They Didn't See Us Coming by Lisa Levenstein

Author:Lisa Levenstein [LEVENSTEIN, LISA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2020-07-14T00:00:00+00:00

NINE

HEART COMMUNITIES: SISTERSONG, SONG, AND INCITE!

Social justice was “in the fabric of my family for generations,” recalled Beth Richie, whose parents’ involvement in the civil rights movement offered a model of political commitment. “Engagement in social movements carried me through… elementary school, high school, undergrad, graduate school,” she said. “It’s… felt like a very natural pathway… the only pathway that I’ve known.”1

In the early 1980s, Richie took a job as a social worker in a neighborhood health clinic in Harlem. She was attracted to the clinic’s approach, which considered medical care as a racial and economic justice issue, just like housing or education. The longer she worked there, however, the more she realized that the list of services offered by the clinic was not comprehensive. In particular, she wondered if they could be doing more to address domestic violence. Many of the women she counseled felt trapped in abusive relationships.2

Struck by the magnitude of the problem, Richie started a domestic violence support group at the clinic and began attending meetings and conferences with feminists who were opening shelters and crisis lines in New York City and other parts of the country. She was impressed by white feminists’ analyses of how patriarchal systems encouraged and tolerated sexual and domestic abuse.3 And she felt inspired by the other women of color in the field who were networking with white activists and organizing independently. They were emphasizing how poverty and racism shaped intimate violence and calling attention to victims’ reluctance to seek assistance from a criminal justice system they viewed as racist. White women were not yet paying much attention to their analyses. But the women of color felt optimistic that the more they shared their ideas, the more their white colleagues would learn. They felt similarly confident about the men they worked with in racial justice organizations. Perhaps naively, Richie reflected, “we expected that people we considered ‘natural’ social justice allies would meet our efforts with enthusiasm.”4

What they were saying seemed obvious: Both sexism and racism shaped domestic and sexual abuse. Therefore, violence against women was both a feminist and a civil rights issue. To their surprise, neither the men nor the white women could accept this proposition. The men kept insisting that intimate violence had little to do with racial justice. And the women refused to consider racism as a major factor in shaping abuse. The title of a classic women’s studies textbook summed up their challenge: All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave.5

Richie and her colleagues were not the only ones in this predicament. Women of color health activists and lesbian rights activists had similar hurdles. Many white women focused on sexism, whereas women of color tended to see issues more holistically, linking the barriers people faced on account of sex to their struggles with racism and economic inequality. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, in the field of women’s health, women of color attended all of the major meetings and conferences but could not shake the feeling that they were appendages to white organizing.

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