Summary of Readings
For the past 50+ years, scholars of the social sciences have witnessed the rise and flourishing of analytic, self-analytical, and retrospective literature on a particular subject. It is the collective identity of Black women and their place as a sub-class in the Black community and American society. For example, Lorde and Clarke analyze what a Black lesbian is from gender, class, and political viewpoints in their writings and share their personal experiences (Guy-Sheftall, 1995).
Moreover, they criticize homophobia and the heteronormative paradigm in African American, mainstream feminist, and white cultures during the first decades after the civil rights movement (Guy-Sheftall, 1995). However, cultural and gender bias has not been eradicated, and Black women, especially lesbians, have had to deal with it daily, individually and collectively, at all institutional levels.
Today, the cultural and sociological self-reflective discussion about Black women as a distinct community with unique issues continues and has even intensified in the last 5-6 years. Miranda (2017) narrates retrospectively about the revolutionary post-modern “We Wanted a Revolution” exhibition. Avila (2022) critiques the contemporary issue of cultural and ethnic invisibility of dark-skinned Afro-Latino women and the whitening of images of Black Afro-Latino women.
With her online article, Siek (2021) reminds the audience of Tina Bell, the forerunner of the grunge sub-genre. Hotchkiss (2019) also does historical justice in her article describing the figure of Lenn Keller and other Black lesbians of the 70s, pioneers of the Black lesbian movement and art. This attention to the female part of the Black community is due to the lack of representation and recognition in American culture by other societal groups and the growing threat of a political crisis in the United States.
Issues Raised
Despite differing historical and other contexts, such as the political one, during which all the works mentioned were written, they all discuss the same two socio-cultural issues. These are the lack of representation of culturally ‘non-conventional’ Black women, such as lesbians and dark-skinned ones, and the larger American society’s non-recognition of them that continues even today in art and civic activism.
As an example, Avila (2022) states that “light-skinned Black Latines […] have been given space to be the face of all Black Latines” (para. 3). These issues are relatively specific, but the entire Black community still should pay attention to them. All authors provide personal experiences and those of persons directly involved in the explored topics as evidence. They also often use historical and sociological knowledge to support their claims.
Personal Thoughts
I liked how each writer organized the narrative so that ideas and thoughts smoothly transition from personal experiences to historical and sociological facts and vice versa. All writing is near perfect, but I wish the authors included more information about Black women’s supporters from other ethnic groups. I found no overly complex subtopics or concepts in all five papers that made me question my knowledge.
It was new for me to read about discriminated groups within another larger discriminated group. Most of the previous thematically close learning material was about the oppressor and the oppressed in a country-sized American context. I now see that for “non-conventional” sub-groups within minorities, the effect of marginalization and discrimination is multiplied.
References
Avila, L. (2022). Dark-skinned Black women are missing from Afro-Latina representation. Refinery 29. Web.
Guy-Sheftall, B. (Ed.). (1995). Words of fire: An anthology of African-American feminist thought. The New Press.
Hotchkiss, S. (2019). Lenn Keller: Keeping the Bay Area’s Black lesbian history alive. KQED. Web.
Miranda, C. A. (2017). How the black radical female artists of the ‘60s and ‘70s made art that speaks to today’s politics. Los Angeles Times. Web.
Siek, S. (2021). The Black ‘godmother of grunge’ who inspired your fav bands. Medium. Web.