Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Trump
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Ten months after assuming his position in the Oval Office, George Bush was faced with the bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 . Most Americans outside of Oakland, California didn’t know much about California’s Ninth District US Representative, Barbara Lee . However, on September 15, 2001, the Senate passed a use-of-force resolution and the House overwhelmingly approved it by a 420-1 margin. Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) was the lone dissenting voice. Lee’s resistance to Bush’s domination provided a new model of Black female political leadership.
When it comes to military action, Congresswoman Lee has a history of dissent. In 1999, she was the only member of the House to vote against a resolution of support for US troops in Yugoslavia. In 1998, she opposed the Clinton administration’s bombing of Iraq . Ironically, voting “no” after terrorists attacked the USA generated death threats for this pacifist. Congresswoman Lee explained her vote in the following statement:
Why I Opposed the Resolution to Authorize Force
Barbara Lee
On September 11, terrorists attacked the United States in an unprecedented and brutal manner, killing thousands of innocent people, including the passengers and crews of four aircraft. Like everyone throughout our country, I am repulsed and angered by these attacks and believe all appropriate steps must be taken to bring the perpetrators to justice.
We must prevent any future such attacks. That is the highest obligation of our federal, state and local governments. On this, we are united as a nation. Any nation, group or individual that fails to comprehend this or believes that we will tolerate such illegal and uncivilized attacks is grossly mistaken.
Last week, filled with grief and sorrow for those killed and injured and with anger at those who had done this, I confronted the solemn responsibility of voting to authorize the nation to go to war. Some believe this resolution was only symbolic, designed to show national resolve. But I could not ignore that it provided explicit authority, under the War Powers Resolution and the Constitution, to go to war.
It was a blank check to the president to attack anyone involved in the September 11 events—anywhere, in any country, without regard to our nation’s long-term foreign policy, economic and national security interests, and without time limit. In granting these overly broad powers, the Congress failed its responsibility to understand the dimensions of its declaration. I could not support such a grant of war-making authority to the president; I believe it would put more innocent lives at risk.
The president has the constitutional authority to protect the nation from further attack and he has mobilized the armed forces to do just that. The Congress should have waited for the facts to be presented and then acted with fuller knowledge of the consequences of our action.
I have heard from thousands of my constituents in the wake of this vote. Many—a majority—have counseled restraint and caution, demanding that we ascertain the facts and ensure that violence does not beget violence. They understand the boundless consequences of proceeding hastily to war, and I thank them for their support.
Others believe that I should have voted for the resolution—either for symbolic or geopolitical reasons, or because they truly believe a military option is unavoidable. However, I am not convinced that voting for the resolution preserves and protects U.S. interests. We must develop our intelligence and bring those who did this to justice. We must mobilize and maintain an international coalition against terrorism. Finally, we have a chance to demonstrate to the world that great powers can choose to fight on the fronts of their choosing, and that we can choose to avoid needless military action when other avenues to redress our rightful grievances and to protect our nation are available to us.
We must respond, but the character of that response will determine for us and for our children the world that they will inherit. I do not dispute the president’s intent to rid the world of terrorism—but we have many means to reach that goal, and measures that spawn further acts of terror or that do not address the sources of hatred do not increase our security.
Secretary of State Colin Powell himself eloquently pointed out the many ways to get at the root of this problem—economic, diplomatic, legal and political, as well as military. A rush to launch precipitous military counterattacks runs too great a risk that more innocent men, women, [and] children will be killed. I could not vote for a resolution that I believe could lead to such an outcome (San Francisco Chronicle, September 23, 2001).
This attitude inspired Alice Walker’s tribute to Barbara Lee in Sent by Earth : A Message from the Grandmother Spirit After the Attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Alice Walker’s affirmation of Barbara Lee received less hostility than Michelle Wallace’s Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman of the 1970s primarily because, in the midst of national tragedy, it received less attention. In Kim Springer’s 1999 dissertation, “Our Politics Was Black Women,” Springer attributed Black feminist organizational decline to three factors: (1) insufficient monetary resources, (2) activist burnout, and (3) ideological disputes. I agree with Springer’s assessment that Black feminist organizations encountered issues of Black self-determination, racial authenticity, and source and control dilemmas. Springer concluded that the political opportunity structure that yielded so many positive results for the civil rights movement closed in the 1980s, leaving Black feminist organizations to either fold or wait in abeyance for new opportunities for gains against racist, sexist, heterosexist, and classist discrimination. Springer’s dissertation leaves off in 1980. The question this book leaves us asking is, “Were their new opportunities for gains, and why didn’t Black feminist politics survive for the next 20 years?”
When I wrote this book, I set out to answer two questions: (1) “What did feminist identified Black women do to gain ‘political power’ between 1961 and 2001 in America?”, and (2) “Why didn’t they succeed?” This book has shown that Black women have tried to gain centrality by their participation in Presidential Commissions, Black feminist organizations, theatrical productions, film adaptations of literature, beauty pageants, electoral politics, and Presidential appointments. I am working with the assumption that “success” means that, among other more general constructs, (1) the feminist identified Black women in the Congressional Black Caucus who voted against Clarence Thomas’s appointment would have spoken on behalf of Anita Hill ; (2) Senator Carol Moseley Braun would have won reelection; (3) Lani Gunier would have had a hearing; (4) Dr. Joycelyn Elders would have maintained her post; and (5) Congresswoman Barbara Lee wouldn’t have stood alone in her opposition to the war resolution.
Collective Black feminism has met the resistance of the American public in general, and their most obvious allies—Black men, white women, and the Democratic Party in particular. The individual gains and achievements of Condoleezza Rice demonstrate that in the twenty-first century, Black female political prominence is possible… as long as it is not feminist.
The first edition of this book was written during the summer of 2008, before the presidential election . Of course, what would unfold after the book’s initial publication offered far more material for analysis about Black feminists’ role and agency in American political life. There was, for example, Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Obama, and her increasing influence over the political sphere. As Patricia Williams wrote in The Nation in 2007, the “Double O’s” (Obama and Oprah), were “an arresting team [and] brilliant speakers, easy with large audiences,” with a “particular form of raced celebrity [that] enshrines the notion of American mobility.”
The “Double O” mania, which was certainly acknowledged by people other than Williams, tended to overshadow two Black women who should not have been overlooked: Barack’s wife, Michelle , and Green Party presidential nominee, Cynthia McKinney . Despite Barack Obama’s worldwide popularity, many did not take to his brown-skinned, working-class, South Side Chicago wife. Those attributes were more visible than the fact that she was also a Princeton alum, and graduate
d Harvard Law School before the Senator did, and was actually his boss when he was still a student. Her unusual brand of candor also raised eyebrows, especially in the white establishment of conservative politics. When she told a Milwaukee crowd in February 2008 that, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change,” conservative talk show host Bill O’Reilly , took a call from one of his listeners, who addressed Michelle Obama’s apparent gaffe from earlier in the week (“for the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country”). The caller, who identified herself as Maryanne, claimed to have insight into the character of Michelle Obama, saying that she is “very angry” and “militant.”
In response , O’Reilly came to Obama’s defense with this bizarre rant:You know, I have a lot of sympathy for Michelle Obama, for Bill Clinton, for all of these people. Bill Clinton, I have sympathy for him, because they’re thrown into a hopper where everybody is waiting for them to make a mistake, so that they can just go and bludgeon them…That’s wrong. And I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels. If that’s how she really feels — that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever — then that’s legit….
Although O’Reilly later apologized for his “lynching party” comment, several months later he continued to depict Michelle Obama as “angry.”
From the September 16 edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor:O’REILLY:
In the “Obama Chronicles” segment tonight: the controversial wife of the Democratic candidate, Michelle Obama. “Chronicle” facts: Mrs. Obama was born on January 17, 1964, in Chicago. Her father worked for the city. He died from MS in 1991. Her mother worked as a secretary. She still lives on the south side of Chicago. She has one sibling, her brother, who coaches the Oregon State University basketball team. She graduated from Princeton and has a law degree from Harvard. She married Barack Obama in 1992. They have two young girls.
Joining us now from Washington, Michelle Oddis, a columnist for HumanEvents.com, and here in the studio, Rebecca Johnson , who wrote a profile of Mrs. Obama for Vogue magazine.
You spent some time with her. How much time?
REBECCA JOHNSON (Vogue magazine contributing editor):
A few hours.
O’REILLY:
Just a few hours with her?
JOHNSON:
Hmm-mm. Half a day.
O’REILLY:
How did you find her in person? Was she engaging?
JOHNSON:
I found her lovely, actually, very bright, very thoughtful and, you know, an impressive person, intelligent. She was great. I was impressed.
O’REILLY:
Now, I have a lot of people who call me on the radio and say she looks angry. And I have to say there’s some validity to that. She looks like an angry woman. Did you ask her about that?
JOHNSON:
Don’t they say that about you, too?
O’REILLY:
Yeah, but I’m not running for—I’m not going to be the first lady.
JOHNSON:
But she’s—
O’REILLY:
I hope not, anyway. The perception is that she’s angry in some quarters. Valid?
JOHNSON:
Well—they say she looks angry because of maybe of the cast of her eyebrows or something like that. But, no, I don’t find her to be angry. I think what happens is that we expect women to be cheerful and happy all the time in that kind of television personality kind of way. And she’s not like that. She’s a thoughtful person. She’s not going to—
O’REILLY:
Warm and fuzzy?
JOHNSON:
No.
O’REILLY:
Not warm and fuzzy?
JOHNSON:
No.
O’REILLY:
Even to you, who she’s trying to win over as an author of the piece?
JOHNSON:
You know, she was not trying to win me over in any way.
O’REILLY:
Really?
JOHNSON:
No, not at all.
O’REILLY:
Because it’s interesting, because most people—talking to somebody who’s going to write about them—want to win you over. She didn’t want to win you over?
JOHNSON:
No, not at all.
O’REILLY:
Why not?
JOHNSON:
And it’s interesting, because I actually—I’ve also interviewed Sarah Palin , and she was very friendly and very—
O’REILLY:
Tried to win you over.
JOHNSON:
Yeah. But Michelle wasn’t trying to win me over with a kind of a false chumminess. She is somebody who speaks her mind, and stands on her own. And whether I liked her or not, I don’t think was particularly important to her, no.
O’REILLY:
OK, interesting.
In the fall of 2008, we did not know who the next President of the USA would be. I made a safe prediction that it would not be Cynthia McKinney . In her July 12, 2008, Green Party nominee acceptance speech she said:Thank you all for being here and standing with me today.
In 1851, in Akron, Ohio a former slave woman, abolitionist, and woman’s rights activist by the name of Sojourner Truth gave a speech now known as “Ain’t I a Woman ” Sojourner Truth began her remarks, “Well children, where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter.” She then went on to say that even though she was a woman, no one had ever helped her out of carriages or lifted her over ditches or given her a seat of honor in any place. Instead, she acknowledged, that as a former slave and as a black woman, she had had to bear the lash as well as any man; and that she had borne “thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And Ain’t I a woman ?” Finally, Sojourner Truth says, “If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!”
As it was in 1851, so too was it in 2008. There was so much racket that we, too, knew something was out of kilter. In 1851, the racket was about a woman’s right to vote. In 1848, just a few years before Sojourner uttered those now famous words, “Ain’t I a Woman ?” suffragists met in Seneca Falls, New York and issued a declaration. That declaration began:We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government … But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.8
Two hundred sixty women and forty men gathered in Seneca Falls, New York and declared their independence from the politics of their present and embarked upon a struggle to create a politics for the future. That bold move by a handful of people in one relatively small room laid the groundwork and is the precedent for what we do today. The Seneca Falls Declaration represented a clean break from the past: Freedom, at last, from mental slavery. The Seneca Falls Declaration and the Akron, Ohio meeting inaugurated 72 years of struggle that ended with the passage of the 19th Amendment in August of 1920, granting women the right to vote. And 88 yea
rs later, with the Green Party as its conductor, the History Train is rolling down the tracks.
To paraphrase a member of the Combahee River Collective, when it came to the Democratic Party, Hilary Clinton was white, Barack Obama was a man, but Cynthia McKinney was brave.
Footnotes
1http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/elections/cpowelltext073100.htm.
2Ibid.
3Dillard, A. D. (2001). Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Now? : Multicultural Conservativism in America. New York: New York University Press.
4Dillard, A. D. (2001). Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Now? : Multicultural Conservativism in America. New York: New York University Press, p. 2.