Seen but not heard: The racial gap between feminist discourse and practice

The authors were participants in a fifteen-week seminar on feminist epistemology and methodology at a university-based humanities research center. We had approached the seminar with expectations of refining our ideas about feminist epistemology and methodology but, to our disappointment, we instead began to question our place within women's studies. The following commentary reflects on our increasing frustration with the substance and direction of that seminar.1

At the time of the seminar, Venetria Patton was a doctoral candidate in English completing her dissertation on nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American women writers; Kimberly Nettles was a doctoral candidate in sociology whose research focused on women's political mobilization in Guyana, South America.2 Although we came from different disciplines, we both thought the seminar would lead to new insights about our work; however, we quickly became disillusioned. Rather than coming together to share as diverse scholars, we found a closed circle that did not seem to have room for our ideas.

According to the memo our research group sent to our invited guest speakers, our purpose was:

to examine some of the many and diverse practices of knowledge production that currently constitute "feminist" research (with an eye towards mapping the shifting curricular terrain and identity of women's studies). Four areas of inquiry loosely structure our investigations: "Feminist Jurisprudence," "Art, Literature, and Popular Culture," "Cultural Studies of Science," and "New Ethnographies." Some of the very general questions with which we had been wrestling include the following: What are the epistemological claims, assumptions, starting points, or locations of methods that might be regarded as distinctly feminist? What work do "we" want and expect inquiry to do? How are we to proceed, methodologically, in an era of increasingly precise critical undercutting, and what is left for "science" in an era of blurred genres? What is both opened and foreclosed by various feminist counter-discourses, particularly feminist methodological investments in liberatory, praxis-oriented, pragmatically useful, linguistically accessible inquiry practices?3

Despite the promise of a thorough investigation of feminist methodologies, we did not discuss our definitions of feminism prior to beginning our investigation of feminist knowledge projects. Thus we began with the assumption that we were all beginning from the same place. This proved to be untrue. We probably had as many definitions of feminism as we had participants. While feminism is often associated with women's rights and such ideas as equal pay for equal work, not all women agree about what their rights are or how to gain them. "Feminism" may continue to invoke pleasant visions of a united sisterhood even as black feminists such as Hazel Carby and bell hooks, among others, continue to question the existence of a sisterhood of black and white women. For example, Carby states, "Considering the history of the failure of any significant political alliances between black and white women in the nineteenth century, I challenge the impulse in the contemporary women's movement to discover a lost sisterhood and to reestablish feminist solidarity."4 She suggests that contemporary feminists are searching for an imagined sisterhood. Hooks is even more critical of racism within feminist movements: "Every women's movement in America from its earliest origin to the present day has been built on a racist foundation."5 Carby and hooks demonstrate that all too often when feminists presume to speak about all women, it is based on the assumption that what is true for white, middle-class women is true for all women. Feminism is founded on the belief that women share a common subordination to men, however, in an attempt to identify the essence of women's experience, there is a tendency to flatten the experience of all women into a solitary image that then denies the rich variety of women's experiences.6 Consequently, contemporary feminists realize that a woman's gender identity is complicated by other aspects of personhood, which make it difficult to generalize about women as a group. Some feminists acknowledge the impossibility of separating gender issues from other aspects of identity such as race, class, sexuality, and nationality, to name a few. In fact, our own research group espoused the importance of recognizing the multiplicity within feminism; however, this proved to be rhetorical and did not effect the functioning of the seminar itself In other words, participants expressed support for the concept of a diverse feminism, but they proceeded as though their assumptions were true for all members of the group and for other feminists. For example, it was clear from our reading list that a canon of feminist literature was presumed, but that presumption was neither disclosed nor questioned.

The events of our seminar may not seem significant in and of themselves, but they do reflect on a larger and ongoing problem within feminism and women's studies. In our analysis we identify small incidents and interactions that excluded us specifically but also illustrate a pattern of exclusion. Although the issues of exclusion and related issues of silence and dismissal have been addressed by other feminists of color in the past, it is important to realize that the struggle for recognition of difference continues. If those working within the feminist movement hope to be successful in attaining equal political, economic, and social rights for women, we must begin to understand not just the reality of difference but also the impact of difference on our daily lives. We cannot expect to gain equal rights for women if feminists continue to negate the significance of racial, ethnic, class, geographic, and sexual identities among women. In the midst of this era of civil rights backlash, it is essential that feminists unite while also acknowledging and addressing our differences. We will not be operating from a position of power if we ignore the fissures within our assumed unity. These fissures or differences could be points of strength, but instead become points of weakness when they are not addressed.