0:12

Hello

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and welcome to the History of Africana Philosophy

0:15

by GK Jeffers and Peter Adamson, brought

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to you with the support of the King's College London Philosophy

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Department and the LMU in Munich, online

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at historyofphilosophy.net. Today's

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episode, Double Jeopardy, Black

0:28

Feminism. Different

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kinds of problems call for different kinds of solution. Sometimes

0:34

you can break down a big problem into smaller,

0:36

hopefully more manageable problems. Say

0:39

you're trying to fix up a car that's in bad

0:41

shape. You'd go about this by repairing

0:44

each part, one after another. The

0:46

carburetor, then the brakes, then

0:48

the thingy with the coolant inside,

0:50

and then... Well, that's all the

0:52

carb parts we could think of off the top of our heads,

0:54

but you get the idea. Very

0:56

different, though, would be the approach needed for a task

0:59

where Chike and I have more expertise, understanding

1:02

a difficult philosophical text. Here,

1:04

you can't just try to understand each sentence,

1:06

argument, or paragraph on its own, because

1:09

your reading of one part will affect your reading of

1:11

another part. Ideally, you want

1:13

to find an interpretation that provides consistency

1:15

across the whole work.

1:17

Or if you prefer a more down-to-earth example,

1:19

say you're adjusting the seasoning in a stew. If

1:22

you add more spice, you might want to add less

1:25

salt. In cases like these, you

1:27

need to keep an eye on the big picture and

1:29

understand how everything hangs together.

1:32

Many have thought of the plight of black women as

1:34

a problem of the first kind. Black

1:37

women are, of course, black and suffer

1:39

from racism, and they are, of course, women,

1:41

so they suffer from sexism.

1:43

The way to improve the lot of black women is

1:46

to work for equality in these two separate spheres,

1:48

race and gender. Sometimes

1:51

it has seemed that the chief question is not a conceptual,

1:53

but a tactical one, whether it is more

1:55

urgent to fight for racial or gender

1:57

liberation. As we saw a minute

1:59

ago, many episodes ago, figures like Frederick

2:02

Douglass already considered this dilemma at the end

2:04

of the 19th century. Up

2:06

to the middle of the 20th century, more attention

2:08

was directed towards the uniquely parlous

2:10

state of black women, especially those of

2:13

the working class, subjected as they

2:15

are to overlapping forms of prejudice.

2:17

Remember how Claudia Jones spoke

2:19

of triple oppression and super

2:21

exploitation. But even

2:23

this language suggests that the problem is an additive

2:26

one.

2:27

Working class black women are

2:29

oppressed because of racism, sexism, and

2:31

capitalism, so that their overall problem

2:34

can be broken down into three sub problems.

2:37

It seems fair to say that Jones also offered

2:39

a one size fits all solution to deal with all

2:41

three problems at one stroke, namely

2:43

the introduction of socialism.

2:46

Many black feminists in the 1960s and 1970s though, had

2:49

a different analysis. In a way

2:51

that Anna Julia Cooper arguably pioneered

2:54

back in 1892 with her book, A Voice

2:56

from the South,

2:57

these later black feminists argued that black women

2:59

face a problem of the second sort.

3:02

They are in a very special predicament of their

3:04

own.

3:04

And there is no reason to expect that a simple

3:06

combination of efforts towards black liberation

3:09

and women's liberation could ever be sufficient

3:11

to rescue them from that predicament.

3:13

For this reason, building on the legacy of older

3:15

black women's organizations like those we discussed

3:18

in episode 63 with interview guest

3:20

Brittany Cooper,

3:21

these new black feminists banded together

3:23

to form organizations of their own,

3:25

collaborating on the activist front and

3:27

generating a prodigious outpouring of intellectual

3:30

work. Note that we say new

3:32

black feminists. After all, this is not

3:34

our first look at black feminism. We've

3:36

repeatedly addressed previous subjects as black

3:38

feminist thinkers and activists going back

3:41

way past Claudia Jones and even Anna

3:43

Julia Cooper, all the way to Maria W.

3:45

Stewart speeches and writings in the 1830s,

3:48

which we discussed in episode 44.

3:51

But it's only now that we have an episode with black feminism

3:53

in the title because the word feminism

3:55

itself was not commonly used before the 1960s and 70s.

3:59

looking at the intellectual challenge that Black

4:01

feminists posed to the feminist movement

4:04

as it was developing during that time, as

4:06

well as to the Black Power movement of the time. An

4:09

outstanding example of this challenge is a collection

4:11

of writings published in 1970, entitled

4:14

The Black Woman and Anthology, which

4:17

was edited by Toni Cade, or as she

4:19

began to call herself soon thereafter, Toni

4:21

Cade Bambara.

4:23

It contains short works of several genres, poems,

4:26

some by authors we mentioned when discussing the Black

4:28

Arts Movement like Nikki Giovanni, autobiographical

4:31

memoirs, short stories, and argumentative essays.

4:33

In her preface, Cade Bambara questions

4:36

what she takes to be an assumption underlying the feminist

4:38

movement of until that time, namely that

4:40

women are simply women.

4:43

During the 1960s, Black women have

4:45

increasingly felt underserved by that movement

4:47

and have been, turning away from the larger

4:49

society and turning toward each other.

4:53

One of the better-known essays in the collection delves

4:55

into this issue more deeply, Double

4:57

Jeopardy to be Black and Female

4:59

by Frances Biel.

5:01

First published in 1969, this

5:03

groundbreaking manifesto was collected not

5:05

only in Cade Bambara's anthology, but

5:08

also in the white feminist Robin Morgan's landmark

5:10

collection of 1970, Sisterhood is Powerful.

5:14

Biel was a member of SNCC who had helped

5:16

to create that organization's Black Women's

5:18

Liberation Committee.

5:20

The title of her essay suggests a similar idea

5:22

as Jones's triple oppression, and

5:24

thus the use of double instead of triple may

5:27

make it seem that Biel is less interested in class

5:29

than Jones was. But

5:31

in fact, she traces the subjugation of women in

5:33

part to capitalism, with women expected

5:36

to work as mothers and housewives while their

5:38

partners go out to earn money, becoming

5:40

a mere satellite to her mate.

5:43

This of course is something a white feminist might say

5:45

too.

5:46

But Biel argues that the concerns of Black

5:48

women have usually been overlooked by white feminists

5:51

who largely come from a middle-class background.

5:54

In particular, Black women offer what Biel

5:56

calls an escape valve for capitalism,

5:59

just as poor whites.

5:59

can at least comfort themselves by looking down on

6:02

black people,

6:03

black men cope with their own economic exploitation

6:05

by being glad that at least they aren't women.

6:08

Along the same lines, an essay here

6:10

by Kay Lindsay, called The Black Woman

6:13

as Woman, observes that up until now,

6:15

the black movement has been led by men and

6:17

the feminist movement by white women.

6:20

Thus, Lindsay writes, the black woman

6:22

finds herself on the outside of both political

6:24

entities, in spite of the fact that she is

6:26

the object of both forms of oppression.

6:29

The same point was made in the title of another collection,

6:31

published a bit later, All the women are

6:34

white, all the blacks are men, but some

6:36

of us are brave. The point being

6:38

that black women must be brave, having

6:40

been ignored even by the two great liberatory

6:42

movements of the day. Black

6:45

feminists insisted that white feminists could

6:47

not presume to be addressing the issues of black women

6:49

with their efforts to face the oppression that they,

6:52

as white women, faced.

6:54

White women have greater access to middle class luxuries

6:57

and greater social capital, and have a

6:59

place in the ideal family unit.

7:01

Black women often do the dirty work for such

7:03

families, and are seen purely in the terms

7:06

of what physical labor they can offer.

7:08

As Lindsay puts it, stereotypes and expectations

7:11

of the black woman see her as nothing more than

7:13

a body.

7:14

Without the inducements offered her white counterpart,

7:17

while white females are sexual objects,

7:19

black women are sexual laborers. Another

7:23

striking essay of this time, one that did not

7:25

appear in Cade Bamber as the black woman, is

7:28

Linda LaRue's The Black Movement and Women's

7:30

Liberation.

7:32

LaRue was a graduate student in political science

7:34

when her piece was published in the May 1970

7:36

issue of The Black Scholar, an important

7:39

outlet for black intellectual work under the

7:41

previous year.

7:42

We find in this piece a particularly

7:44

stern critique of white feminism.

7:47

LaRue mocks talk of oppression by the

7:49

sort of white women who pronounce themselves second

7:52

tired of Playboy foldouts and

7:54

of Christian Dior lowering hemlines

7:56

or adding ruffles.

7:58

She admits that white women are suppo-

7:59

oppressed, prevented from achieving their full

8:02

potential, but this is very different from being

8:04

oppressed as Black women are.

8:06

White women are simply not immiserated in anything

8:09

like the same way.

8:10

So she expects little or nothing from the white

8:12

feminist movement.

8:13

After all, white women have never shown much concern

8:15

for the situation of Black men, so why

8:17

would they be helpful allies for Black women?

8:21

LaRue mentions something else that comes up a lot

8:23

in Black feminist writings of this period, namely

8:25

a government report on the Negro family

8:28

produced by Patrick Moynihan for

8:30

the Department of Labor.

8:32

Moynihan would later become a senator, but probably

8:34

not with the help of many votes from Black women.

8:37

His central contention was that Black families

8:39

are, unlike white families, matriarchal,

8:42

something that could be traced all the way back to the time of

8:44

slavery, when Black families were regularly

8:46

split apart with children often not even knowing

8:48

their fathers.

8:50

The powerful place of mothers and wives, according

8:52

to Moynihan, imposes a crushing burden

8:55

on the Negro male.

8:57

This leads to a disempowerment of Black men

8:59

to the birth of children outside of wedlock and

9:01

ultimately to widespread poverty.

9:04

Black feminists, understandably, were affronted

9:06

by being told that their supposed power, and

9:09

not say their oppression by white power,

9:11

was the root cause of problems in the Black community.

9:14

But even more outrageous was that many Black

9:16

men seemed more or less to agree with Moynihan.

9:20

This brings us to the other side of the critique offered

9:22

by Black feminists. They complained just as

9:24

much about Black men as they did about white

9:26

women.

9:27

And it cannot be said that the male leaders of the Black

9:29

liberation movement gave no reason for complaint.

9:33

An infamous supposed example is Stokely Carmichael

9:35

saying there was a position for women in the movement,

9:38

namely prone.

9:40

The attribution of this sentiment to Carmichael is

9:42

in fact a misrepresentation of a moment in

9:44

which he was doing a sort of comedic bit.

9:47

Unfortunately his autobiography, Ready for Revolution,

9:50

illustrates the major role Black women played in the

9:52

movement.

9:53

Still there was plenty of other real talk

9:55

in this time of Black men reclaiming their masculinity.

9:58

Actually, we mention an example.

9:59

in episode 101 when quoting

10:02

the remarks of Ossie Davis at the funeral of Malcolm

10:04

X to the effect that X represented

10:07

our living Black manhood.

10:09

And we're not the only people who have quoted this line.

10:12

It appears in one of the most controversial works of

10:14

the Black feminist movement,

10:16

a combination of memoir and polemic

10:18

called Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman

10:21

by Michelle Wallace.

10:23

This book appeared in 1978, three

10:25

years after Wallace's essay Anger in

10:27

Isolation was published in The Village Voice.

10:30

There she told of how she found herself liberated

10:32

by feminist ideas, only for these newfound

10:35

freedoms to be taken away when she joined up with

10:37

the Black nationalist movement.

10:39

Her uncompromising message is this,

10:41

the Black man has learned to hate himself and

10:43

to hate you even more. And

10:45

she links the problem to the heedlessness of white feminists,

10:48

who are more eager to draw parallels between their

10:51

own subjugation of women and the racial

10:53

subjugation of Black men.

10:55

Since Black men are fellow victims, white

10:57

feminists give them a pass when they mistreat Black

10:59

women and expect these women to be housebound

11:02

drudges supposedly in the cause of the revolution.

11:05

Now in the book Black Macho, she greatly

11:08

extends this argument, making the case that

11:10

Black men are now in fact among the most important

11:12

sources of oppression for Black women.

11:15

Black men see racial liberation as a quest

11:17

to undo their own emasculation,

11:19

something they will achieve through access to

11:21

white women sexually and the systematic

11:24

subjugation and suppression of Black women.

11:27

Wallace's harsh diatribe was no doubt

11:29

intended to be provocative, and if so,

11:32

it worked.

11:33

In 2015, even her mother,

11:35

the artist Faith Ringgold, would write

11:37

a critical response to Black Macho.

11:40

Closer to the time of its publication, Robert

11:42

Staples published an article-length reply in 1979,

11:46

so a year after the appearance of Wallace's

11:48

book.

11:49

It begins by speaking almost nostalgically

11:51

of a not-so-distant time, when it could safely

11:53

be assumed that the Black man was certainly

11:56

in no position to be sexist, whether he wanted

11:58

to be or not.

11:59

He groups Wallace together with Nozake

12:02

Shange, famous for her critically acclaimed

12:04

choreo poem for colored girls who

12:06

have considered suicide when the rainbow is enough.

12:09

This is a very complex theatrical work,

12:12

which Staples mentions here because black

12:14

men are depicted committing heinous acts

12:16

from rape to infanticide. Staples

12:19

mounts a kind of defense for black men whom

12:21

he portrays as being victimized by a white-dominated

12:24

capitalist society. In

12:27

a bold reversal, he intimates that

12:29

Wallace's book is right-wing propaganda

12:31

because it ignores the pernicious effects of capitalism.

12:35

As we've seen, this was certainly not an omission in

12:37

black feminism more generally, but it

12:39

is arguably a relevant point as concerns

12:41

black macho in particular.

12:43

Staples also makes the argument that Wallace's

12:46

and Shange's views can be related to the fact

12:48

that they are of a middle-class background.

12:50

If this seems unhelpfully ad hominem, we

12:53

should bear in mind that black feminists were often making

12:55

the same point about white feminists in this period.

12:58

Ultimately though, Staples's main charge,

13:00

or even lament, is that Wallace

13:02

and Shange are undermining racial solidarity.

13:06

They adopt what he calls an arcane philosophy

13:09

by which black women will go it alone outside

13:11

family bonds, a plan with little prospect

13:13

of popular acceptance or success.

13:17

But arcane or not, this was indeed

13:19

a philosophy many black feminists were embracing

13:21

at the time.

13:22

In the aforementioned anthologies, we can find

13:24

many passages attacking family arrangements

13:27

in general and black fathers in particular

13:29

as oppressive to women.

13:31

The black woman includes a darkly

13:33

hilarious memoir by Joanna Clark

13:36

called simply motherhood, telling of

13:38

her struggles to stay afloat financially with

13:40

no help or in fact considerable

13:42

hindrance from the father of her children.

13:45

At a more abstract level, K. Lindsay

13:47

suggests that the standard family unit in America

13:50

is an intrinsically white institution put

13:52

in place to support the state.

13:55

Reproductive rights are relevant here. One

13:57

of Kate Bambara's contributions to her own

13:59

anthology.

13:59

anthropology defends the use of the birth control pill

14:02

against black men who think that their partners ought

14:04

to be rearing warriors for the revolution.

14:07

Then there is a piece by Cheryl Clark called

14:10

Lesbianism, an Act of Resistance, which

14:12

was published in an anthology titled This

14:15

Bridge Called My Back, writings by

14:17

radical women of color. For

14:19

Clark, male-female family relations

14:21

are typically characterized by tyrannical power.

14:24

Slavery itself was a radical application

14:26

of the methods of oppression men had always

14:28

used on women.

14:30

Men always relate to women as property,

14:32

as a sexual commodity, as a servant, as

14:34

a source of free or cheap labor, and

14:36

as an innately inferior being.

14:39

More than a sexual preference, lesbianism

14:41

is a full-blown revolt against the predatory

14:44

heterosexuality.

14:47

This essay by Clark appeared in 1981,

14:49

but it harkens back to earlier developments, with

14:52

the emergence of such organizations as the

14:54

Combahee River Collective, a group of

14:56

black lesbian activists, including the sisters

14:58

Barbara and Beverly Smith,

15:00

Demita Frazier, the aforementioned Cheryl

15:02

Clark, and a figure who will be getting her own

15:04

episode before long, Audre Lorde.

15:07

Founded in 1974, the collective

15:09

was named after a raid involving Harriet

15:12

Tubman, which freed 750 people from slavery in 1853.

15:16

A statement outlining the rationale

15:19

and ideals of the collective is one of the key

15:21

documents for understanding black feminism in the

15:23

1970s.

15:24

For one thing, it provides the first example in this

15:27

episode of a group of black women explicitly

15:29

naming themselves black feminists, reminding

15:31

us not to take for granted how common that term

15:34

has become today. The statement

15:36

is also credited with introducing the term

15:38

identity politics, which of course still

15:40

lives on today, though more often is a

15:42

lazy term of abuse than as an aspiration

15:45

or positive strategy.

15:47

Barbara Smith has remarked that this is often misunderstood.

15:50

We were not saying that we didn't care about anyone

15:52

who wasn't exactly like us.

15:54

The collective was in fact open to coalition

15:57

with other groups, but embracing the feminist

15:59

slogan that

15:59

personal is political,

16:01

the group wanted to embrace their unique perspective

16:04

as people excluded simultaneously on the grounds

16:06

of race, gender, and sexuality.

16:09

As they say in the statement,

16:11

the major systems of oppression are interlocking,

16:13

notice not just added one on top of

16:15

another. Here we have the notion

16:17

that Kimberlé Crenshaw would later famously

16:20

dub intersectionality.

16:22

In fact, Demi-de-Frasier recalls that in

16:24

conversations around the time of the statement, she

16:26

told the others that, we stand at the intersection

16:29

where our identities are indivisible.

16:32

With the collective, we see a further step in the direction

16:35

of taking particular points of view seriously.

16:37

Just as black women cannot trust white women

16:40

and black men to simply represent

16:42

them, so black lesbians will have their

16:44

own concerns that are not necessarily going to

16:46

be solved through separate struggles for equality

16:48

with regard to race, gender, and sexual orientation.

16:52

This insight is now often appreciated by

16:55

the potential coalition partners of such groups.

16:58

An interesting and self-critical reflection by

17:00

the white feminist Winnie Brinus, published

17:02

years later in 2002, is open

17:05

in admitting the failures of the movement in the 60s

17:07

and 70s. She points out

17:08

that white women's organizations, her

17:11

example is the Bread and Roses group, which

17:13

like the Combahee River Collective was active in

17:16

Boston,

17:16

did voice support for the Black Panthers and

17:19

for racial equality. But she also

17:21

admits that, we thought all women were

17:23

us and we were all women,

17:25

exactly the oversimplification we saw being

17:27

identified by Kate Bambara in the

17:29

preface to the black woman.

17:32

White feminists of the time often didn't

17:34

know or work with black women and

17:36

thus were not exposed to their viewpoints.

17:38

In particular, they underestimated the extent

17:40

to which interracial work for a feminist cause

17:43

might seem to undermine racial solidarity.

17:46

Thus, black women were pulled between two movements

17:49

and served well by neither.

17:51

In a footnote, Brinus quotes another feminist

17:53

thinker, Susan McHenry, as pointing

17:55

to the need for greater dialogue

17:57

to get past the situation where we alternate

17:59

hazard the Platon-Tudeness, wouldn't

18:02

it be wonderful to work together or shout

18:04

racist across a widening chasm?

18:08

The same problems of division were appearing in other countries

18:10

at this time, but with a twist.

18:13

Take for instance the Brixton Black Women's Group

18:15

in Britain.

18:16

It was formed in 1974 on

18:18

the basis of a craft organization whose members

18:20

decided to become politically active.

18:23

One model was the Black Panthers, but as

18:25

a later account by the members says, the group

18:27

had very much its own flavor because of the Caribbean

18:30

influence.

18:32

In a British context, a pressing question was one

18:34

we've seen cropping up in other contexts, especially

18:36

in Guyana, with the story of Walter Rodney,

18:39

what attitude should black activists take towards

18:41

other non-white groups, like South Asians?

18:44

The answer in this case was to reach across the divide,

18:47

notably under the aegis of the Organization

18:49

of Women of Asian and African Descent, founded

18:52

in 1978 as an umbrella group for

18:54

black and Asian activists.

18:56

But as members of the group wrote a few years

18:58

later, we were beginning to learn very

19:00

quickly that the concept black had

19:02

very different meanings for those of us living in white-dominated

19:05

societies and regions compared to those

19:07

of us from societies which were ostensibly

19:09

independent. There was

19:11

also concern not to let sexual orientation

19:14

split the movement, as it arguably did in the

19:16

US. But the price of

19:18

that unity was a failure to discuss homosexuality

19:21

at all.

19:22

The group admitted in retrospect,

19:24

this issue, more than anything else, showed

19:26

the weakness which became exposed when oppressed

19:28

women tried to organize around both the

19:30

traditional areas of struggle and those issues

19:33

specific to our oppression as a sex.

19:36

A question emerges from the story of black feminism

19:39

as we've told it thus far. Did its strength

19:41

in challenging other movements count as a

19:43

kind of weakness when turned back on itself?

19:46

Having taken seriously the importance of the

19:48

specific perspective of black women, it

19:50

would hardly be consistent to resist the consideration

19:53

of even more specific perspectives,

19:55

yet this could lead to worries about fracture within

19:57

the movement.

19:59

of the Brixton group as compared to the American

20:02

examples we've mostly been discussing, also

20:04

shows that Black feminism necessarily meant

20:06

something different in different cultural and political contexts.

20:10

It's a lesson shown even more vividly by one

20:12

final text we want to consider, a study of

20:14

the oppression of women in Africa by the Senegalese

20:16

scholar Awa Tiam.

20:18

It appeared in French in 1978 under

20:21

the title La Parole au n'Eresse,

20:24

meaning roughly, let Black women speak,

20:26

or as it is more assertively phrased in the title

20:29

of the English translation, Black Sisters

20:31

Speak Out.

20:33

The book powerfully delivers on the promise of

20:35

that title.

20:36

The first section of the book consists of autobiographical

20:39

stories told by African women who suffered

20:41

through mistreatment at the hands of family and

20:44

husbands, often because of forced marriages

20:46

and polygamy. In the second part

20:48

of the book, we find Tiam drawing conclusions

20:51

in a set of blistering essays on these practices,

20:53

genital mutilation, and African women's

20:55

attempts to lighten their skin or otherwise

20:58

seem more white.

21:00

Tiam is more inclined towards universalism

21:03

than the particularism and intersectional thinking

21:05

of contemporary Black feminism in the US.

21:07

She writes, we go beyond the racial

21:10

problem since we are taking our stance not

21:12

only as Black women, African women, but

21:14

also as members of the human race, without

21:17

regard for any ethnic considerations. As

21:19

far as we are concerned, this human race consists

21:22

of social classes and two categories of individuals,

21:25

men and women, whose relationship to

21:27

each other is that of dominating to dominated.

21:30

However, she does make the now familiar point

21:33

that it is a false comparison to equate

21:35

the oppression of women, implicitly white

21:37

women, with that of Black people.

21:40

And above all, her book points to the fact that African

21:42

women were subject to forms of oppression that

21:45

were bound up with local practices.

21:47

The struggle of the Black African woman can

21:49

and must be conceived in some other way than

21:52

as a carbon copy of the European woman's

21:54

struggle.

21:55

While she herself is highly critical of some African

21:58

cultural norms, she's wary of it.

21:59

of attacks made by outsiders without sufficient

22:02

understanding.

22:03

For example, she gives a nuanced treatment

22:05

of the practice of female circumcision,

22:07

discussing the extent to which women in these societies

22:10

supported, even as she identifies

22:12

it as real mutilation, real

22:14

torture.

22:16

On the question of polygamy, she's more forthrightly

22:18

in opposition, since it seems evident to

22:20

her that only men think it's a good idea.

22:24

Tiam's exploration of the gender politics of

22:26

Africa in the 1970s makes for interesting

22:28

reading alongside the works of black feminists in

22:30

America, since some of the latter often

22:33

talked of Africa in idealized, optimistic

22:35

terms.

22:37

If lesbianism offered one model for escaping

22:39

patriarchal family structures, another

22:41

was found in ideas about traditional African society.

22:45

Cade Bambara asserts in The Black Woman that

22:47

before colonialism, the communitarian

22:50

and cooperative nature of African societies

22:52

prevented the systematic oppression of women.

22:55

The woman was neither subordinate nor dominant,

22:57

but a sharer in policymaking and privileges

23:00

had mobility and opportunity and dignity.

23:03

Mary Ann Weathers, in her pioneering 1969 piece,

23:06

An Argument for Black Women's Liberation as a

23:09

Revolutionary Force, goes even further.

23:11

She says that in African tribes, households,

23:14

let alone heads of households, are non-existent.

23:18

And you'll remember that way back in episode 22 of

23:20

this series, we talked about scholarship that

23:22

associates African culture with a relatively

23:25

egalitarian role for women.

23:27

Awa Tiang seems to pour cold water

23:29

on all that. She does not associate

23:31

the most sexist and oppressive aspects of Africa

23:34

in her own day with colonialism,

23:35

and says bluntly that it is a myth that African

23:38

societies are matriarchal.

23:40

Families may be matrilineal, but that's

23:42

not the same thing at all. And in fact, women

23:44

in black Africa have, she argues, no

23:47

real power.

23:49

To state the obvious, all these debates are

23:51

still with us today.

23:52

There are real and important empirical questions

23:55

to be sorted out.

23:56

How, in fact, do black women, black men, and

23:58

white women compare socioeconomic?

23:59

which historical societies

24:02

in Africa or elsewhere might offer

24:04

us models for less exploitative family

24:06

relations?

24:07

Then there are important questions of tactics.

24:10

When interests do not completely align, is it

24:12

always necessary to work within separate organizations?

24:15

What room is there under such circumstances for

24:17

collaboration? These problems

24:19

lead directly to more broadly philosophical questions.

24:22

If we accept intersectional representations

24:25

of Black women's issues, what are the epistemological

24:27

and ethical consequences? Do

24:29

you need to inhabit a perspective fully to

24:31

understand its challenges? When

24:34

is it permissible, or even possible, to

24:36

question the testimony of someone with a significantly

24:38

different identity or set of identities?

24:41

What is an identity anyway? We

24:44

won't be resolving these issues in our Humble Podcast,

24:46

but we will be continuing to think about them as

24:49

we embark on a series of episodes on Black

24:51

Feminist Thought in the 1970s and onward

24:53

into the 80s and 90s. We

24:55

will turn in the next episode to the expression

24:57

of thoughts that we might call Black Feminist,

24:59

or alternatively not, by

25:01

some creative writers of the time. Writers

25:03

like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker

25:06

took the world by storm in the 1970s,

25:08

so much so that this period is looked upon as a

25:10

Black women's literary renaissance.

25:13

So what more reason could you need to

25:15

listen? You're off your walker if

25:17

you missed the next installment of The History

25:20

of Africa

25:20

of Philosophy.