by Hooks, Bell
Color-caste hierarchies embrace both the issue of skin color and hair texture. Since lighter-skinned black people are most often genetically connected to intergenerational pairings of both white and black people, they tend to look more like whites. Females who were the offspring of generations of interracial mixing were more likely to have long, straight hair. The exploitative and oppressive nature of color-caste systems in white supremacist society has always had a gendered component. A mixture of racist and sexist thinking informs the way color-caste hierarchies detrimentally affect the lives of black females differently from black males. Light skin and long, straight hair continue to be traits that define a female as beautiful and desirable in the racist white imagination and in the colonized black mind set. Darker-skinned black females work to develop positive self-esteem in a society that continually devalues their image. To this day, the images of black female bitchiness, evil temper, and treachery continue to be marked by darker skin. This is the stereotype called “Sapphire”; no light skin occupies this devalued position. We see these images continually in the mass media whether they be presented to us in television sitcoms (such as the popular show Martin), on cop shows, (the criminal black woman is usually dark), and in movies made by black and white directors alike. Spike Lee graphically portrayed the conflict of skin color in his film School Daze, not via male characters but by staging a dramatic fight between light-skinned women and their darker counterparts. Merely exploiting the issue, the film is neither critically subversive nor oppositional. And in many theaters black audiences loudly expressed their continued investment in color-caste hierarchies by “dissing” darker-skinned female characters.
Throughout the history of white supremacy in the United States, racist white men have regarded the biracial female as a sexual ideal. In this regard, black men have taken their cues from white men. Stereotypically portrayed as embodying a passionate sensual eroticism as well as a subordinate feminine nature, the biracial black woman has been and remains the standard other black females are measured against. Even when darker-skinned black women are given “play” in films, their characters are usually subordinated to lighter skinned females who are deemed more desirable. For a time, films that portrayed the biracial black woman as a “tragic mulatto” were passé, but contemporary films such as the powerful drama One False Move return this figure to center stage. The impact of militant black liberation struggle had once called upon white-dominated fashion magazines and black magazines to show diverse images of black female beauty. In more recent times, however, it has been acceptable simply to highlight and valorize the image of the biracial black woman. Black women models such as Naomi Campbell find that they have a greater crossover success if their images are altered by long, straight wigs, weaves, or bonded hair so that they resemble the “wannabes”—folks who affirm the equation of whiteness with beauty by seeking to take on the characteristic look of whiteness. This terrain of “drag” wherein the distinctly black-looking female is made to appear in a constant struggle to transform herself into a white female is a space only a brown-skinned black woman can occupy. Biracially black women already occupied a distinctly different, more valued place within the beauty hierarchy. As in the days of slavery and racial apartheid, white fascination with racial mixing once again determines the standard of valuation, especially when the issue is the valuation of female bodies. A world that can recognize the dark-skinned Michael Jordan as a symbol of black beauty scorns and devalues the beauty of Tracy Chapman. Black male pop icons mock her looks. And while folks comment on the fact that light-skinned and biracial women have become the stars of most movies that depict black folks, no one has organized public forums to talk about the way this mass media focus on color undermines our efforts to decolonize our minds and imaginations. Just as whites now privilege lighter skin in movies and fashion magazines, particularly with female characters, folks with darker skin face a media that subordinates their image. Dark skin is stereotypically coded in the racist, sexist, or colonized imagination as masculine. Hence, a male’s power is enhanced by dark looks while a female’s dark looks diminish her femininity. Irrespective of people’s sexual preferences, the color-caste hierarchy functions to diminish the desirability of darker-skinned females. Being seen as desirable does not simply affect one’s ability to attract partners; it enhances class mobility in public arenas, in educational systems and in the work force.
The tragic consequences of color-caste hierarchy are evident among the very young who are striving to construct positive identity and healthy self-esteem. Black parents testify that black children learn early to devalue dark skin. One black mother in an interracial marriage was shocked when her four-year-old girl expressed the desire that her mom be white like herself and her dad. She had already learned that white was better. She had already learned to negate the blackness in herself. In high schools all around the United States, darker-skinned black girls must resist the socialization that would have them see themselves as ugly if they are to construct healthy self-esteem. That means they must resist the efforts of peers to devalue them. This is just one of the tragic implications of black reinvestment in color-caste hierarchies. Had there never been a shift in color consciousness among black people, no one would have paid special attention to the reality that many black children seem to be having as much difficulty learning to love blackness in this racially integrated time of multiculturalism as folks had during periods of intense racial apartheid. Kathe Sandler’s documentary film A Question of Color examines the way black liberation politics of the sixties challenged color caste even as she shows recent images of activists who returned to conventional racist defined notions of beauty. Even though Sandler does not offer suggestions and strategies for how we can deal with this problem now, this film is an important intervention because it brings the issue back into public discourse.
To describe the problems of color caste we must address it politically as a serious crisis of consciousness if we are not to return to an old model of class and caste where those blacks who are most privileged will be light-skinned or biracial, acting as mediators between the white world and a disenfranchised, disadvantaged mass of black folks with dark skin. Right now there is a new wave of young, well-educated biracial folks who identify as black and who benefit from this identification both socially and when they enter the work force. Although they realize the implicit racism when they are valued more by whites than darker-skinned blacks, the ethic of liberal individualism sanctions this opportunism. Ironically, they may be among those who critique color caste even as they accept the perks that come from the culture’s reinvestment in color-caste hierarchies. Until black folks begin collectively to critique and question the politics of representation that systematically devalues blackness, the devastating effects of color caste will continue to inflict psychological damage on masses of black folks. To intervene and transform those politics of representation informed by colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy, we have to be willing to challenge mainstream culture’s efforts to “erase racism” by suggesting it does not really exist. Recognizing the power of mass media images to define social reality, we need lobbyists in the government, as well as organized groups who sponsor boycotts in order to create awareness of these concerns and to demand change. Progressive nonblack allies in struggle must join the effort to call attention to internalized racism. Everyone must break through the wall of denial that would have us believe a hatred of blackness emerges from troubled individual psyches and acknowledge that it is systematically taught through processes of socialization in white supremacist society. We must acknowledge, too, that black folks who have internalized white supremacist attitudes and values are as much agents of this socialization as their racist nonblack counterparts. Progressive black leaders and critical thinkers committed to a politics of cultural transformation that would constructively change the lot of the black underclass and thus positively impact the culture as a whole need to make decolonizing our minds and imagin
ation central when we educate for critical consciousness. Learning from the past, we need to remain critically vigilant, willing to interrogate our work as well as our habits of being to ensure that we are not perpetuating internalized racism. Note that more conservative black political agendas, such as the Nation of Islam and certain strands of Afrocentrism, are the only groups who make self-love central, and as a consequence capture the imagination of a mass black public. Revolutionary struggle for black self-determination must become a real part of our lives if we want to counter conservative thinking and offer life-affirming practices to black folks daily wounded by white supremacist assaults. Those wounds will not heal if left unattended.
17
MALCOLM X
The longed-for feminist manhood
Critical scholarship on Malcolm X contains no substantial work from a feminist standpoint. Always interested in psychoanalytical approaches to understanding the construction of individual subjectivity, I have been excited by recent work on Malcolm X that seeks to shed light on the development of his personality as militant spokesperson and activist for black liberation struggle by critically interpreting autobiographical information and, as a consequence, seriously highlighting the question of gender.
These are troubled times for black women and men. Gender conflicts abound, as do profound misunderstandings about the nature of sex roles. In black popular culture, black females are often blamed for the problems black males face. The institutionalization of black male patriarchy is often presented as the answer to our problems. Not surprisingly, a culture icon like Malcolm X, who continues to be seen by many black folks as the embodiment of quintessential manliness, remains a powerful role model for the construction of black male identity. Hence, it is crucial that we understand the complexity of his thinking about gender.
Malcolm often blamed black women for many of the problems black men faced, and it took years for him to begin a critical interrogation of that kind of misogynist, sexist thinking. It seems ironic that Bruce Perry’s recent biographical study, Malcolm: A Life of the Man Who Changed Black America, which offers much needed and previously unavailable information and attempts to “read” Malcolm’s life critically using a psychological approach, holds the women in Malcolm’s life accountable for any behavior that could be deemed dysfunctional. Though Perry appears to be appalled by the depths of Malcolm’s sexism and misogyny at various periods of his life, he does not attempt to relate this thinking to the institution of patriarchy, to ways of thinking about gender that abound in a patriarchal culture, nor does he choose to emphasize the progressive changes in Malcolm’s thinking about gender towards the end of his life. To have focused on these changes, Perry would have had to rethink a major premise of his book, that the “dominating” or abandoning black women in Malcolm’s life created in him a monstrous masculinity, one that so emotionally crippled him that he was unable to recover himself and was, as a consequence, abusive and controlling towards others.
In a sense, Perry’s biography attempts to deconstruct and demystify Malcolm by highlighting in an aggressive manner his flaws, shortcomings, and psychological hang-ups. And it is particularly through his exploration and discussion of Malcolm’s relationship to women that Perry critically interprets material in such a way as to emphasize (even overemphasize) that Malcolm was not the stuff of which role models, heroes, and cultural icons should be made. To decontextualize Malcolm’s sexism and misogyny, and make it appear to be solely a reaction to dysfunctional family relations, is to place him outside history, to represent him as though he were solely a product of black culture and not equally an individual whose identity and sense of self, particularly his sense of manhood, was shaped by the prevailing social ethos of white supremacist capitalist patriarchal society. Using such a narrow framework to analyze Malcolm’s life can only lead to distortion and over-simplification. Needless to say, Perry does not apply tools of feminist analysis to explain Malcolm’s attitude towards women or his thinking about gender relations. There have been few attempts to discuss Malcolm’s life, his political commitments, from a feminist perspective. All too often, feminist thinkers have, like Perry, simply chosen to focus on the sexism and misogyny that shaped Malcolm’s thinking and actions throughout much of his life, using that as a reason either to invalidate or dismiss his political impact. Contemporary resurgence of interest in the writings and teachings of Malcolm X has helped to create a critical climate where we can reassess his life and work from a variety of standpoints. Young black females and males, choosing Malcolm as icon and teacher, raise questions about his thinking on gender. In my classes, young black females want to know how we reconcile his sexism and his misogyny with progressive political teachings on black liberation.
To reassess Malcolm’s life and work from a feminist standpoint, it is absolutely essential to place him firmly within the social context of patriarchy. We must understand Malcolm in light of that historical legacy in which racism and white supremacy are forms of domination where violation and dehumanization have been articulated and described through a gendered patriarchal rhetoric. That is to say, when folks talk about the cruel history of white domination of black people in the United States—as exemplified by the emasculation of black men—they often make liberation synonymous with the establishment of black patriarchy, of black men gaining the right to dominate women and children.
The “manhood” Malcolm X evoked in his passionate speeches as a representative of the Nation of Islam was clearly defined along such patriarchal lines. While Malcolm did not directly advocate the establishment of black patriarchy as a way of affording black men the right to dominate black women, he talked about the need to “protect” black women, thus using a less obvious strategy to promote black patriarchy. He evoked what might be called a “benevolent” patriarchy in which the patriarchal father/ruler would assume full responsibility for caring for his family—his woman, his children. In one of his most famous speeches, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” Malcolm articulated the tenets of black nationalism using patriarchal rhetoric: “The political philosophy of black nationalism means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community …” Black nationalist liberation rhetoric clearly placed black women in a subordinate role. It’s important to note here that Malcolm did not invent this rhetoric. It was part and parcel of the conservative ideology underlying the Black Muslim religion and both reformist and radical approaches to black liberation.
That ideology was promoted by black females as well as by black males. Many black women joined the Nation of Islam because they felt they would find respect for black womanhood, the patriarchal protection and care denied them in the dominant culture. The price of subordination did not seem too high to pay for masculinist regard. At one of his early appearances with the great black freedom fighter Fannie Lou Hamer, Malcolm castigated black men for their failure to protect black women and children from racist brutality.
When I listen to Mrs. Hamer, a black woman—could be my mother, my sister, my daughter—describe what they had done to her in Mississippi, I ask myself how in the world can we ever expect to be respected as men with black women being beaten and nothing being done about it? No, we don’t deserve to be recognized and respected as men as long as our women can be brutalized in the manner that this woman described, and nothing being done about it …
Socialized to think along sexist lines about the nature of gender roles, most black people in Malcolm’s day believed that men should work and provide for their families, and that women should remain in the home taking care of domestic life and children. (Today, most black folks assume that both genders will work outside the home.) It was often understood that racism in the realm of employment often meant that black men were not able to assume the position of economic providers, that black females often found low-paying jobs when males could find no work. One promise of Elijah Muhammad’s Islam was that black women would find husbands who would have jobs. Whatever sexism and mi
sogyny Malcolm X embraced prior to his involvement with the Nation of Islam was intensified by his participation in this organization. In the context of the Nation, the misogynist fear and hatred of women that he had learned as a street hustler was given a legitimate ideological framework. Yet, there it was assumed that if black women were dominant it was not because they were inherently “evil” but because black men had allowed themselves to become emasculated and weak. Hence, any black man who had the courage could reclaim this patriarchal role and thus straighten out the wayward black woman. As a street hustler, Malcolm was often enraged when females were able to outsmart and control men.
Underlying his distrust of women was a fear of emasculation, of losing control, of being controlled by others. Indeed, Malcolm was obsessed with the notion of emasculation and concerned that black men assert control over their lives and the lives of others. In his autobiography, Malcolm explained Muslim teachings on the nature of gender roles, stating that
the true nature of a man is to be strong, and a woman’s true nature is to be weak, and while a man must at all times respect his woman, at the same time he needs to understand that he must control her if he expects to get her respect.