Black Women and Women's Liberation

Abstract

Black women have yet to see even their menfolk attain positions of power and influence in the mainstream culture. It is understandable then, that in terms of priorities, black women seek to raise the life chances of the whole group. They view disadvantages of race and class before disadvantages of sex.(1)This article will focus on the Liberation Movement and its proven irrelevance to Aboriginal women, the role of Aboriginal women and men with a strong theme of women's independence prevailing, and the multitude of social problems faced by Aborigines. I will argue that Aboriginal men and women both are fighting for the same things, regardless of gender differences. The overall scenario is that, in such a deprived and oppressed culture, it would seem ludicrous to suggest that either sex could be a victor.Although the Liberation Movement was first activated in the 1960s from such movements as the anti-war and civil rights groups in America, the contemporary women's movement has a much longer history. It dates back to at least the nineteenth century with struggles over universal suffrage, the exploitation of women's labour, unionisation of women, and the temperance movements. However several Black American critics insist that Blacks are always left to fight their own battles: Women's Liberation won't be any different. White women won the right to vote but black people, including black women, didn't get it for another hundred years.(2) There is also a commonly-voiced suspicion that the Liberation Movement has attached itself to the Blackmovement in order to take advantage, for its own interests, of the momentum and attention that the Blacks have recently achieved.Historically, the Liberation Movement in Australia began some eighteen years ago and, in that time, it has developed a size and diversity which has made it a nebulous and rather elusive body, with feminists having had different priorities in their agendas for change. These divergences have led also to different tactics and strategies, and to competing ideologies and world views.(3)As the movement grew, some feminists saw that class and race differences meant that women experienced different forms and degrees of oppression. However, if the white women who organised the contemporary movement toward feminism were at all aware of racial politics in Australian history, they would have known that overcoming barriers that separate women from one another would entail confronting the reality of racism; not just racism as a general evil in society, but the race hatred they might harbour in their own psyches. Despite the predominance of patriarchal rule in Australian society, Australia was colonized on a racially imperialistic base and not on a sexually imperialistic base. No degree of patriarchial bonding between white male colonizers and Aboriginal men over-shadowed white racial imperialism.(4) In fact, white racial imperialism granted to all white women, however victimized by sexist oppression, the right to assume the role of oppressor in relationship to Black women and Black men.White liberation leaders are also fond of pointing to the analogy between Blacks and women as second-class citizens in a white male chauvinist society. One of the clearest points of similarity between the situation of Blacks and women is that they have both been brainwashed into the same `low self-image'; they are not supposed to use their minds, they are incapable of making decisions. They are both second-class members of the society who should be kept in their place.If white women in the women's movement needed to make use of a Black experience to emphasise women's oppression, it would only seem logical that they focus on the Black female experience -- but they have not. Had white women desired to bond with Black women on the basis of common oppression, they could have done so by demonstrating an awareness of the impact of sexism on the status of black women. …

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