Further To Fly: Black Women and the Politics of Empowerment

2. Uses and Limits of Black Feminist Theory and the Decline of Black Women's Empowerment

NOW is dedicated to the proposition that women . . . must have the chance to develop their fullest human potential. —National Organization for Women, statement of purpose, adopted at the —organizing conference in Washington, D.C., October 29, 1966. In the radical feminist view, the new feminism is not just the revival of a serious movement for social equality, it is the second wave of the most important revolution in history. Its aim: the overthrow of the oldest most rigid caste/class system in existence, the class system based on sex. —Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution This chapter discusses the relationship between second-wave feminism and the decline of black women’s empowerment. In the context of a movement whose explicit goal was to raise women’s consciousness and engender social change, black feminists made little progress in creating feminist theories that could mobilize black women on behalf of black culture and community. The insights of feminist intellectuals and the acceptance of black feminist thought in academia should not be allowed to obscure the fact that neither gender consciousness nor liberation politics addressed the political and cultural damage that the Great Society and its dismantling did to black male-female relationships and to the social fabric of black communities across America. Furthermore, feminists have been demonized by a backlash that holds feminist theory and politics responsible for the decline of American civil society, the loss of America’s moral values, and the general lack of political participation and social activism that characterizes America in the information age. Although these charges are overblown and unfair , feminists should not ignore them. The times demand constructive responses 2. Uses and Limits of Black Feminist Theory and the Decline of Black Women’s Empowerment 11 to the criticism that feminist theorizing is failing to shape gender consciousness to fit the demands of a new century. Although, in general, feminist paradigms are shifting in response to the changing realities of race and gender, it is time for black feminists to rethink the purpose of their theorizing so that the impact of gender on history remains accessible and relevant to new generations of black women. If it is true that theorizing makes an important contribution when it enhances our understanding of race as a gendered reality, then at least two questions arise: How can black feminists theorize the complex dynamics of gender difference? And how can race be usefully conceptualized as part of the dynamics of gender identity? This chapter explores these questions and offers a model for conceptualizing differences among women. I Feminist theory, irrespective of its political perspective, examines the forms, functions, and social processes of human sexuality and explores the dimensions of gender in a variety of contexts. Feminist analysis is meant to influence gender consciousness and to catalyze individual transformation and progressive social change. In other words, the main use of feminist theorizing is to promote women’s empowerment. In the current political context, empowered individuals are self-determined but value difference, diversity, and community. Empowerment is a term contested by feminists themselves. For example, Nira Yuval-Davis states unequivocally that “empowerment of the oppressed cannot by itself be the goal of feminist and other anti-oppression politics.” She argues that empowerment politics “naturalizes social categories and groupings, denying shifting boundaries, internal power differences, and conflicts of interest” (1997, 97). Although I understand Yuval-Davis’s concern, I am troubled by a logic that uses one aspect of empowerment to define the whole concept. The politics of empowerment is fraught with the contradictions imposed by differences in power, scarcity of resources, conflicts of interest, and shifting alliances. But true empowerment is not just political. Genuine empowerment is a process, not an event or an endgame. Its goal is to define individual and group self-interest in the broader context of social justice. True empowerment goes beyond the group’s responsibility to protect its turf or to control decisions that affect its members. When leaders are allowed to conflate empowerment and politics, the result is as Yuval-Davis suggests. However, if empowerment processes are widely institutionalized , different individuals and groups have meaningful access to the struc12 —Uses and Limits of Black Feminist Theory tures that exercise power and influence. Focusing on empowerment as the primary goal of feminist analysis therefore compels black women to reconceptualize feminist theories of racial difference and to affirm the direct connection between...