The Sadomasochism of White Liberalism
In my opening remarks on a panel earlier this year, I shared my experiences as an academic with multiple minoritized identities (Black, disabled, queer, genderqueer/transmyn), who is perceived to be and entreated as a Black woman. Although subjected to many of the same indignities and presumed incompetence as my fellow Black ciswomen panelists, I confessed that my experiences were not wholly consonant with what scholars have long demonstrated, particularly regarding the interaction of racially minoritized faculty across genders and white women faculty across racial categories with white students in course evaluation ratings. I had consistently garnered high student ratings of my teaching, including for required courses focused on issues of diversity, inclusion, equity, and justice in the field of student affairs.
These experiences were confirmed by other panelists in both their academic and personal interactions, by others in attendance at the summit, and later by other colleagues who had born witness to this phenomenon. I and other Black Womx/yn* academics recognized that we were good teachers, but were perturbed by the inconsistency between our high course ratings and the existing scholarship. These high ratings shouldn’t be our reality, especially for the kinds of courses we taught (and that’s another essay), and yet it was. Were we not as radical as we thought we were? Shouldn’t our radical honesty (h/t to Bianca C. Williams) produce resentment, hostility, and resistance in the classroom?
An Illustration
For my first few years of graduate-level teaching, I taught a one of two sections of a course like the one I’ve described above. Even though both sections of this course were offered in the same semester for several years, mine would always reach capacity within minutes of the opening of registration.
There were many factors that played into this, among them day and time of the sections and the preference for many minoritized students in the program to take my section so that they could have a course taught by someone like them (this is also another essay). However, among these factors were others that reflected a very different set of considerations. On the first day of class, it was my habit to ask students to share with me and each other what they hoped to get out of the course. Many white students would unabashedly declare that they knew that I would “get them together,” or wanted me to “whip them into shape.” Sometimes they would share, more privately, that they wanted to see me do the same for others.
I teach from a deliberately and intentionally critical perspective that refutes milquetoast approaches to diversity and inclusion that fail to lead to actual institutional transformation. I do not allow students to get away with narratives of white denial and do not tolerate displays of white fragility. These are the kinds of philosophical approaches that many white students reject in the classroom more often than not.
Yet, here was my class full of mostly white liberal-leaning students who had clamored to get into my course with full knowledge of what I would bring. Once in the class, many betrayed their lack of competence with reflecting on and discussing issues of equity and justice. They were coming to me hungry for my correction, looking to me to restrain their or their peers’ attempts to subject minoritized students to their harmful ignorance and invasive questions. When I would offer developmental challenges to other white students, and sometimes to Students of Color, about their different privileges, these students eagerly took in these scenes almost giddily. They did not trust anyone else to play this role. I was their chosen one.
Beyond the Classroom
Throughout my six years on Twitter, I have observed similar interactions between highly visible Black Womx/yn and their followers. Certain white followers demand correction in the guise of being “educated” or just assume that Black womx/yn will correct them and also go after others, all the while ignoring those Black Womx/yn’s humanity. Artist and essayist, Trudy, has dissected this phenomenon on her blog Gradient Lair, exposing the ways that highly visible Black Womx/yn are made both hypervisible and invisible. My classroom experiences and those of other Black Womx/yn reflect her discussion of consumption and controlling images of Black Womx/yn.
I am reminded of the controlling image of Sapphire, first described by Michele Wallace in her 1978 treatise, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman. Within the white gaze, Wallace observed that Sapphire’s anger and sass is rejected and denigrated. However, in my observations of social media spaces like Twitter, I see a specific sexualization of Black Womx/yn’s radical critique by white liberals that positions them as (nonconsensual) dominatrixes to white liberal supremacy. Black Womx/yn’s sass and corrective checks are desired and exploited within this white gaze. It is the refusal to fulfill these desires that is met with virulent backlash and continued demands of engagement.
BDSM and the Role of the Dominatrix
Bondage & Discipline/Domination & Submission/Sadomasochism (BDSM) is a relationship between two or more consenting partners in which the submissive’s (aka, bottom) needs are prioritized and centered by the dominant (aka, top). Someone of any gender can serve in either or both roles. Some submissives fetishize Black Womx/yn dominatrixes to fulfill racialized-gendered stereotypes, like Sapphire, through fantasies that hypersexualize Black Womx/yn. It is through this context that I have come to understand my experiences as a person assigned to Black womanhood with some white liberal students, colleagues, and social media followers. I am not introducing BDSM as a metaphorical tool to advance a theoretical and esoteric argument. Nor am I being sensational or chasing clickbait. Rather, my own familiarity with these sexual/relational practices came to mind as I considered how to describe and analyze the racialized-gendered experiences I have shared with other Black Womx/yn’s experiences in the classroom, online, and in personal relationships.
White Liberalism’s Relationship to Black Womx/yn
It has been widely discussed and acknowledged that white liberals tend to center their own feelings over that of Black and Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC). Robin DiAngelo has discussed this as white fragility and Ibram Kendi from the vantage point of white denial. Such tactics and other moves to innocence [see Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang’s excellent discussion of settler logics and misappropriation of decolonization] seek to sanitize white liberals and deflect their responsibility for advancing anti-racism and anti-supremacism in society. In these claims of innocence, denial, and fragility, Black Womx/yn are often made subject to demands to affirm and assuage white people’s need to be seen as “good” especially by BIPOC.
Jordan McDonald discussed a recent (renewed) phenomenon of asking for Black Womx/yn to save the United States from its self-destructive/self-fulfilling path. A recent example is the role of Black Womx/yn in the Alabama Senate election this spring (see discussion here using this narrative and here for a necessary critique of it). This attitude also puts Black Womx/yn in an (undesired) top position to the white liberal’s purportedly willing bottom. This nonconsensual intimacy between supposedly benevolent white people and Black Womx/yn can be traced through the white supremacist history of the U.S. to chattel slavery. Enslaved Black Womx/yn were expected to center white people’s needs and feelings. They were forced to soothe white children, cater to white women, and satisfy white men through emotional and/or physical rape and exploitation.
This history is also connected to modern enactments of white fetishizing and appropriation of Black womx/yn’s expressions and mannerisms. This has been grossly enacted by white men, white women, Black Mx/yn, and (ironically) Black Womx/yn themselves who refer to particularly powerful Black Womx/yn as “spirit animals” thus abusing both Indigenous and Black peoples. See this Google search result regarding Serena Williams for way too many examples of this than there should effing be.
Through countless methods, Black Womx/yn have been and continue to be used as conveyors and arbiters of white emotional release.
Like, Really, WTF
This is a missing element in previous research on the ways white students engage with racially minoritized faculty. The inconsistency of my experiences and other Black Womx/yn with existing scholarship on course evaluations is not an outlier. Rather, the existing research has often not disaggregated the experiences of Black womx/yn faculty in white liberal contexts. In failing to do so, an intersectional critique is muted and the complex, nuanced, and varied ways in which white supremacist liberalism exploits, controls, and dehumanizes Black womx/yn are lost.
White supremacist liberalism’s desire to be in proximity to Black Womx/yn’s radical critique hijacks their radical critique. In doing so, white supremacist liberalism seeks to position Black Womx/yn as dominatrixes, conduits for the meeting of their needs — arbiters for the release of their self-flagellation. I have heard and read choruses of “tell it,” “yes, check them,” or “I came to you because I know you’ll get me together!” throughout my career, in classroom and online spaces. Such rhetoric approximates the submissive/bottom’s requests to be choked, whipped, restrained; to be the person whose desires are centered and satiated. It also implicates the bystander — a role played both by Black Mx/yn and Black Womx/yn, as well as white people — as a type of cuckold, who is satiated by seeing their partner topped by someone else while restraining themselves from engagement.
Yet, Black Womx/yn’s needs, desires, or willingness to engage in this role are considered. Often they are dismissed outright. Instead, the attitude is that this is what Black Womx/yn are “there for” as both Trudy and Feminista Jones have had remind their followers repeatedly. Be assured, this is a twisted abuse of BDSM sexual and relational practices that are predicated on the necessity of mutual consent. For the white supremacist liberal, however, the Black Womx/yn’s consent is irrelevant. The submissive becomes a “power-bottom” controlling the relationship.
Dehumanization does not only come in the guise of direct physical violence leading to the murders of Black folx or the social politics of starvation and malnutrition. White supremacist liberalism also engages Black Womx/yn in dehumanizing ways meant to satiate white desire. Dismantling this corruption of racialized intimacy requires white liberals to confront their white supremacy. They must let go of the controlling images of Black Womx/yn as emotional surrogates and sexual releases for white innocence, denial, and fragility.
The only submissives I want are the ones I choose.
*Throughout this essay, I use Black Womx/yn to refer to those assigned female at birth regardless of their actual gender identity. Therefore, Black Womx/yn is meant to be inclusive of Black cisgender, genderqueer, masculine of center, and transmasculine people who are assigned to Black womanhood. The capitalization signifies the particular significance of Black Womx/yn’s experiences at the intersection of racism and cis/sexism/patriarchy.
Author Bio
“Blues Bentley” is the pseudonym (chosen in honor of Harlem Renaissance blues singer Gladys Bentley) for a Black-disabled-queer-trans academic scholar. Blues Bentley accepts he/him/his and they/them/their as proper pronouns of reference. In his academic life, Blues Bentley focuses on issues of equity and justice in postsecondary education in the U.S. and globally. They are incredibly grateful to the circle of trusted friends and online colleagues who reviewed drafts of this essay.
