The Trump Administration can either make or break us
Do black and brown communities have to unite with white communities in order to achieve their goals of equality?
Assimilation once and for all?
The rhetoric in the United States, concerning immigrants, has been a long back and forth of how much culture of one’s home nation must be given up in order to show loyalty to the United States. In recent debate, there has been the argument that the United States is not united by a single commonality, but instead is joined through fragmented groups. People want immigrants to leave their past values behind and accept the values of America, presumably those of “freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as stated in the Constitution. While outsiders push for immigrants to “fit in”, there are some immigrants themselves who strive to be one and to not stand out from what is deemed as “American”. This need to fit in connects with the idea of ego withdrawal.
In Black Skin, White Masks, decolonial scholar, Frantz Fanon, introduced the idea of ego withdrawal being accomplished through white approval. Ego withdrawal is the denial of pain and humility, avoiding the criticism that one faces. The only way that immigrants, or minorities can achieve this avoidance is by gaining approval of the majority, in this case white people. Fanon gives the example of black women being with white men as a form of needing to let go of the blackness they held, even if never being able to fully leave the blackness behind. The relationship a black woman has with a white man is not entirely based on love and instead serves a purpose greater than the people.
This purpose is to “whiten the race, save the race, but not in the sense that one might think: not to ‘preserve the uniqueness of that part of the world in which they grew up’, but make sure that it will be white.”
This is assimilation taken to the extreme, with black women getting with white men in order to rid themselves, and to a larger extent society, of blackness. Is this the assimilation that people want today? Is this what the minorities who voted for Trump attempted to do through their votes? Despite the lower percentages, people of color did vote for Trump and trying to understand why leads back to this need for white approval, but at what point does the need for white approval become too much?
Eating the Other
Post-colonial scholar, bell hooks, touches on when white approval can become too much in Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance. While bell hooks, argues that sleeping with someone of another race/ethnicity does not give anyone power or lead to a transmission of culture. Thus when people of color give their vote to Trump, someone who has repeatedly discriminated and targeted certain groups, there is the belief that through the vote the power that trump holds will somehow pass onto them. The notion that the power can be transmitted is not true and instead the people of color are harming any progress that can be made on their behalf or the behalf of their communities of color. People of color cannot afford to pander to white communities and they also cannot take the route of victimizing themselves. In order to overcome the idea of power being able to be taken from one body to another through relationships, their has to be mutual recognition of the disadvantages faced to leave behind the fantasies and desires each side associates with the other.
What can be done?
Is unity possible? Does this unity have to include ALL communities and not only communities of color? There has to be an overall awareness of power and privilege that comes with certain groups, i.e. white privilege. The denial that white privilege exists is detrimental to the movement moving forward. There has to be acknowledgement from the people in power that institutions are structured to favor some groups over others as constantly proven. Once the acknowledgment of power imbalance has been made, then the groups in the minority have to realize that gaining the approval of the majority is not the answer to all the problems or disadvantages faced. Minorities have to recognize other forms of power that do not revolve around being white. The recognition can come from validation in media, to begin with. As more minorities seem themselves and their lives reflected in movies, television shows, etc. empowerment can become more common and prevalent. The importance of seeing oneself reflected on a large scale can have a monumental impact of children, and even adults, of many generations. Once empowerment within communities of color has begun, then integration with white communities can begin as both groups head in on an equal level that acknowledges the inequality between the groups and work towards closing the gap. Especially in the next four years, lord forbid the next eight (yikes!), the power found in the different cultures in the United States is crucial to the movements of people of color, and to the intersectional feminist movement.
How does feminism play into this?
The day after Trump was elected, hundreds of thousands of women and men, headed to the streets in protest! A protest known as the Women’s March and ended up being primarily composed of white women! Women of color did not feel that the march was actively seeking to be inclusive nor did it have any comprehensible reforms to be advocated for. The lack of inclusion and lack of definitive goals highlighted the disconnect between white communities and communities of color. In contrast to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which has clearly defined principles, and thus organized events that are cohesive and build credibility for the movement. The feminist movement behind the Women’s March lacked cohesiveness and ended up as a flop for women of color.
The feminist movement needs to reconnect the two routes it has going on at the moment. There is the route of white feminism which fails to recognize how race and class are also barriers beyond gender, that hinder women of color. Then there is the route of intersectional feminism that recognizes the role that race and class play and thus seeks to overcome the barriers the two categories add to gender. Both movements must somehow unite in order to advance against the agenda that Trump and his administration. An agenda that threatens the healthcare of the disadvantaged, i.e. poor people and people of color, commonly poor people of color. As bell hooks advocated for in mutual recognition of racism, there has to be mutual recognition of discrimination between both groups of feminism. Even though white feminism is not actually feminism, there has to be a thought of “your oppression is not my oppression but I will fight with you regardless” within white feminists. A coalition must be created and the common ground of that coalition may be womb envy.
Can womb envy save us?
In The Spivak Reader, Gayatri Spivak, talks about the idea of womb envy. She identifies womb envy in contrast to Freud’s penis envy. Penis envy is Freud’s idea that women are men except without the penis. The lack of penis is something that bothers women and the actions women take are related to trying to gain the power that having a penis gives men. Spivak flips this idea on its head and instead identifies the womb as the place of power. The womb is the place of production and thus women have total control of production.
Accepting womb envy can be crucial to women of all backgrounds taking agency in the power they hold. Women are powerful and have the ability to take that power and create a coalition that can lend its voice to all. Events like the Women’s March or the Day Without Women can happen but instead of excluding certain groups can benefit everyone. Working mothers and women of color can find their causes championed for too and this inclusion is necessary for any progress to make change in the next four years, instead of further isolating women from one another.
