Califia Women: Feminist Education against Sexism, Classism, and Racism

5. Antiracism to Get under the Skin

chapter 5 antiracism to get under the skin like the training about class, Califia’s presentations on race sought to nurture integrated women’s groups that functioned effectively across differences. This chapter argues that Califia founders expressed feminists ’ concern to teach women to work together and that the development of antiracism trainings represented feminist views on race in the 1970s and 1980s in four main ways. The pedagogy developed from earlier Black Power calls for whites to help other whites unlearn racism; Califia founders developed antiracism as one of the consistent presentations in hopes that white women could become antiracist enough to unite with women of color in sisterhood. Later efforts to raise attendance by women of color challenged the efficacy of initial pedagogy. Women of color teachers provided more complexity, force, and broader antiracist focus, which helped women of color participants at an unintended emotional cost to the teachers . The trajectory from white founding to multicultural leadership became part of the cycle of reincorporating racial inclusion in feminism. The resulting creation of two formative groups and the refashioning of Califia into women of color camps exemplified the increase in feminist antiracist work while mainstream America de-emphasized racism. If Califia’s work on sexism showed the centrality of reclaiming power against male violence for radical and lesbian feminists, and the training on class difference reflected a CR-focused rejection of anticapitalist theory, Califia’s antiracism work symbolized the enduring divisiveness of race and racism in 1970s and 1980s America and feminists’ prioritization of race as mainstream society de-emphasized racism. de facto segregation Califia collective members had to work hard against decades of segregation and racial tensions to create diversity. Practices that enforced racial 122 califia women segregation in California were national reminders that southern segregation laws were only one method by which to deprive Americans of equal opportunities. New Deal programs that sought to decrease local poverty adopted widespread prejudicial assumptions, and postwar programs built on those biases. For example, the Federal Housing Administration and the GI Bill subsidized home buying in white-only neighborhoods for millions by working with mortgage companies and realties that required racial homogeneity to consider neighborhoods desirable. City officials used federal urban renewal and highway funds after 1956 to facilitate suburbanization of white Americans, to raze poor neighborhoods of color, and to crowd minorities into ghettos. Zoning and the intentional placement of transportation systems and industrial areas created buffers between working-class areas and affluent suburbs. Until 1948, it was legal to bar certain racial and ethnic groups from buying or renting homes or to sell houses with restrictive covenants in the contracts that forbade resale to African Americans, Jewish Americans, or other minorities. Even after the Supreme Court ruled this practice illegal, people continued to use restrictive covenants. Real estate agents also maintained racial homogeneity by refusing to show homes in some neighborhoods to people of color, and developers built with a target race in mind. Neighborhood segregation impeded public school desegregation by tying districts to neighborhoods. Across the country, after the Supreme Court Brown vs. Board of Education ruling to desegregate, white-collar suburban families who opposed integration used a color-blind discourse that claimed that merit-based individual effort produced different levels of success and that their children would be disadvantaged by being grouped with low-performing students. Attributing education, salary , and other marks of privilege to merit ignored institutional supports for racism. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, these families were decrying attempts to further school desegregation by busing students out of their neighborhoods.1 California Governor Pat Brown had embraced civil rights in 1959 by appointing several black and Latino staffers and signing civil rights measures to guarantee fair employment, access to businesses, public accommodations , and publicly funded housing. In 1963, however, California joined states like Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi as sites where civil rights activists demonstrated against businesses, government agencies, and segregated housing. Black and white protestors from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Congress on Racial Equality, and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) picketed Sheraton hotels, Bank of America branches, federal buildings, city halls, and court- antiracism to get under the skin 123 houses, charging discriminatory policies. The California Real Estate Association promoted Proposition 14 in 1964 to overturn a new state law that banned discrimination in the...