Within the study of African-American history and the African diaspora, gender operates as a central framework through which we can understand the transformation of cultural heritage and memory throughout time and space. Drawing on Snorton’s theories of masculinity, trans identity, femininity, and gender fluidity as both an abstract and lived lens, we can destabilize the ways in which gender is constructed through and with blackness. Snorton further argues that black maternity is fundamental to producing American discourses of black identity. Through the bodies and labor of black women, Foucault’s ideas can be further complicated to reveal how embodied processes of medical examination and reproduction are actually forms of discipline, particularly for black and gendered bodies (in contrast to the assumed white and masculine body, the neutral body, that Foucault discusses). Thus, black flesh produces relationships between race and gender that serve as the foundation for American ideologies of race, sex, gender, and power.
The visual, material, textual, embodied, and sensory practices that serve to shape the fluidity of blackness are often upheld and passed down through women’s bodies, narratives, and beliefs. The questions of social change and cultural continuity are embedded in the politics of gender, and the contributions of black women in the United States are integral to answering the question of where blackness is, and how blackness is created, contested, and imagined (Weisenfeld, 136). Drawing on the stories and experiences of how black womanhood is understood and expressed destabilizes the pervasive and restrictive conditions through which blackness is often defined in scholarly and academic texts.
Through our coursework, we sought to immerse ourselves within visual media, music, and literature that expanded not just our ideas about where blackness exists, but how to understand blackness as a fluid and ever-changing concept. Theorizing blackness through the specific lens of gender and politics enables scholars to pay attention to the forms of knowledge production, complicating “alternative and culturally powerful conceptions of community, formulations of the public self, and strategies for political action,” and revealing new potential definitions of the domestic and private realms (Weisenfeld, 139). Exploring the politics of gender while theorizing blackness is a route to locating where and how black culture and identity is produced and disseminated. Concepts covered in class, such as the work of female artists like Nina Simone, Lorraine Hansberry, contemporary music, and Snorton’s theoretical framework explore how gender and blackness intersect. Throughout our class, we complicated how blackness is a fluid process that is both sustained and mobilized through the body.
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Becoming Michelle Obama Documentary Review
After recently watching the documentary becoming ” on Netflix based on Michelle Obama’s memoir, I think it is important to acknowledge her story and how it was told. When thinking about influential Black Leaders, most of the time Black men are the first names listed. When thinking about those who put themselves on the front line, again Black men are most commonly listed. Black women are placed on the Black burner and if acknowledged for the work they do, it relates to their work behind the scenes.
The documentary speaks on scenes from Michelle Obama’s book Becoming and follows her on her book tour.
I think one of the most memorable aspects of the film was when Michelle shared her perspective of her husband Barack Obama’s campaign. During the beginning of Barack Obama’s campaign, Michelle opened up and was vulnerable about her life and her story. She shared with people across the country her own struggle and hunger for change. She stood by her husbands’ side throughout his campaign but was also very vocal in the process. During the campaign, she encountered hate from news channels, magazines, and politicians disrespecting her for her openness. She was labeled as the angry back woman, a hater of America, and even a terrorist. They used her or vulnerability against her and it affected her greatly. She had to continue the campaign using a script and limit herself as vocal. Michelle also spoke about having to put a brake on her dreams and realign her priorities after giving birth to her daughters Sasha and Malia. It wasn’t because her husband told her to quit her job that she did, but because she felt like she needed to be there to raise her daughters.
I think the overshadowing of Black women is important to acknowledge in thinking about the politics of gender as it gives a voice to one that was once hidden. Michelle Obama released this book shortly after concluding 8 years as the First Lady. Arguably I think this book and documentary served as a release. After years of judgment and people attempting to bring her down and transform her narrative, provide the world with her own perspective of how she became who she is. Black women are constantly being judged and misread especially when navigating a public eye. The shift between being invisible and hypervisor at the same time. Michelle not only sacrificed her own dreams for her family but offered a part of herself to this country as she told her story. Black women are continuously giving and sacrificing themselves as they lift up and empower those who come after them. As we think about the politics of gender it is important to also highlight the voices of Black women that might be overshadowed.
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Black women back up black men, but who backs up black women?
Black women are expected to be put others before themselves. The women of the Younger family in A Raisin in the Sun are criticized by Walter Younger for not supporting him and being selfish. He tells Ruth “So tired—moaning and groaning all the time, but you wouldn’t do nothing to help, would you? You couldn’t be on my side that long for nothing, could you?” (Hansberry 1988, 32). He doesn’t realize that just because Ruth may not vocalize her pain or frustration does not mean she is not feeling those emotions. He is jumping to the conclusion that she blames him for the hardship they are going through as a family. He is also not recognizing how hard Ruth works to help provide for their family.
Walter also tries to shut down Beneatha “Who the hell told you you had to be a doctor? If you so crazy ‘bout messing ‘round with sick people—then go be a nurse like other women—or just get married and be quiet…” (38). The family materializes their dreams because of the insurance money they will receive. Walter wants to use the money for a business opportunity, Beneatha wants to use the money for medical school, Mama and Ruth want to use the money for a new home. Walter tells Beneatha that because she is a woman, she should just be a “nurse” or a “wife.” He thinks that her dreams are not as important as his; that as a woman there are pre-determined dreams to strive for. Walter wants Beneatha to sacrifice her dreams and give up her share of the money. Beneatha or Ruth should not sacrifice themselves for Walter. Their dreams and opinions are just as important as Walter’s. Their roles in the Younger family are not appreciated by Walter.
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Black women’s anger is survival
Anger is emotion, and for black women, it is also survival. Audre Lorde discusses anger in more than one of her essays in Sister Outsider, but her essay “Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger” argues that anger is important to a black woman’s survival because anger can destroy. Black women are constantly fighting for their survival, and in the process, they become stronger. Anger can destroy black sisterhood, Lorde says “Other Black women are not the root cause nor the source of that pool of anger…Then why does that anger unleash itself most tellingly against another black woman at the least excuse?” (Lorde 1984, 145). Why do black women not let their anger out on the people that are the cause of that anger? This may not happen because there could be consequences with directing that anger towards certain people. Not because that anger is aggressive or causes harm, but because those people could find a way to punish black women for expressing that anger in any way.
So how do black women survive? How do they survive so that anger does not destroy them?
Lorde argues “…survival is the greatest gift of love. Sometimes, for Black mothers, it is the only gift possible, and tenderness gets lost” (150). Lorde describes survival as a gift that is passed down by black mothers. This gift is not passed down with “tenderness,” but that is because survival is not meant to be an easy journey. Survival is active. Black women actively perform survival. They find ways to release that anger so that it does not cause pain. Black mothers want their children to survive and live.
“What other creature in the world besides the Black woman has had to build the knowledge of so much hatred into her survival and keep going?” (150).