by Hooks, Bell
When white female anthropologist Carol Stack looked critically at the lives of black poor people more than twenty years ago and wrote her book The Culture of Poverty, she found a value system among them which emphasized the sharing of resources. That value system has long been eroded in most communities by an ethic of liberal individualism, which affirms that it is morally acceptable not to share. The mass media has been the primary teacher bringing into our lives and our homes the logic of liberal individualism, the idea that you make it by the privatized hoarding of resources, not by sharing them. Of course, liberal individualism works best for the privileged classes. But it has worsened the lot of the poor who once depended on an ethic of communalism to provide affirmation, aid, and support.
To change the devastating impact of poverty on the lives of masses of folks in our society we must change the way resources and wealth are distributed. But we must also change the way the poor are represented. Since many folks will be poor for a long time before those changes are put in place that address their economic needs, it is crucial to construct habits of seeing and being that restore an oppositional value system affirming that one can live a life of dignity and integrity in the midst of poverty. It is precisely this dignity Jonathan Freedman seeks to convey in his book From Cradle to Grave: The Human Face of Poverty in America, even though he does not critique capitalism or call for major changes in the distribution of wealth and resources. Yet any efforts to change the face of poverty in the United States must link a shift in representation to a demand for the redistribution of wealth and resources.
Progressive intellectuals from privileged classes who are themselves obsessed with gaining material wealth are uncomfortable with the insistence that one can be poor, yet lead a rich and meaningful life. They fear that any suggestion that poverty is acceptable may lead those who have to feel no accountability towards those who have not, even though it is unclear how they reconcile their pursuit with concern for and accountability towards the poor. Their conservative counterparts, who did much to put in place a system of representation that dehumanized the poor, fear that if poverty is seen as having no relation to value, the poor will not passively assume their role as exploited workers. That fear is masked by their insistence that the poor will not seek to work if poverty is deemed acceptable, and that the rest of us will have to support them. (Note the embedded assumption that to be poor means that one is not hardworking.) Of course, there are many more poor women and men refusing menial labor in low-paid jobs than ever before. This refusal is not rooted in laziness but in the assumption that it is not worth it to work a job where one is systematically dehumanized or exploited only to remain poor. Despite these individuals, the vast majority of poor people in our society want to work, even when jobs do not mean that they leave the ranks of the poor.
Witnessing that individuals can be poor and lead meaningful lives, I understand intimately the damage that has been done to the poor by a dehumanizing system of representation. I see the difference in self-esteem between my grandparents’ and parents’ generations and that of my siblings, relatives, friends and acquaintances who are poor, who suffer from a deep-seated, crippling lack of self-esteem. Ironically, despite the presence of more opportunity than that available to an older generation, low self-esteem makes it impossible for this younger generation to move forward even as it also makes their lives psychically unbearable. That psychic pain is most often relieved by some form of substance abuse. But to change the face of poverty so that it becomes, once again, a site for the formation of values, of dignity and integrity, as any other class positionality in this society, we would need to intervene in existing systems of representation.
Linking this progressive change to radical/revolutionary political movements (such as eco-feminism, for example) that urge all of us to live simply could also establish a point of connection and constructive interaction. The poor have many resources and skills for living. Those folks who are interested in sharing individual plenty as well as working politically for redistribution of wealth can work in conjunction with individuals who are materially disadvantaged to achieve this end. Material plenty is only one resource. Literacy skills are another. It would be exciting to see unemployed folks who lack reading and writing skills have available to them community-based literacy programs. Progressive literacy programs connected to education for critical consciousness could use popular movies as a base to begin learning and discussion. Theaters all across the United States that are not used in the day could be sites for this kind of program where college students and professors could share skills. Since many individuals who are poor, disadvantaged or destitute are already literate, reading groups could be formed to educate for critical consciousness, to help folks rethink how they can organize life both to live well in poverty and to move out of such circumstances. Many of the young women I encounter—black and white—who are poor and receiving state aid (and some of whom are students or would-be students) are intelligent, critical thinkers struggling to transform their circumstances. They are eager to work with folks who can offer guidance, know-how, concrete strategies. Freedman concludes his book with the reminder that
it takes money, organization, and laws to maintain a social structure but none of it works if there are not opportunities for people to meet and help each other along the way. Social responsibility comes down to something simple—the ability to respond.
Constructively changing ways the poor are represented in every aspect of life is one progressive intervention that can challenge everyone to look at the face of poverty and not turn away.
16
BACK TO BLACK
Ending internalized racism
No social movement to end white supremacy addressed the issue of internalized racism in relation to beauty as intensely as did the Black Power revolution of the sixties. For a time, at least, this movement challenged black folks to examine the psychic impact of white supremacy. Reading Frantz Fanon and Albert Memmi, our leaders begin to speak of colonization and the need to decolonize our minds and imaginations. Exposing the myriad ways white supremacy had assaulted our self-concept and our self-esteem, militant leaders of black liberation struggle demanded that black folks see ourselves differently—see self-love as a radical political agenda. That meant establishing a politics of representation which would both critique and integrate ideals of personal beauty and desirability informed by racist standards, and put in place progressive standards, a system of valuation that would embrace a diversity of black looks.
Ironically, as black leaders called into question racist defined notions of beauty, many white folks expressed awe and wonder that there existed in segregated black life color caste systems wherein the lighter one’s skin the greater one’s social value. Their surprise at the way color caste functioned in black life exposed the extent to which they chose to remain willfully ignorant of a system that white supremacist thinking had established and maintained. The construction of color caste hierarchies by white racists in nineteenth-century life is well documented in their history and literature. That contemporary white folks are ignorant of this history reflects the way the dominant culture seeks to erase—and thus deny—this past. This denial allows no space for accountability, for white folks in contemporary culture to know and acknowledge the primary role whites played in the formation of color castes. All black folks, even those who know very little if anything at all about North American history, slavery, and reconstruction, know that racist white folks often treated lighter-skinned black folks better than their darker counterparts, and that this pattern was mirrored in black social relations. But individual black folks who grow to maturity in all-white settings that may have allowed them to remain ignorant of color caste systems are soon initiated when they have contact with other black people.
Issues of skin color and caste were highlighted by militant black struggle for rights. The slogan “black is beautiful” worked to intervene and alter those racist stereotypes that had always insiste
d black was ugly, monstrous, undesirable. One of the primary achievements of Black Power movement was the critique and in some instances the dismantling of color caste hierarchies. This achievement often goes unnoticed and undiscussed, largely because it took place within the psyches of black folks, particularly those of us from working-class or poor backgrounds who did not have access to public forums where we could announce and discuss how we felt. Those black folks who came of age before Black Power faced the implications of color caste either through devaluation or overvaluation. In other words, to be born light meant that one was born with an advantage recognized by everyone. To be born dark was to start life handicapped, with a serious disadvantage. At the onset of the contemporary feminist movement, I had only recently stopped living in a segregated black world and begun life in predominantly white settings. I remember encountering white female insistence that when a child is coming out of the womb one’s first concern is to identify its gender, whether male or female; I called attention to the reality that the initial concern for most black parents is skin color, because of the correlation between skin color and success.
Militant black liberation struggle challenged this sensibility. It made it possible for black people to have an ongoing public discourse about the detrimental impact of internalized racism as regards skin color and beauty standards. Darker-skinned blacks, who had historically borne the brunt of devaluation based on color, were recognized as having been wronged by assaultive white supremacist, aesthetic values. New beauty standards were set that sought to value and embrace the different complexions of blackness. Suddenly, the assumption that each individual black person would also seek a lighter partner was called into question. When our militant, charismatic, revolutionary leader Malcolm X chose to marry a darker-skinned woman, he set different standards. These changes had a profound impact on black family life. The needs of children who suffered various forms of discrimination and were psychologically wounded in families or public school systems because they were not the right color could now be addressed. For example, parents of a dark-skinned child who, when misbehaving at school, was called a devil and unjustly punished now had recourse in material written by black psychologists and psychiatrists documenting the detrimental effects of the color-caste system. In all areas of black life the call to see black as beautiful was empowering. Large numbers of black women stopped chemically straightening their hair since there was no longer any stigma attached to wearing one’s hair with its natural texture. Those folks who had often stood passively by while observing other black folks being mistreated on the basis of skin color felt for the first time that it was politically appropriate to intervene. I remember when my siblings and I challenged our grandmother, who could pass for white, about the disparaging comments she made about dark-skinned people, including her grandchildren. Even though we were in a small Southern town, we were deeply affected by the call to end color-caste hierarchies. This process of decolonization created powerful changes in the lives of all black people in the United States. It meant that we could now militantly confront and change the devastating psychological consequences of internalized racism.
Even when collective militant black struggle for self-determination began to wane, alternative ways of seeing blackness and defining beauty continued to flourish. These changes diminished as assimilation became the process by which black folks could successfully enter the mainstream. Once again, the fate of black folks rested with white power. If a black person wanted a job and found it easier to get it if she or he did not wear a natural hairstyle, this was perceived by many to be a legitimate reason to change. And of course many black and white folks felt that the gain in civil rights, racial integration, and the lifting of many long-standing racial taboos (for example, the resistance to segregated housing and interracial relationships) meant that militant struggle was no longer needed. Since freedom for black folks had been defined as gaining the rights to enter mainstream society, to assume the values and economic standing of the white privileged classes, it logically followed that it did not take long for interracial interaction in the areas of education and jobs to reinstitutionalize, in less overt ways, a system wherein individual black folks who were most like white folks in the way they looked, talked, and dressed would find it easier to be socially mobile. To some extent, the dangers of assimilation to white standards were obscured by the assumption that our ways of seeing blackness had been fundamentally changed. Aware black activists did not assume that we would ever return to social conditions where black folks would once be grappling with issues of color. While leaders such as Eldridge Cleaver, Malcolm X, George Jackson and many others repeatedly made the issue of self-love central to black liberation struggle, new activists did not continue the emphasis on decolonization once many rights were gained. Many folks just assumed we had collectively resisted and altered color castes.
Few black activists were vigilant enough to see that concrete rewards for assimilation would undermine subversive oppositional ways of seeing blackness. Yet racial integration meant that many black folks were rejecting the ethic of communalism that had been a crucial survival strategy when racial apartheid was the norm. They were embracing liberal individualism instead. Being free was seen as having the right to satisfy individual desire without accountability to a collective body. Consequently, a black person could not feel that the way one wore one’s hair was not political but simply a matter of choice. Seeking to improve class mobility, to make it in the white world, black folks begin to backtrack and assume once again the attitudes and values of internalized racism. Some folks justified their decisions to compromise and assimilate to white aesthetic standards by seeing it as simply “wearing the mask” to get over. This was best typified by those black females who wore straight, white-looking wigs to work covering a natural hairdo. Unfortunately, black acceptance of assimilation meant that a politics of representation affirming white beauty standards was being reestablished as the norm.
Without an organized, ongoing, and collective movement for black self-determination, militant black critical thinkers and activists begin to constitute a subculture. A revolutionary militant stance, one that seriously critiqued capitalism and imperialism, was no longer embraced by the black masses. Given these circumstances, the radicalization of a leader such as Martin Luther King, Jr. went unnoticed by most black folks: his passionate critiques of militarism and capitalism were not heard. King was instead remembered primarily for those earlier stages of political work where he supported a bourgeois model of assimilation and social mobility. Those black activists who remained in the public eye did not continue a militant critique and interrogation of white standards of beauty. While radical activists such as Angela Davis had major public forums, continued to wear natural hair, and be black identified, they did not make the ongoing decolonization of our minds and imaginations central to their political agendas. They did not continually call for a focus on black self-love, on ending internalized racism.
Towards the end of the seventies, black folks were far less interested in calling attention to beauty standards. No one interrogated radical activists who begin to straighten their hair. Heterosexual black male leaders openly chose their partners and spouses using the standards of the color-caste system. Even during the most militant stages of black power movement, they had never really stopped allowing racist notions of beauty to define female desirability, yet they preached a message of self-love and an end to internalized racism. This hypocrisy also played a major role in creating a framework where color-caste systems could once again become the accepted norm.
The resurgence of interest in black self-determination, as well as of overt white supremacism, created in the eighties a context where attention could be given to the issue of decolonization, of internalized racism. The mass media carried stories about the fact that black children had low self-esteem, that they preferred white images over black ones, that black girls liked white dolls better than black ones. This news was all presented wit
h awe, as though there was no political context for the repudiation and devaluation of blackness. Yet the politics of racial assimilation had always operated as a form of backlash, intended to undermine black self-determination. Not all black people had closed our eyes to this reality. However, we did not have the access to the mass media and public forums that would have allowed us to launch a sustained challenge to internalized racism. Most of us continued to fight against the internalization of white supremacist thinking on whatever fronts we found ourselves. As a professor, I interrogated these issues in classrooms and as a writer in my books.
Nowadays, it is fashionable in some circles to mock Black Power struggle and see it solely as a failed social movement. It is easy for folks to make light of the slogan “black is beautiful.” Yet this mockery does not change the reality that the interrogation of internalized racism embedded in this slogan and the many concrete challenges that took place in all areas of black life did produce radical changes, even though they were undermined by white supremacist backlash. Most folks refuse to see the intensity of this backlash, and place responsibility on radical black activists for having too superficial an agenda. The only justifiable critique we can make of militant black liberation struggle is its failure to institutionalize sustained strategies of critical resistance. Collectively and individually, we must all assume accountability for this failure.
White supremacist capitalist patriarchal assaults on movements for black self-determination aimed at ending internalized racism were most effectively launched by the mass media. Institutionalizing a politics of representation which included black images, thus ending years of racial segregation, while reproducing the existing status quo, undermined black self-determination. The affirmation of assimilation as well as of racist white aesthetic standards, was the most effective means to undermine efforts to transform internalized racism in the psyches of the black masses. When these racist stereotypes were coupled with a concrete reality where assimilated black folks were the ones receiving greater material reward, the culture was ripe for a resurgence of color-caste hierarchy.