intervention.
Women of Color do not have the
rewards of
seduction offered to them.
Relatively
few
get
a
high
school
diploma,
even fewer finish
college,
and
only
an
infinitesimal
number obtain
graduate
degrees.84
Most women of Color have
to
contribute to
the
economic survival
of their
families,
and therefore
their commitment to
obtaining
an
education,
acquiring
economic
independence,
and
practicing
a
profession
are
part
of
economic
survival.85
In
addition,
the low-income
status of
most
women
of
Color means that
they
must
acquire
survival
skills
such
as
sustain-
ing
informal networks
of
support,
practicing
alternative
forms of
health
care,
and
organizing
for
political
and
social
change.86
By
comparison,
the childhoods of
many
white middle-class
feminists were
protected by
classism
and racism.
As
a
consequence,
many
do not
acquire
their
political
consciousness of
gender oppres-
sion
until
they
become adults.87
Lacking
experience
in
challenging
authorities and
white men in
particular,
white feminists
often
seem
surprised
at the
harshness
with
which
the
power
structure
responds
to
threat,
and
they
do
not have
well-developed
defenses to
fend off
the attacks.
They
often turn
their
anger
inward rather than
seeing
it
as
a valid
response.88
In
planning political
actions
some
adopt
white
men's
approaches,
others
reject
them
totally.89
White
liberal
femi-
nists,
for
instance,
have had
a
significant
impact
at
the
macro-level
because
they
have
adopted
the bureaucratic
language
and
sociopo-
litical rules that are
congenial
to the
power
structure.90 White
83
Joseph
(n.
36
above),
esp.
32-33, 40;
Cherrie
Moraga
and
Gloria
Anzaldua,
eds.,
This
Bridge
Called
My
Back:
Writings by
Radical Women
of
Color
(Watertown,
Mass.:
Persephone,
1981).
84
Segura
(n.
36
above).
85
Pesquera
(n.
36
above).
86
Brant,
ed.;
Robert
T.
Trotter III and
Juan
Antonio
Chavira,
Curanderismo:
Mexican/American
Folk
Healing
(Athens:
University
of
Georgia
Press, 1981);
Aida
Hurtado,
"A View from Within:
Midwife
Practices
in
South
Texas,"
International
Quarterly
of
Community
Health Education
8,
no.
4
(1987-88): 317-39;
Pesquera.
87
Friedan
(n.
59
above),
esp.
73-94.
88
Carol
Tavris,
Anger:
The Misunderstood Emotion
(New
York: Simon
&
Schuster,
1982),
esp.
25-45.
89
Jaggar
(n.
17
above),
esp.
197,
286-87.
90
Ibid.,
197.
852
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Summer
1989/ SIGNS
radical
feminists
reject
men's
approaches
and
are
successful
at
the
micro-level of interaction in
developing
modes
of
political
organiz-
ing
that are consensual and nonhierarchical.91
In
contrast,
the
political
skills
of
feminists of
Color are neither
the conventional
political
skills of
white liberal feminists nor the
free-spirited
approaches
of
white radical feminists.
Instead,
femi-
nists of
Color
train to be
urban
guerrillas
by doing
battle
every
day
with
the
apparatus
of the
state.'9 Their tactics are
not recorded or
published
for others to
study
and are often misunderstood
by
white
middle-class
feminists. One
basic tactic
is
using anger
effectively.93
Women
of color
in
America have
grown up
within
a
sym-
phony
of
anger,
at
being
silenced,
at
being
unchosen,
at
knowing
that
when
we
survive,
it is in
spite
of a
world that
takes for
granted
our
lack
of
humanness,
and
which hates our
very
existence outside
of
its service.
And I
say
symphony
rather
than
cacophony
because
we have had to learn to
orchestrate those furies so
that
they
do not tear us
apart.
We
have had to learn
to
move
through
them and use them
for
strength
and force and
insight
within
our
daily
lives.
Those
of us
who
did
not
learn this difficult lesson did not survive.
And
part
of
my
anger
is
always
libation for
my
fallen
sisters.94
The loss of children
is
one of the main
reasons
for
the
anger
felt
by
many
women of Color. There is a
contemporary
ring
to
Sojourner
Truth's
words,
"I
have borne thirteen
children and seen them
most
all sold off to
slavery."95 Drugs, prison,
discrimination,
poverty,
and
racism continue to
deprive
women of
Color
of
their children at
alarming
rates
in
contemporary
U.S.
society.
These losses
and their
meaning
for the
survival
of
future
generations
often
distinguish
the
concerns of feminists
of
Color from those
of white women.
"Some
problems
we
share
as
women,
some we do not. You fear
your
children
will
grow up
to
join
the
patriarchy
and
testify against
you,
we fear our children
will
be
dragged
from
a
car
and shot
down
in
91
Joyce
Trebilcot,
"Conceiving
Women:
Notes
on
the
Logic
of
Feminism,"
Sinister
Wisdom,
no.
11
(Fall 1979),
43-50.
92
Moraga
and
Anzaldua,
eds.
93
Lorde
(n.
35
above),
esp.
129;
hooks,
Feminist
Theory
from
Margin
to
Center
(n.
36
above);
Moraga
and
Anzaldua,
eds.
(n.
83
above);
Gloria
Anzaldua,
Borderlands-La Frontera
(San
Francisco:
Spinsters/Aunt
Lute,
1987),
esp.
15-23.
94
Lorde,
119.
95
Stanton,
Anthony,
and
Gage,
eds.
(n.
27
above),
1:117.
853
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Hurtado
/
RELATING TO PRIVILEGE
the
street
and
you
will turn
your
backs
upon
the
reasons
they
are
dying."96
These
differences
in
childhood
experiences
with
racism
and
classism,
in
the
necessity
of
developing
survival
skills,
and
in
using
anger
create conflict
between
white
feminists and feminists of
Color.
"When women of
Color
speak
out
of
the
anger
that laces
so
many
of our
contacts
with white
women,
we
are often told that we
are
'creating
a
mood of
hopelessness,' 'preventing
white
women
from
getting past guilt,'
or
'standing
in the
way
of
trusting
commu-
nication
and action.'.
. .
One woman
wrote,
'Because
you
are Black
and
Lesbian,
you
seem
to
speak
with the
moral
authority
of
suffering.'
Yes I am
Black and
Lesbian,
and
what
you
hear in
my
voice
is
fury,
not
suffering. Anger,
not moral
authority.
There
is
a
difference."'9
Implications
for
political
mobilization
Clearly,
whether women are
subordinated
by
white men
through
seduction
or
rejection,
the results are detrimental to
women's
hu-
manity.
Advantages
gained
by
women of Color
because of
their
distance
from white men amount
to
nothing
more than
the
"de-
formed
equality
of
equal
oppression
[to
that of men of
Color.]"98
The
privileges
that
white
women
acquire
because
of
their closeness
to
white men
give
them
only empty
choices. As a
seventy-three-year-
old Black
woman
observes:
"My
mother used to
say
that the black
woman
is
the white
man's mule
and
the
white woman is his
dog.
Now,
she said
that to
say
this:
we do the
heavy
work and
get
beat
whether we
do
it
well
or
not. But
the
white woman is
closer
to
the
master and
he
pats
them on
the
head and lets them
sleep
in
the
house,
but he
ain't
gon'
treat neither
one
like
he
was
dealing
with
a
person."99
Seen as
obstinate mules or as
obedient
dogs,
both
groups
are
objectified.
Neither
is
seen as
fully
human;
both
are
eligible
for
race-,
class-,
and
gender-specific
modes
of
domination.'??
In
a
pa-
triarchal
society,
all women
are
oppressed
and
ultimately
that
is
what
unites
them.
Neither a valid
analysis
of women's subordination
nor
an
ethnically
and
racially
diverse feminist
movement is
likely
to
6
Lorde,
131-32.
97
Ibid.,
130.
98
Davis,
"Reflections
on
the
Black Women's
Role
in
the
Community
of
Slaves,"
Black Scholar
3,
no.
4
(December 1971):
3-15,
quote
on
8.
'
As
quoted
by
Collins
(n.
23
above),
17.
100
Ibid.,
esp.
18.
854
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Summer
1989
/
SIGNS
emerge
if
white middle-class feminists
do not
integrate
their own
privilege
from association
with white men into their
analysis
of
gender
subordination.
This
requires
an awareness that their subor-
dination,
based
on
seduction,
has
separated
them from
other
women who are subordinated
by rejection.
This
separation
can
be
bridged,
but white
women
must
develop
a
new kind of conscious-
ness and renounce the
privilege
that comes from
their
relationship
to white men.
If
women
of
Color
are
to embrace a feminist movement
then
they,
too,
must
expand
their consciousness
of
gender
oppression.
They,
too,
must understand differences
in the
dynamics
of seduc-
tion and
rejection
and,
in
particular,
that
seduction
is
no less
oppressive
than
rejection.
Gloria
Anzaldua,
a Chicana activist
and
scholar,
advocates
a
consciousness
that
simultaneously rejects
and
embraces-so as not to exclude-what
it
rejects.
It is
a mestiza
consciousness
that
can
perceive multiple
realities at
once:
It
is
not
enough
to
stand
on the
opposite
river
bank,
shouting
questions, challenging
patriarchal,
white conventions.
A
counterstance
locks
one
into a duel of
oppressor
and
op-
pressed;
locked in mortal
combat,
like
the
cop
and the
criminal,
both
are
reduced to a common denominator
of
violence.
The counterstance refutes
the dominant culture's
views and
beliefs,
and,
for
this,
it is
proudly
defiant
....
But
it
is
not a
way
of life. At
some
point,
on our
way
to
a new
consciousness,
we will have to leave the
opposite
bank,
the
split
between the two mortal
combatants somehow healed
so
that we are on both shores at
once, and,
at
once,
see
through
serpent
and
eagle
eyes....
The
possibilities
are numerous
once we decide to act and not
react.'""
The
experiences
of women of Color
in
U.S.
society expose
other
aspects
of
patriarchal society
that are
only beginning
to
emerge
in
feminist
theory
and feminist
political
action. It
is
only through
feminist
theory's integration
of a
critique
of
the
different
forms
of
oppression experienced
by
women that
a
progressive
political
women's
movement can
grow,
thrive,
and last.
Board
of
Studies in
Psychology
University
of
California,
Santa Cruz
o10
Anzaldua,
78-79.
855
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