By Kemi Seriki / August 15, 2020
I Am The One Who Angers People, Despite My Smile, As l Bring Up Taboo Topics, Demand Women’s Rights And Hold No Apology For This Stance.~Korto Reeves Williams
Analysis of black feminism from three biracial women- Ifeoma Fafunwa of Hear word! Naija Woman Talk True, Minna Salami MsAfropolitan, and Dominique Norman “Breaking down my mom’s white feminism with black labor.
I never thought about the biracial feminist perspective on race relations and gender inequality until I met Ifeoma Fafunwa during the dialogue session of her famous play called Hear Word! Naija Woman Talk True. I enjoyed seeing them play at The African Center in New York City in January 2019. Hear Word! Naija Woman Talk True exposes everyday struggles of gender inequality in Nigeria and how cultural values and religious beliefs play a significant role in women’s oppression. Through dialogue, monologue, singing, and dancing, these women demonstrate strength and resistance toward oppressive cultural practice and challenge the status quo within the society. Various sketches were presented addressing different issues such as sexual harassment, female genital cutting, travails widows, and many more.
Most importantly, the play exhibit how women help maintain these repressive practices through their own internalized oppression. According to E.J.R. David of Psychology Today, “Internalized oppression is a concept in social justice, in which an oppressed group comes to use against itself the methods of the oppressor. Internalized oppression occurs when one group of people recognizes a distinct inequality of value compared to another group of people and, as a result, desires to be like the more highly valued group”. For example, in most African societies, child-rearing is seen as women’s responsibility, where she is expected to transmit the gender role according to cultural norms and moral value deemed acceptable in the community of one’s belongings. As the play depicted, a mother’s ultimate goal is to raise a daughter that is suitable for marriage even though the daughter may have attained the highest college degree possible and an exponentially successful career. Without marriage and children, such a woman is a shame to the family.
After the play, there was a dialogue session when Fafunwa further discusses the play’s mission and exposes the unspoken truth. The conversation was later open to members of the audience to ask questions. I asked Fafunwa about her thought on different levels of oppression women of color experience in the United States. I further explained that white women in America do experience gender oppression but not racial, cultural, and religious oppression faced by women of color or immigrants’ women who carry such heritage baggage. Fafunwa aggressively raised her disagreement towards this analysis by saying that African women have historically had a similarly influential role in society as men. Still, the foreign invasion to the continent from colonialism to foreign religion contribute to denigrate women’s status. She mentioned that white women’s exposure to feminism came later, and African women have always been feminists. She further implied that her white mother went through a hard time due to her gender and her race as a white woman. I would have treasured further explanation from Fafunwa on one or two examples of her mother’s experiences, but she did not explicitly provide such an example.
After the show, I started questioning the concept that brought the idea of Fafunwa, saying white women historically suffer more than people of African descent due to their late discovery of feminism. I think Fafunwa may likely do not understand the concept of gender, class, and cultural norms. Ifeoma Fafunwa was born in Nigeria to a Nigerian father and a white mother. As she said during her dialogue, she was born and raised in Nigeria. She spends her formative years in Nigeria but came back to America to further her education, and she went back to Nigeria after completing her education. Even though Fafunwa came to America to further her education, she may not understand or exposed to the struggle of racial discrimination interwoven with gender inequality in America or the European world or, more so, experience racism.
Historically, some African women have held positions of power before and after the colonial era. Still, the account that African women traditionally have equal rights as men is not factually accurate. There is a difference between being among the few in the ruling class and the plight of average women who are culturally and religiously oppressed in a male chauvinistic society. Generally, and around the world, powerful women have ruled empires, and this has not prevented the oppression of women and women been relegated to second-class citizens. For example, Nefertiti Queen of Egypt of 14th B.C., Queen Amina of Nigeria, Queen Mbande Nzinga of Angola, Queen Elizabeth I & II of England, the Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and many others have rules different empires and different countries. In Afghanistan, women gained the right to vote in 1919; a year ahead of women in America and the 1960s, the constitution granted women equal rights. With all these, women in Afghanistan continue to suffer under the oppressive system of cultural and religious persecution. The Europeans may have brought the Bible and introduced Christianity. The Arabs may have brought the Quran and introduced Islam. Both religion did not invent the cultural norms that oppress African women. Such rules include female genital cutting, travails of widows, rape, sexual harassment, and many other forms of subjugations experienced by women in our societies.
As I continue to explore self-enlightenment on biracial feminist appreciation, I discovered a captivating and engaging blog called MsAfropolitan. Minna Salami was the creator and the blogger of MsAfropolitan. In her writings, she connects the past to present in many areas on African feminism, global feminism, decolonization, and contemporary culture from an African perspective. Minna Salami was born in Finland to a Nigerian father and a Finnish mother. Comparable to Ifeoma Fafunwa, Minna Salami, a global feminist, also spent her formative years in Nigeria and went to Sweden to further her education. As she stated in one of her essays titled Nigeria Feminism-past, present, and future perspective, “it is not Sweden but Nigeria that made me feminist.” She said that feminist ideas were planted in her by her mother and her close friends. She also learned about feminism from the family’s house help in Nigeria Margret, a woman from a disadvantaged background. These women may have exposed her to the feminist idea but not racial prejudice she later faced in Sweden. While in Sweden, Minna Salami indicated that she was not only dealing with the intricacies of emerging adulthood, but she experienced racial attacks regularly, which sometimes could be violent. In one of her talk, she stated “I am not a victim of white supremacy, I am a survival of it, and my worldview is African centric and not Eurocentric” The experience shaped her view on white women feminist movement and give clarity on how the movement disregards the struggles women of color all over the world.
In her T.E.D. Talk, Minna Salami emphasizes the collided world of stereotype and reality women worldwide face when it comes to gender inequality. With her diverse background, she tells a compelling story of her two grandmothers from Nigeria and Finland who continue to shape her view on challenges women face around the world. As she said in the talk, even though both women were exposed to gender inequality, face struggles and triumphs of being female in a male-dominated world, there is still a racist stereotype of African women and other women of color worldwide. Her Finish grandmother could be considered as empowered, beautiful, and intelligent, while her Nigerian grandmother often could not be seen in such limelight. The western media representation of African women plays a significant role in depicting African women in negative limelight with images of women rattled by war, famine, and poverty.
Going back to the source of my first quest to understand bi-racial feminism and race relation in America, I needed to find a bi-racial feminist with African American roots. Through an extensive google search, I came across an article written by Dominique Norman. Dominique’s mother, who was white, grew up in Germany, where she met her father, a black man from Fresno, California. In her essay “Breaking down my mom’s white feminism with black labor,” Dominique Norman writes, “no one biracial, multiracial, mixed experience is the same.” Dominique’s parents were divorced when she was about one year, and her single white mother raised her in a predominantly white neighborhood. A white parent with a biracial child or raising a child of a different race may not present a racially conscious child because it is not his/her experience. A white parent who sees him or herself as liberal and socially conscious may not be racially conscious enough to know racism or racial bias cues. Dominique never understands racial identity, gender inequality, and her sexuality until she got into college. The self-discovery manifested in her when she joined the black student association and took some college classes focusing on these issues. At that point, she became “unapologetically Black.” She later brought this knowledge home to her mother, and for the first time, her mother acknowledged her daughter’s black identity.
In summation on this topic, I am using Dominique’s quotes, which she writes, “The reality is that being mixed can feel like a game of chance.” She further pronounced that biracial exposure to identify with women’s struggle and racial inequality depends on many elements such as geographic location, class, appearance, and being raised by both parents.