I learned from Amanda that today is "Blog Against Racism" day.

I’ve touched on race many times in previous posts, but I’ve been stumped trying to think of ways to address the topic this morning.  I’d like, I suppose, to marry the issue to my favorite secular topic, feminism.

I’ve been teaching women’s history here at PCC for a decade.  During those years, the percentage of the student body identified as "white" has dropped from around 25% in 1995 to just over 15% today.  I’ve noticed the change in my classes; I had one section of History 1B (Modern Europe) last year where every single one of my students was either Asian or Latina/o.  No whites, no blacks.  But I’ve always had a diverse mix in my women’s history courses, though whites have never constituted an outright majority.

I write this because, over the years, I’ve read in countless student journals that feminism is "a white thing."  Time and time again, I’ve heard from young women of color that their peers and families associate feminism with "trying to be white".  Over and over again, my Latina and African-American students report being told by male peers in particular that their time and energy ought to be flowing towards building ethnic solidarity, not a "sisterhood."  In a majority-minority setting like Pasadena City College, this perception of feminism as being a movement for white middle-class women is one of the most destructive myths I have to combat in the classroom.

I’m quite honest about the fact that in the past, there has been a racist tinge to certain strands of the American feminist movement.  All one has to do is look at the post-Civil War split among suffrage activists over the issue of granting votes to black men, and it becomes evident that the women’s movement has played the "race card" from time to time. 

But the real racism of the contemporary women’s movement lies in the perceived contempt of mainstream feminism for traditional culture.  For example, on more than one occasion in my classes, I’ve had to intervene as white female students launch sweeping denunciations of Latin or black men.  There’s an oft-spoken assumption by many of my white students that white men are "less macho" and thus "more evolved".  Many of my female students of color are thus put in the awkward position of "having to choose" between solidarity on the basis of sex and solidarity on the basis of culture and ethnicity.  This forced choice is not something their white sisters often understand.

Here on campus, we have a Black Students Association.  We have MEChA.  We have countless organizations for various Asian groups.  But on a campus that is 56% female, we do not currently have a viable women’s group.  I’ve seen many of my best and brightest female students, young women of color, pour their time and their energy into ethnically-based activities while showing little or no interest in doing gender-based work.  I ask them, again and again, whether they consider racial discrimination or sexual discrimination to be the greater obstacle in their lives.  Most say racial discrimination, even after I point out that as women, they have an infinitely greater chance of being sexually assaulted because they are female than they do of being lynched by the Klan because they aren’t white!

It’s clear that feminists and their pro-feminist allies need to do a better job of reaching both young men and young women of color.  We do have to be brutally  honest about both the overt and the subtle racism that has tinged the movement in decades past.  And above all, we have to be very careful not to put women in the position of being forced to choose between their culture and their sex!  Too often, the message that my students hear sounds like this:  "You can either live up to the expectations of your culture, or you can be a feminist, but you can’t be both."  Faced with that false dichotomy, most young women of color will choose their cultures; after all, doing so means staying in relationship with their families and men of their own ethnic background.    Too often, we make feminism sound like a life of lonely isolation from one’s family of origin.

We who do feminist work, particularly in majority-minority settings, need to listen to the unique frustrations of young women of color.   Those of us who are white and do this work, as I do, must be especially mindful of our language — it is all too easy for me, I know, to seem casually dismissive of traditional values that are of particular importance in certain cultures!  We must constantly tinker with the feminist message, not to "dumb it down" or weaken it, but to make it more appealing to those who don’t feel represented and included in the feminist story.  And, while never compromising our bedrock convictions about women’s equality and dignity, we need to become more mindful of the great value many women of color place on their unique cultures.  If we’re going to do a better job of reaching an ever-more diverse group of young women, we must stop presenting a message that demands a "false choice" between embracing feminism and embracing one’s heritage.