Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of Herself: Some Thoughts on Canadian Feminism
2004; Springer International Publishing; Volume: 30; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0311-4198
Autores Tópico(s)Feminist Theory and Gender Studies
ResumoIntroduction Before I begin, I would like to give a brief explanation for this paper's title. It is borrowed from a Canadian play called Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God. Written by Djanet Sears, this play was a collaboration between Nightwood Theatre (Toronto's oldest feminist theatre), and Obsidian Theatre (Toronto's newest theatre featuring Black artists). To me, this is a rather eerie coincidence, since I did not know about the play's production history when I decided to name this paper after it. The play is about a Black woman's search for her faith, which is waning, in light of the impending break-up of her marriage. This paper is about my search for myself, as Black woman, in the light of my impending entry into the 'real world'. 'Black' and 'woman' are the two words that immediately come to mind whenever I'm asked to describe myself. I am always 'Black', first, and 'female' second. Veronica Chambers writes: To be a young, black [woman] today, I believe, is to feel unsure that your needs and interests can be fully addressed in any one camp. It seems that for sanity's sake you must choose sides - your skin colour versus your gender, blacks (implicitly male) versus women (implicitly white). Because of the pressing problems in the community - poverty, drugs, men's absence from many of our families - most young black women choose to play the game like boys on a b-ball court. When it comes down to picking teams - skins vs. shirts - most of us opt to play skin, shedding our gender questions like a layer of clothing that becomes tedious and superfluous on a hot ghetto day.1 To me, this explanation of why Black women often choose their skin colour over their gender is accurate ... to a point. Although I resonate with what Chambers says about feeling forced to 'choose sides', and that 'most of us opt to play skin', I do not quite accept the idea that that choice is fully 'ours' to make. Daniel Yon2 argues that the process of identity-formation is highly ambivalent. A young Black (or any racialised) woman may 'choose' her skin colour over her gender not just because that is what she opts to play, but also because that is what she feels she must play. Skin colour is the aspect of her identity that is the most 'socially salient'.3 Recently, I have learned that the oppression of women of colour cannot be collapsed into a simple 'either/or' situation. Thus, it is not a case of either I am oppressed because I am Black, and therefore, I choose to fight racial oppression, or I am oppressed because I am female, and therefore, I choose to fight gender oppression. Rather, it is the union of 'Blackness' and 'Femaleness' that results in multiple cycles of oppression, which are very difficult to rupture. As such, a much more layered and nuanced analysis of women's experiences is required, for the further development of a Canadian feminist theory. 'Black Feminist Thought' in the USA and Canada Patricia Hill Collins sees 'Black Feminist Thought' as being historically situated in the oppressive experiences of American Black women. It is a critical social theory that is used as a tool for resisting those experiences. Through collective identity and action, oppositional bodies of knowledge can be produced, which resist the mainstream ways of theorizing women's oppression. There are six distinguishing features of this theory. Collins stresses that it is not the features themselves that are unique, but rather, it is their convergence that makes Black Feminist Thought different from other bodies of knowledge. One: Black women participate in a dialectical relationship between oppression and activism. Such a relationship is necessary in order to create an activist response to the intersecting axes of oppression - according to ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality - that Black women experience. Two: The tension that links experiences and ideas. As Black women, we may experience similar oppressions but, because of individual differences, we have different ideas about, and responses to, those oppressions. …
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