Black Women and an Epistemology of Lived Experience
“An experiential, material base underlies a Black feminist epistemology, namely, collective experiences and accompanying worldviews that U.S. Black women sustained based on our particular history (see Chapter 3).The historical conditions of Black women’s work, both in Black civil society and in paid employment, fostered a series of experiences that when shared and passed on become the collective wisdom of a Black women’s standpoint. Moreover, a set of principles for assessing knowledge claims may be available to those having these shared experiences. These principles pass into a more general Black women’s wisdom and, further, into what I call here a Black feminist epistemology” (Collins, 256).
Reaching back to post-Enlightenment ideas on rationality and emotionality, many scholars, writers, and laymen presumed that white (Caucasian) and black (African) individuals took varied approaches to religion and spirituality. These arguments augmented racialist ideas about black individuals as inherently spiritual and emotional beings. At the same time, they bolstered the belief that white individuals maintained a rational approach to the same topics. Curtis J. Evans, detailing the work of “romantic racialists” of the 19th-century writes,
“The hope of the African race rested in its light-heartedness, Kinmont maintained, and the ‘natural want of solitude for the future,’ natural talent for music, and willingness to serve, ‘the most beautiful trait of humanity, which we, from our innate love of dominion, and in defiance of the Christian religion, brand with the name servility, and abuse not less to our own dishonor than their injury” (Evans, 32–33).
Evans, quoting Kinmont, continues.
“All the sweeter graces of the Christian religion, appear almost too tropical and tender plants to grow in the Caucasian mind; they require the character of human nature which you can see in the rude lineaments of the Ethiopian mind, to be implanted in, and grow naturally and beautifully withal” (33).
I begin with Curtis J. Evans and romantic racialism because I have noticed a pattern among discussions on black spirituality, emotionality, and our responses to arguably traumatic events. I have had a lot of time to reflect on what happened last week, regarding the hoax letter, and the conversations that continue into this week. I also observed a strong focus on Zandra Vranes’s tearful response, and the “pain” and “hurt” inflicted, not only by the hoaxer’s actions but also, the Church itself.
I can offer a laundry list of reasons why the hoax was wrong and somewhat racist, even if that racism was unintentional. I can offer a laundry list of reasons why the Church as an organization perpetuates white supremacy in aspects of its theology and rhetoric. These things are not mutually exclusive. However, beyond that, this focus (via individuals on Facebook, Twitter, podcasts, and media outlets) on the emotional impact of the restrictions, fake apology letter, and responses negates the very rational conversation to be had about how racism and white supremacy work. Further, how leaving a proposed “racist, sexist, homophobic organization” doesn’t absolve one from reproducing the “isms” and phobias outside of that organization.
Emotion is important, no doubt. Still, it is difficult to overlook the fact that some individuals do not take emotionality as seriously as the reaction of someone who produces a theoretical model that explains their reasoning, or some positivist effort. How people continue to talk about the suffering of black Mormons leads me to believe that certain individuals only consider black narratives when black people are emotional. Others dismiss black individuals who speak from a place that Patricia Hill Collins notes, “flies in the face of Western epistemologies that often see emotions and rationality as different and competing concerns” (Collins, 243–245). The latter focuses on the emotional response from many black Mormons as an indication of the pain the Church causes, deflecting the carelessness of the hoaxer and ignoring the ways black people in America create epistemologies of the self. For example, take note of how news publications covered last week’s events. Specifically, focus on who got to speak and who did not. The hoaxer received ample time to explain his actions. These same organizations only featured clips from Zandra Vranes’s video.
As video clips of the shootings of black individuals demonstrate, there’s something about ethnic suffering that produces a sort of spectacle. The spectacle of the scaffold, Michel Foucault writes, is a reminder of the sovereign’s power. When someone justifies the murder of black individuals by police officers by proposing said victim “did something wrong,” Foucault offers us this: execution itself is proof of guiltiness.
Moreover, we consume these horrors. Re-posting and re-playing like the “exhibition of the corpse of the condemned man (Foucault, 44).
“You have to see this video!”
Actually, no, we do not.
The aesthetics of the grotesque is something I would like to explore in depth at a later time. However, for now, I provide the example of police videos to offer the ways individuals reproduce a spectacle of ethnic suffering for public consumption.
When black women express pain in public spaces, it is met with a sense of urgency to disseminate the information as quickly as possible. At other times, as several conversations on the events from this week and last week highlight, individuals dismiss those same emotions because the idea is that fault solely lies with the institution/sovereign. When in fact, for the hurt to have a tangible impact, a spectacle requires an audience.
Additionally, as one may suppose, individuals dismiss those truth claims as reason does not bind them. However, this ignores the ways black women and minoritized groups piece together an epistemology of the self that defies white Western thought.
Epistemology concerns knowledge production among individuals and groups. For black/African American women, lived experience, Hill Collins notes, is “a criterion for credibility” used when making knowledge claims” (257). The criteria for credibility, among black women (especially academics), is to act as objective observers of our lives (Collins, 256). When we are not able to parse out and deliver information in a way that aligns with Western-standards of objectivity (really, the illusion of total objectivity), the focus shifts to the emotional response itself versus approaching it as a source and production of knowledge.
“For most African-American women,” Hill Collins writes, “those individuals who have lived through the experiences about which they claim to be experts are more believable and credible than those who have merely read or thought about such experiences” (Collins, 257). Hill Collins offers this epistemology as an alternative to dominant sources of knowledge production. I would argue, however, that it runs concurrent with others; intersecting, history shows, at various points. This is why white Western epistemologies cannot supersede the epistemologies of minoritized groups; challenging the argument that the pain or experiences among those in a dominant group outweighs the pain and experiences of minoritized groups.
Speaking specifically to black women and black people, the expression of hurt, pain, or as Foucault would perhaps suggest: torture, is a valuable contribution to how we understand intersubjectivity and ultimately, how we understand the self. These reactions are not commodifiable for media purposes. Nor should they be dismissed as ruminations of a people “who are in pain,” because of course, black individuals are more than a romantic racialist idea in a book or on a computer screen. Focusing exclusively on suffering denies “black women status as fully human subjects by treating us as the objectified Other within multiple binaries” (Hill Collins, 73). By turning a sensitive subject in the Mormon Church into a weapon, one objectifies those directly impacted it.
Experience, and the knowledge produced from it, are powerful tools. However, it is critical to be mindful of how one use experiences that are not their own.
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Works Cited
Evans, Curtis J. The Burden of Black Religion. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison. Social Theory. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought : Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd Ed.]. ed. Routledge Classics. New York: Routledge, 2009.
