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Review by Christine E. Hutchins
Duchess Harris, Associate Professor of American Studies at Macalester College, opens her important new book, Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton, with a problem. In Paula Giddings's 1996 book When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America, Giddings asks, "Who has presented the political agenda for Black women?
Harris and Giddings show that the 1963 March on Washington represented an overwhelmingly male Black consciousness and Betty Friedan's 1966 Feminist Mystique an essentially middle-class and white feminist movement. Harris begins, "Since Giddings did not answer her own question, this is where I enter. I wrote this book because I wanted to take up the analysis of Black women's involvement in American political life where Giddings left off."
Harris's analysis is both hopeful and disheartening. On the one hand, Harris provides oral, archival and literary histories of Black women without whom neither the Black Power nor the feminist movements would have progressed. On the other hand, Harris demonstrates that these movements, so beholden to Black women, have never adequately or fairly represented their needs and desires. Worse, they have too often asked Black women to choose between identities, prioritizing one over others.
The insistence that they choose may be Black women's worst dilemma, pressured as they are under the combined weight of racism, sexism and homophobia. The Black Power movement often asks Black women to set aside concerns over unequal status; feminist organizations often have difficulty recognizing the ways that race factors into equations of gender and power.
Harris shows through examination of media, Congressional records and survey data that in situations in which they feel they must choose, Black women overwhelming concede gender to race. Harris demonstrates that Black women strongly backed O.J. Simpson, accused of murdering his former wife, a white woman. In the hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, testimony by Anita Hill about his sexual improprieties required Black women to balance the possibility of a Black Supreme Court appointment or a gender-troubled appointment. Black women generally excused Thomas, Harris argues, "considering it more important to take a Black hero where one could be found, however flawed he might be."
Woman Power Comes and Goes
Harris divides the book into four parts: A History of Black Feminism; The 1990s in Context; Black Women's Relationships to Party Politic; and Doubting the Democrats.
In these parts, Harris charts the long and winding paths Black feminism traversed from the mid- to late-twentieth-century. Throughout, she describes patterns of significant advances for Black women co-existing with virulent backlash.
For example, although the 1961 Fourth Consultation of President John F. Kennedy's Commission on the Status of Women advanced Black women's causes by explicitly stating that a section of the committee's report should address issues specific to Black women, the final report dropped this section. Even New York Times reports omitted reference to data the committee had compiled and analyzed for this fourth section. The final printed report of the commission included three sections on employment opportunities, volunteer work and media representations, without reference to issues specifically affecting Black women.
Although the commission’s planned section on Black women never appeared, Black women sat on the commission. Black women made great strides toward gaining seats at the tables of political organizations throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Women of color were active in founding the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966 and the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) in 1973. Harris credits the Combahee River Collective, emerging in 1975 from the Boston National Black Feminist Organization, as first among Black feminist organizations to integrate fully the principles of both Black Power and feminism. Harris argues, "The scope of the [Combahee River Collective’s] activities confirmed the members' understanding of multiple oppressions [the combined forces of racism, sexism, and homophobia] and their willingness to engage in wide-ranging advocacy actions advancing multiple interests." Despite its advances and its continuing influence through successive reprints of the Combahee River Collective Statement, the group dissolved after a mere six years; no organization since has emerged as its successor.
Harris lingers on this moment in Black feminist organizing when, with the Combahee, it seemed possible for Black women to address the combined effects of race, gender and sexuality without prioritizing one over
