Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (32 page)

Healing eventually came from actively talking about my abortion with my mother and friends. Whether through speech or writing, it meant consciously remembering the experience. It meant talking about how our bodies have never been our own. For centuries we have been controlled, sterilized and raped by masculine, imperialist and white supremacist forces. The predominantly white and racist feminist movement of the 1970s ignored the relationship between racism, sexism, classism and homophobia. This pervasive feminist thinking has denied the complexities of the oppressions I fight everyday. In the growing emergence of “third wave” feminism, feminism isn’t reduced to one English-speaking white face from North America. Asian-American feminists must not remain invisible in the feminist struggle, because we too are angry at the injustices that we face in this country. We yearn for a feminism that addresses our realities as Asian-American women and women of color, one that incorporates race, class, gender and sexuality in its analysis and application. We long for a feminism that addresses the struggle of reproductive rights for women of color in the United States and in the “Third World.”

Even for those who can afford to get an abortion, in my experience there has been a serious lack of education about procedures and proper emotional and physical aftercare. While some women have had positive experiences with RU-486, mine was not. Almost a year after the abortion, the pain still visited me from time to time. For so long I tried to deny that I had undergone a shocking experience, and I entered a period of self-punishment. I pretended to be recovered, but the pain pushed itself outward. Regret and guilt caused severe anxiety attacks that left me breathless, convulsing and faint.

When I returned to the clinic after the abortion, I was told I needed therapy for my depression and anxiety. A white female doctor began asking questions about me, my family and my refusal to seek therapy. I suggested that I join a support group for women of color who had abortions and was informed by the doctor that there were none, to her knowledge, in New York City. She asked me why I would feel more comfortable around other women of color and not a white man. I resented her questions, and she pressed on, a few words short of calling me a “separatist.” Since my own abortion, I have realized that women of color need access to post-abortion therapy that is affordable and sensitive to different cultures and sexualities.

 

To heal I had to let go. I didn’t let go of the memory but of this imaginary noose that restrained me and kept me from self-love. I hadn’t learned as a child to love myself. Rather, I had been taught to be a good Filipina girl and do as I was told. This noose now came in forms of denial, self-punishment and attracting unsupportive people in my life. I also had to take some time away from my mother, to retreat from her anger and hurt to process my own. The first few months after the abortion we didn’t speak that often. Eventually I entered therapy, which my mother paid for out of guilt, despite our emotional distance. Talking about my abortion with another woman of color was a relief. I found support and a safe space to open up.

My mother eventually broke down. She called in tears and apologized for not supporting me during my ordeal. I knew in my heart that if I was to forgive myself, I must also forgive her. She too was wounded and realized that she would not have known what to do in my situation. I felt closer to her at that point.

Healing has never been as easy process for me. Something always interrupts it—new relationships, disagreements with family or friends, old issues, work and school. Denial coats the pain and prevents actual healing. When I become scared of my emotions and feel buried, I remember to love myself and know that I am not alone. I struggle with my inner demons constantly. Although I am only in the beginning stages of my healing process, I feel that I have now entered a place of peace. Regret does nothing to change things. Although my decision was difficult, I made the best choice for my circumstances. It is my daughter’s spirit that calls me out of grief. In my insistence on remembering her, I have found healing. She comes to me in dreams and comforts me during difficult times, giving me a vision for the future where there is love instead of suffering. Being with her, I find a place where there is healing from dehumanization. I struggle for her vision everyday.

 

 

shani jamila

 

 

 

 

 

I used to think I had missed my time. Thought I was meant to have come of age in the sixties when I could’ve been a Panther freedom fighter, challenging the pigs alongside Assata, Angela and Kathleen. Oh, but I went deeper than that. I saw myself reading my poetry with Sonia, Ntozake, Nikki and June . . . being a peer of Audre, Alice and Paula Giddings . . . kickin’ it with revolutionary brothers like Huey, Haki, and Rap . . . all while rocking the shit out of my black beret. When she needed advice, I would’ve
been
there for Patricia Hill Collins as she bounced her preliminary ideas about
Black Feminist Thought
off me. Now can’t you see the beauty in this? I would have been building and bonding with a community of artists and activists that had this whole vibrancy radiating from its core, and so many of my role models would’ve just been crew.

I know right now some of y’all are probably like, “OK, this child’s on crack . . . that decade was not all that!” But don’t front. When you heard the stories of your parents, aunts, uncles and family friends—or even if you just watched some TV special talking about the mystique of the sixties—didn’t it ever make you wonder what happened with our generation? Who were our revolutionaries? What sparked our passions so high that we were willing to risk our lives to fight for it? Where was our national Black Arts Movement?

It seemed natural that we should have one—after all, we had flavor for days . . . high-tops and Hammer pants, jellies and Jheri Curls bear witness to that! And as an African-American child coming of age in the first generation to endure the United States post-integration, I can
definitely
testify that we had our own struggles: AIDS, apartheid, affirmative action, the prison industrial complex and underdeveloped inner cities are only a few examples. Growing up, these were the things that would run through my mind as I’d cut out collages from
Right On!,
and wonder what happened to us. Seemed like coping with issues like these would’ve hyped us up enough to create our own culture of resistance. The glossy pages trying to stick to the walls of my room competed futilely with the vibrations emanating from my spastic MTV imitations as Power 99FM’s bass blasted. I danced around the images of Public Enemy and Queen Latifah that now decorated my floor, rapping all the lyrics to “Fight the Power” as I mourned our inactivity.

As I got older, I realized what I’d missed in my youth. Largely due to globalization and growing technology, in addition to some banging beats and off-the-chain lyrics, we’d had an
international
Black Arts Movement shaping our generation. As a kid, I didn’t recognize hip hop as a vibrant and valuable sociocultural force—I just thought the culture was cool. I loved the music but never conceived of it as a revolutionary outcry. After all, I’d learned in school that activism was a concept confined to the sixties.... so even though I felt empowered by the Afrocentric vibes and in-your-face lyrics, it seemed like the culture came a few decades too late for a critical context. In fact, individuals and organizations whose work challenged me to think critically about Black people rarely even entered the public school curriculum. In my high school’s halls we were taught a very narrow and revisionist view of world history that boiled down to this: white was right, Africa was an afterthought. In addition to the massive amounts of potentially empowering information that was erased by those messages, a holistic history just was not taught.

Not only were my people not reflected in the syllabi, but I didn’t see a proportionate reflection in the faces of my classmates either. As one of only three Black faces in the honors program, all of whom were middle-class females, I often questioned why our representation was so disproportionate. The subtext shouted that the reason wasn’t a deficiency in the newly integrated school system but rather the failings of people of color. We were tacitly taught that our token presence proved racism and sexism were over, so the problem must have been our peers’ inability to achieve. I knew this wasn’t true but as a child I was often frustrated because I didn’t know how to prove it, as it was often demanded that I do.

See, my generation came of age with the expectancy that we could live, eat and attend school among whites. Race and gender were no longer inscribed in the law as automatic barriers to achievement, making the injustices we encountered less obvious than those our predecessors had faced. But the issues didn’t go away. Instead, we found that an adverse consequence of integration and the “gains” of the sixties was even more heavily convoluted notions of race and gender oppression. Economic class stratification has also continued to evolve as a serious complication.

The paradox of the Black middle class as I experienced it is that we are simultaneously affirmed and erased: tokenized and celebrated as one of the few “achievers” of our race but set apart from other Black folks by our economic success. It is the classic divide-and-conquer technique regularly employed in oppressive structures; in this case saying that Black people are pathological—but you somehow escaped the genetic curse, so you must be “different.” These lessons were regularly reinforced with camouflaged compliments such as, “Wow, you’re so pretty/smart . . . are
both
of your parents Black?” Other times the insults would blaze brazenly, like the comments made by the white girls in my Girl Scouts carpool when we drove by a group of Black children playing in their yard: “Ooooh, Mom! Look at the little niglets playing on the street!” Their snickers echoed in a familiar way that suggested they’d shared this joke before. As the pain and rage began to well up within me, their dismissive comments also gathered force: “God, like, don’t be so sensitive, Shani. We’re not talking about you. You’re different.” I waited expectantly for the adult in the car to tell her children they were out of line and to apologize. She said nothing. I began to wonder if I was overreacting. Maybe it wasn’t such a big deal. Maybe I was different. Maybe I thought too much.

Over the years I learned how to censor myself and adapt to different surroundings, automatically tailoring my tongue to fit the ear of whatever crew I was with. Depending on the composition of the crowd, the way I’d speak and even the things I’d talk about were subject to change. White people automatically got a very precise speech, because I knew every word out of my mouth was being measured and quantified as an example of the capabilities of the entire Black race. Around Black people I slipped into the vocabulary I felt more comfortable with but remained aware that I was still being judged. This time it was to see how capably I could fall back into “our talk” without sounding like a foreigner, if I could prove my suburban upbringing and elitist education had not robbed me of my authenticity as a Black woman.

Passing this litmus test meant the most to me. Because if the daily trials weren’t enough, when the flood of college acceptance and rejection letters began pouring in and I got into schools my white “friends” weren’t admitted to, all of a sudden the color they didn’t see before came back fierce. My GPA, test scores, extracurricular activities, and recommendations were rendered irrelevant when they viciously told me the only conceivable reason I was getting in over them had to be affirmative action. I realized the racial logic being used against me was something that pervaded all class spheres. Whether you were a beneficiary of affirmative action or you were seen in the imagery of welfare queens (whose depiction as poor Black women defies actual numerical stats), we were all categorized as niggers trying to get over on the system.

While most of my memories from childhood are happy ones, I also remember a constant struggle to find a sense of balance. For every “reward” token status bestowed, it simultaneously increased the isolation I felt. I didn’t think there were many people who could understand how and why I was struggling when by societal standards I was succeeding. I worried that I was being ungrateful because I knew so many who had come before me had given their lives in the hopes that one day their children could have the opportunities I’d grown up with. Despite the public accolades I received for my accomplishments, until I went to college I felt shunned by whites and suspected by Blacks. I was looking for a place to belong.

In 1993 I took my first steps on the campus of Spelman College, a Black woman’s space in the middle of the largest conglomeration of historically Black colleges and universities in the world. This is not your typical institution. One of only two colleges of its kind surviving in the States—at Spelman Black women walk proud. Our first address from “Sista Prez” Johnnetta B. Cole told us so. As is characteristic of speeches to incoming first-year students, she instructed us to look to our right and look to our left. We dutifully gazed upon each other’s brown faces. She spoke: “Other schools will tell you one of these students will not be here in four years when you are graduating. At Spelman we say we will all see to it: your sister
better
be at your side when you
all
graduate in four years!” Loud cheers erupted—we were our sisters’ keepers.

At Spelman I learned new ways of learning, thinking and challenging. It was in this place that I was first introduced to a way of teaching that was unapologetically rooted in Black women’s perspectives, that addressed the reality of what it means to be at the center of intersecting discriminations like race, class and gender. My formal education about my people began to expand beyond Malcolm and Martin. I learned about activists like Sojourner Truth and Maria W. Stewart, journalists and crusaders like Ida B. Wells, preachers like Jarena Lee, freedom fighters and abolitionists like Harriet Tubman, scholars like Anna Julia Cooper, poets like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and community leaders like Mary Church Terrell. Here our core courses were entitled “African Diaspora and the World” and “Images of Women in the Media.” The required reading on the syllabi included books like Paulo Freire’s
Pedagogy of the Oppressed,
Frantz Fanon’s
The Wretched of the Earth,
and Patricia Hill Collins’s Black Feminist
Thought.
In these books and classes I found the answers to questions I didn’t even have the language to ask with the education I’d received in high school.

This is what made attending a historically Black college such a turning point in my life. I don’t want to romanticize my collegiate experience to the point where it was like I opened up a book and suddenly became some sort of guru, but what being exposed to this community of scholars and activists did do was give me a framework for my feelings. The value of having my thoughts nurtured, legitimized and placed into a historical context, in addition to the power of being surrounded by sisters and brothers who were walking refutations to the stereotypes I’d grown up with, gave me a space to blossom in ways I couldn’t have imagined. I felt validated and affirmed by the idea that I no longer had to explain why Black folks were different from the purported standard. Instead of being made to justify what mainstream society perceived as deviance, I was supported in the effort to critically challenge how societal norms even came to be. I loved that when we would discuss slavery, an integral part of the conversation was slave revolts—Black resistance had finally entered the curriculum. It was the first time I saw people reflective of myself and my experiences both inside and outside of the classroom. Living and learning like this was revolutionary for me. It changed my life.

 

Of course, being on an all women’s campus, gender was also a regular topic of conversation. I was part of some beautiful dialogues where brothers would share the struggles they endured excelling academically that they didn’t face when they’d shine in the more “acceptable” realms of sports or music. Sisters would relate back with testimonies of feeling forced to choose between our Blackness and our womanhood—a choice as impossible, a professor pointed out, as choosing between our left and right sides. In stark contrast to the race debates, however, these moments of raw honesty took place on a slippery slope. Gendered analyses were not granted the same sense of universal urgency attributed to race. Rather, they were received with suspicion. Many people perceived the debate over gender dynamics as a way to pit Black folks against each other. In heated conversations my peers would choose camps, placing race, gender and class in a hierarchy and declaring loyalty to one over the other. Protests would be peppered with frequent warnings that Spelman was notorious for inculcating crazy mentalities in its students. We were told we better watch our backs before we turned into one of those (gasp!) feminists too.