Black Women Organizers
How did the readings this week challenge or confirm your prior expectations of what it means to be a “Black woman organizer?”
This week's readings confirmed my prior expectations of what it means to be a Black woman organizer. In my discussion post last week on media as a tool for Black women, I said “However, not all hashtags are of equal impact for Black women. For example, those who engage with #SayHerName are also engaged in intersectional mobilization by highlighting Black women victims of police violence while #BLM focuses primarily on Black men… despite having been founded by three Black women.”
Black woman organizers face many challenges. Treva Lindsey discusses this by saying “Despite a robust field of scholarship that focuses on African American women as activists challenging anti-Black racism, dominant narratives about racial justice movements, both historically and contemporarily, often pivot around Black men’s activism and, more specifically, Black heterosexual men’s activism.” Although Black women organize and advocate, much of the attention is given to Black men. Another example Lindsey gives is in regard to the prison-industrial complex, a conversation that is typically centered around Black men. Yet, what are the effects of this complex on Black women and girls? The report Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced, and Underprotected highlights that “much of the existing research literature excludes girls from the analysis, leading many stakeholders to infer that girls of color are not also at risk.” Who wrote the report? Yep… three Black women. I think this is an interesting contrast to note - three Black queer women founded the Black Lives Matter movement which, despite its encompassment of Black people without gender specificity, has been focused primarily on Black men. In contrast, this report (although these are different forms of advocacy) which is focused on advocating for Black girls and women is written by three Black women.
Further, Lindsey highlights Alicia Garza’s illumination of the work of Black queer women being particularly erased in conversations about movements against anti-Black state and state-sanctioned violence.
Alicia Garza spoke. about an experience of erasure in a story. on The Wire and provided an example of a community institution that curated an art show, entitled “Our Lives Matter.” Garza highlights an important point here, “And, to keep it real–it is appropriate and necessary to have strategy and action centered around Blackness without other non-Black communities of color, or White folks for that matter, needing to find a place and a way to center themselves within it.” Yet, another challenge that Black women organizers face (the need of others to center themselves within advocacy that has literally nothing to do with their rights).
An artist “conducted an interview that completely erased the origins of their work - rooted in the labor and love of queer Black women.” Garza stated, “...perhaps if we were the charismatic Black men many are rallying around these days, it would have been a different story, but being Black queer women in this society (and apparently within these movements) tends to equal invisibility and non-relevancy.” One of the things that initially stuck out to me when reading about this incident is the use of “community institution,” instead of naming the institution that clearly undermined the Black Lives Matter movement and the role that Black queer women have in its foundation. Perhaps this is yet another way that Black women organizers are affected - would Garza have felt more empowered to call the organization out if she felt as though Black women, and more specifically Black queer women, were viewed as equal to their Black male, and more specifically Black heterosexual male, counterparts?
Lindsey stated, “When documentation and activism fail to encapsulate violence against Black trans* people, queer people, and women and girls, then we further marginalize and render invisible those surviving and living on the margins of marginalization.”
These challenges are not new or a result of the Black Lives Matter activism. In 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer’s speech at the DNC threatened Lyndon Johnson (white male fragility..) so much so that he attempted to steal the time Hamer had to speak by tricking the television outlets into thinking he was going to announce the vice president for his campaign so that they would stop airing her speech. Bob Moses, an organizer, said “The president, Lyndon Johnson, he’s not afraid of Martin Luther King’s testimony. He’s afraid of Fannie Lou Hamer’s testimony.” In fact, Johnson sent political advisers to persuade Hamer not to make her appeal to the credentials committee. Hamer said, “But what was the point of being scared? The only thing the whites could do was kill me, and it seemed like they’d been trying to do that a little bit a time since I could remember” While Dr. King did important work, I think the point Moses raised is important. Dr. King was given space to speak and is known for his organization work but how many Black women are given the same recognition? For those women who are recognized in history classes, how are those conversations or descriptions different from that of Dr. Kings?
The readings this week confirmed my expectation that being a Black woman organizer is difficult, with a lot of opposition coming from many different areas - opposition that might not even be intentional, but is just as harmful. I was challenged to further engage in readings that further illuminated the specifics of these difficulties and allowed me to better understand the necessity of utilizing a multi-dimensional lens when learning about the implications of identity in activism.