Book Review: Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton by Duchess Harris

Reigniting Black Feminist Power
Review by Christine E. Hutchins

Duchess Harris, Associate Professor of American Studies at Macalester College, opens her important new book, Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton, with a problem. In Paula Giddings's 1996 book When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America, Giddings asks, "Who has presented the political agenda for Black women?

Harris and Giddings show that the 1963 March on Washington represented an overwhelmingly male Black consciousness and Betty Friedan's 1966 Feminist Mystique an essentially middle-class and white feminist movement. Harris begins, "Since Giddings did not answer her own question, this is where I enter. I wrote this book because I wanted to take up the analysis of Black women's involvement in American political life where Giddings left off."

Harris's analysis is both hopeful and disheartening. On the one hand, Harris provides oral, archival and literary histories of Black women without whom neither the Black Power nor the feminist movements would have progressed. On the other hand, Harris demonstrates that these movements, so beholden to Black women, have never adequately or fairly represented their needs and desires. Worse, they have too often asked Black women to choose between identities, prioritizing one over others.

The insistence that they choose may be Black women's worst dilemma, pressured as they are under the combined weight of racism, sexism and homophobia. The Black Power movement often asks Black women to set aside concerns over unequal status; feminist organizations often have difficulty recognizing the ways that race factors into equations of gender and power.

Harris shows through examination of media, Congressional records and survey data that in situations in which they feel they must choose, Black women overwhelming concede gender to race. Harris demonstrates that Black women strongly backed O.J. Simpson, accused of murdering his former wife, a white woman. In the hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, testimony by Anita Hill about his sexual improprieties required Black women to balance the possibility of a Black Supreme Court appointment or a gender-troubled appointment. Black women generally excused Thomas, Harris argues, "considering it more important to take a Black hero where one could be found, however flawed he might be."

Read the Full Review @ On the Issues: The Progressive Woman's Magazine