Imani Hamilton

Learning About The Black Feminist

I wouldn’t say that my work is a celebration because it’s not as “festive” as I am thinking the word celebration means to me, but it’s more of a milestone in my life. I am content with who I have become thus far. The last time I took photos was a turning point for me; the colorful pictures speak a volume of pride that I am unable to express in words. It was honestly the first time since maybe junior survey, that I actually had a game plan and was satisfied with what I was doing.  I was one to never believe in the whole “music taking control”, but at that moment it did. I was feeling the hurt, the pride, the joy, just all of these bottled up emotions I’ve had for so long. I want to show a timeline. A timeline of me as a person and how this project started, to who I am now and where this project is going. I want to channel the energy that not only family members and close friends inspired me to have, but the influences I had staring in my face growing up.

Thinking about what John said about including my junior survey work into my thesis work and it becoming muddy is right. John is my thesis professor and has been through it all with me. He has helped me get to the point that I am at now with my work, but I am nowhere close to being finished. John saw my Junior Research work and believes that they are having two separate conversations. I do notice that I am talking about two different times in my life, but I’m curious if I were to some how bring in three or four images from survey to show the timeline that I’ve been thinking about. Maybe have the junior survey work small and the closer I get to my recent work the bigger the images become.

I have a lot of self-portraiture for my thesis project and just a couple of images of me and the relationship with my family. My self-portraiture first stated out as these clinical looking images of me putting on white face, covering up my face to hide any form of identity, and all of these images took place in a stark black room you can call it. In my most recent self portraiture they are a lot more livelier and show more emotion. I have the colors of the African flag and images of me showing freedom, happiness, me feeling alive. The complete opposite of what I showed in my junior survey and the beginning of this semester.

I am exploring the boundaries on what it means to be an African American feminist. I feel like that part of feminism has been tackled before but has only been brushed over in learning environments and with people educating themselves. I know people like Angela Davis, Renee Cox, (others) have tackled both in writing and in art forms on afro-feminism.

Growing up to who I am and having the pride and fire inside of me to be proud of who I am has helped me with this project, but also having this sense of pride and demeanor about myself has made me question “am I doing too much?”. For the past couple of months I have been exposed to “you guys are over doing it” “you guys are just looking for something to complain about” “ you guys should get over it” and it has made me believe that maybe I am asking for too much, maybe I am making a big deal out of something. These outside voices that felt that their opinion really mattered were people from Facebook, Instagram, internet “personalities” like Tomi Lahren. But then I have to remind myself that we have been suppressed for so long that now that we are doing the same type of over saturation that they have been doing for centuries they think there is something wrong.

After listening to an excerpt of Malcolm X’s Speech “Who taught you how to hate”, reading the speech and dissecting it gave me that reminder that we all need every once in a while. I was only able to find the entire speech video on Youtube but the lines that stuck out to me were; “Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? To such extent you bleach, to get like the white man. Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind? Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to so much so that you don’t want to be around each other?” and also “The most disrespected person in America, is the black woman. The most un-protected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America, is the black woman.”

It’s really amazing how something that was issue in the early 60s is still an issue in 2016. Not only for black women, but for black people as a whole. The constant feeling of not being enough’, but when we do try to embrace our “blackness” we are doing “too much” or “asking for a lot” and even we can “not be doing enough”. There never seems to be for lack of better of words an in between when it comes to black people and them trying to be active in their community. Its really disappointing to know that we haven’t progressed as much as we are told we have. Not saying this is the only change that is prominent, but we’re able to go to school with other races than our own. But the discrimination is still prominent and that what hurts the most. To think about all the people who died for us to have a better life and for us to not have progressed as much as we should have is so disheartening.

In the essay called “Being Lovingly, Knowingly Ignorant: White Feminism and Women of Color” by Mariana Ortega. She analyzes the notion of “loving, knowing ignorance,” a type of “arrogant perception” that produces ignorance about women of color and their work at the same time that it proclaims to have both knowledge about and loving perception toward them.  Doing a brief analysis of her essay, she talks about issues within feminism regarding the separation of colored women, how white women used the knowledge of colored women to aide them for their personal benefit, and then the feminist who actually does care about women of color and wants to broaden their knowledge to not only understand but to bring women of color into the lime light.

In her essay she asks a lot of important questions “Why is it that there is only a small percentage of books and articles written by women of color in the growing lists of feminist publications? Why is it that I or any of the few women of color who are involved in feminist work could write lists of all the experiences that make us invisible, misunderstood, homogenized, and victimized while dealing with white feminists–lists that are eerily similar to the list Lorde provides in her 1981 essay “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”?” I don’t have a valid enough response to her questions but I do have an idea on the reason for certain things. In response to her question about why there is a small percentage of women of color involved with books and articles, I personally feel like it is because not a lot of people go looking for books and articles written by women of color. And because of that when people type in feminism into their search engines whatever is frequently viewed pops up first. I will admit that when it came to looking up work regarding feminism I never knew how to one search correctly for women of color and feminism and two I didn’t expect their to be a great number of established colored women artists in the game. Yes you can be quick to blame the institution, but how much can institutes provide for students until its time for those same students to do their own research.

Ortega also said “Thus we may find the feminist who wants to perceive lovingly, who wants to see women of color in their own terms, does not want to homogenize them, does not want to be coercive with them, does not want to use them but who, despite her well intentions, turns women of color into something that can be used to further her own desires.” This is the white feminist that uses the hardships and labor of colored women for their own benefit. There are some that don’t know that they are like this but there are a majority of white feminist that realize this and are okay with putting on a façade to let themselves seem like a better person and probably even lie to themselves to let them think they are helping others, aiding the community of colored women, etc. An example that some people may disagree with me on would be when Trump was elected president. When he got elected every women, person who identifies with being a women, and others came together as one to protest their feelings towards the decision America had made. But, if you think about months ago when the BLM movement was going around, it was a majority of black women protesting on the social injustice of black people with a select few white people. I don’t want to say that some white feminist are selective on what battles they fight, but that did come to my attention.

One last quote I would like to pull from the essay is “The loving feminist is one who knows (and wants to know) about women of color. It is not the arrogant perceiver that Frye describes who does not even care to know about the object of perception, who merely wants to possess, use, coerce, and enslave this object. Instead, this loving, knowing perceiver may be engaged in knowledge production about women of color in various ways: by citing the work of women of color, by including women of color in her political and practical agenda, by making claims about the lives of women of color, by classifying the experience of women of color, or by systematizing her findings about the experience of women of color.” This quote is recognizing the white feminist who do appreciate, seek out to learn and even seek out to educate other people about women of color.

Bibliography

Ortega, Mariana. Being Lovingly, Knowingly Ignorant: White Feminism and Women of ColorEbsco Host. Hypatia, 2006. Web. 26 Nov. 2016. <http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=b0114fe9-8e24-47b8-bc75-f3c89783d8f8%40sessionmgr2&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=505164987&db=asu>

Through a Lens Darkly. Dir. Thomas Allen Harris. Perf. Carrie Mae Weems, Lorna Simpson, Anthony Barboza, Hank Willis Thomas, Coco Fusco, Clarissa Sligh, James Van Der Zee, Gordon Parks. Through a Lens Darkly. PBS.org, 16 Feb. 2015. Web. 26 Oct. 2015. <http://putlockerfree.com/watch-through-a-lens-darkly-black-photographers-and-the-emergence-of-a-people-2014-movie-online-2856.html>

Who Taught You to Hate. Perf. Malcolm X. Who Taught You to Hate. Youtube.com, 5 May 1962. Web. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRSgUTWffMQ>

Posing Beauty in African American CultureVmfa.museum. Web. <https://vmfa.museum/teens/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2014/02/M-LiT-Prospectus_PosingBeauty.pdf>

Willis, Deborah. Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000. Print

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