Black feminist epistemology
Black feminist epistemology
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A small girl and her mother passed a statue depicting a European man who had bare- handedly subdued a ferocious lion.The little girl stopped, looked puzzled and asked, “Mama, something’s wrong with that statue. Everybody knows that a man can’t whip a lion.” “But darling,” her mother replied, “you must remember that the man made the statue.” —As told by Katie G. Cannon
As critical social theory, U.S. Black feminist thought reflects the interests and standpoint of its creators. Tracing the origin and diffusion of Black feminist thought or any comparable body of spe- cialized knowledge reveals its affinity to the power of the group that created it (Mannheim 1936). Because elite White men control Western structures of knowledge validation, their interests pervade the themes, paradigms, and epis- temologies of traditional scholarship.As a result, U.S. Black women’s experiences as well as those of women of African descent transnationally have been routinely distorted within or excluded from what counts as knowledge.
U.S. Black feminist thought as specialized thought reflects the distinctive themes of African-American women’s experiences. Black feminist thought’s core themes of work, family, sexual politics, motherhood, and political activism rely on paradigms that emphasize the importance of intersecting oppressions in shaping the U.S. matrix of domination. But expressing these themes and paradigms has not been easy because Black women have had to struggle against White male interpretations of the world.
In this context, Black feminist thought can best be viewed as subjugated knowledge. Traditionally, the suppression of Black women’s ideas within White- male-controlled social institutions led African-American women to use music, literature, daily conversations, and everyday behavior as important locations for
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constructing a Black feminist consciousness. More recently, higher education and the news media have emerged as increasingly important sites for Black feminist intellectual activity.Within these new social locations, Black feminist thought has often become highly visible, yet curiously, despite this visibility, it has become differently subjugated (Collins 1998a, 32–43).
Investigating the subjugated knowledge of subordinate groups—in this case a Black women’s standpoint and Black feminist thought—requires more ingenu- ity than that needed to examine the standpoints and thought of dominant groups. I found my training as a social scientist inadequate to the task of study- ing the subjugated knowledge of a Black women’s standpoint. This is because subordinate groups have long had to use alternative ways to create independent self-definitions and self-valuations and to rearticulate them through our own specialists. Like other subordinate groups, African-American women not only have developed a distinctive Black women’s standpoint, but have done so by using alternative ways of producing and validating knowledge.
Epistemology constitutes an overarching theory of knowledge (Harding 1987). It investigates the standards used to assess knowledge or why we believe what we believe to be true. Far from being the apolitical study of truth, episte- mology points to the ways in which power relations shape who is believed and why. For example, various descendants of Sally Hemmings, a Black woman owned by Thomas Jefferson, claimed repeatedly that Jefferson fathered her chil- dren. These accounts forwarded by Jefferson’s African-American descendants were ignored in favor of accounts advanced by his White progeny. Hemmings’s descendants were routinely disbelieved until their knowledge claims were vali- dated by DNA testing.
Distinguishing among epistemologies, paradigms, and methodologies can prove to be useful in understanding the significance of competing epistemolo- gies (Harding 1987). In contrast to epistemologies, paradigms encompass interpretive frameworks such as intersectionality that are used to explain social phenomena.1 Methodology refers to the broad principles of how to conduct research and how interpretive paradigms are to be applied.2 The level of episte- mology is important because it determines which questions merit investigation, which interpretive frameworks will be used to analyze findings, and to what use any ensuing knowledge will be put.
In producing the specialized knowledge of U.S. Black feminist thought, Black women intellectuals often encounter two distinct epistemologies: one represent- ing elite White male interests and the other expressing Black feminist concerns. Whereas many variations of these epistemologies exist, it is possible to distill some of their distinguishing features that transcend differences among the para- digms within them. Epistemological choices about whom to trust, what to believe, and why something is true are not benign academic issues. Instead, these concerns tap the fundamental question of which versions of truth will prevail.
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E u r o c e n t r i c K n o w l e d g e Va l i d a t i o n P r o c e s s e s a n d U . S . P o w e r R e l a t i o n s
In the United States, the social institutions that legitimate knowledge as well as the Western or Eurocentric epistemologies that they uphold constitute two inter- related parts of the dominant knowledge validation processes. In general, schol- ars, publishers, and other experts represent specific interests and credentialing processes, and their knowledge claims must satisfy the political and epistemo- logical criteria of the contexts in which they reside (Kuhn 1962; Mulkay 1979). Because this enterprise is controlled by elite White men, knowledge validation processes reflect this group’s interests.3 Although designed to represent and pro- tect the interests of powerful White men, neither schools, government, the media and other social institutions that house these processes nor the actual epistemologies that they promote need be managed by White men themselves. White women, African-American men and women, and other people of color may be enlisted to enforce these connections between power relations and what counts as truth. Moreover, not all White men accept these power relations that privilege Eurocentrism. Some have revolted and subverted social institutions and the ideas they promote.
Two political criteria influence knowledge validation processes. First, knowl- edge claims are evaluated by a group of experts whose members bring with them a host of sedimented experiences that reflect their group location in intersecting oppressions. No scholar can avoid cultural ideas and his or her placement in intersecting oppressions of race, gender, class, sexuality, and nation. In the United States, this means that a scholar making a knowledge claim typically must con- vince a scholarly community controlled by elite White avowedly heterosexual men holding U.S. citizenship that a given claim is justified. Second, each com- munity of experts must maintain its credibility as defined by the larger popula- tion in which it is situated and from which it draws its basic, taken-for-granted knowledge. This means that scholarly communities that challenge basic beliefs held in U.S. culture at large will be deemed less credible than those that support popular ideas. For example, if scholarly communities stray too far from widely held beliefs about Black womanhood, they run the risk of being discredited.
When elite White men or any other overly homogeneous group dominates knowledge validation processes, both of these political criteria can work to sup- press Black feminist thought. Given that the general U.S. culture shaping the taken-for-granted knowledge of the community of experts is permeated by widespread notions of Black female inferiority, new knowledge claims that seem to violate this fundamental assumption are likely to be viewed as anomalies (Kuhn 1962). Moreover, specialized thought challenging notions of Black female inferiority is unlikely to be generated from within White-male-controlled acad- emic settings because both the kinds of questions asked and the answers to them
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would necessarily reflect a basic lack of familiarity with Black women’s realities. Even those who think they are familiar can reproduce stereotypes. Believing that they are already knowledgeable, many scholars staunchly defend controlling images of U.S. Black women as mammies, matriarchs, and jezebels, and allow these commonsense beliefs to permeate their scholarship.
The experiences of African-American women scholars illustrate how indi- viduals who wish to rearticulate a Black women’s standpoint through Black fem- inist thought can be suppressed by prevailing knowledge validation processes. Exclusion from basic literacy, quality educational experiences, and faculty and administrative positions has limited U.S. Black women’s access to influential aca- demic positions (Zinn et al. 1986; Moses 1989). Black women have long pro- duced knowledge claims that contested those advanced by elite White men. But because Black women have been denied positions of authority, they often relied on alternative knowledge validation processes to generate competing knowledge claims. As a consequence, academic disciplines typically rejected such claims. Moreover, any credentials controlled by White male academicians could then be denied to Black women who used alternative standards on the grounds that Black women’s work did not constitute credible research.
Black women with academic credentials who seek to exert the authority that our status grants us to propose new knowledge claims about African-American women face pressures to use our authority to help legitimate a system that deval- ues and excludes the majority of Black women. When an outsider group—in this case, African-American women—recognizes that the insider group— namely, elite White men—requires special privileges from the larger society, those in power must find ways of keeping the outsiders out and at the same time having them acknowledge the legitimacy of this procedure. Accepting a few “safe” outsiders addresses this legitimation problem (Berger and Luckmann 1966). One way of excluding the majority of Black women from the knowledge validation process is to permit a few Black women to acquire positions of author- ity in institutions that legitimate knowledge, and to encourage us to work within the taken-for-granted assumptions of Black female inferiority shared by the scholarly community and the culture at large. Those Black women who accept these assumptions are likely to be rewarded by their institutions.Those challeng- ing the assumptions can be placed under surveillance and run the risk of being ostracized.
African-American women academicians who persist in trying to rearticulate a Black women’s standpoint also face potential rejection of our knowledge claims on epistemological grounds. Just as the material realities of powerful and domi- nated groups produce separate standpoints, these groups may also deploy dis- tinctive epistemologies or theories of knowledge. Black women scholars may know that something is true—at least, by standards widely accepted among African-American women—but be unwilling or unable to legitimate our claims using prevailing scholarly norms. For any discourse, new knowledge claims must
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be consistent with an existing body of knowledge that the group controlling the interpretive context accepts as true. Take, for example, the differences between how U.S. Black women interpret their experiences as single mothers and how prevailing social science research analyzes the same reality.Whereas Black women stress their struggles with job discrimination, inadequate child support, inferior housing, and street violence, far too much social science research seems mes- merized by images of lazy “welfare queens” content to stay on the dole. The methods used to validate knowledge claims must also be acceptable to the group controlling the knowledge validation process. Individual African-American women’s narratives about being single mothers are often rendered invisible in quantitative research methodologies that erase individuality in favor of proving patterns of welfare abuse. Thus, one important issue facing Black women intel- lectuals is the question of what constitutes adequate justification that a given knowledge claim, such as a fact or theory, is true. Just as Hemmings’s descendants were routinely disbelieved, so are many Black women not seen as credible wit- nesses for our own experiences. In this climate, Black women academics who choose to believe other Black women can become suspect.
Criteria for methodological adequacy associated with positivism illustrate the standards that Black women scholars, especially those in the social sciences, would have to satisfy in legitimating Black feminist thought. Though I describe Western or Eurocentric epistemologies as a single cluster, many interpretive frameworks or paradigms are subsumed under this category. Moreover, my focus on positivism should be interpreted neither to mean that all dimensions of pos- itivism are inherently problematic for Black women nor that nonpositivist frame- works are better.
Positivist approaches aim to create scientific descriptions of reality by produc- ing objective generalizations. Because researchers have widely differing values, experiences, and emotions, genuine science is thought to be unattainable unless all human characteristics except rationality are eliminated from the research process. By following strict methodological rules, scientists aim to distance themselves from the values, vested interests, and emotions generated by their class, race, sex, or unique situation. By decontextualizing themselves, they allegedly become detached observers and manipulators of nature (Jaggar 1983; Harding 1986).
Several requirements typify positivist methodological approaches. First, research methods generally require a distancing of the researcher from her or his “object” of study by defining the researcher as a “subject” with full human sub- jectivity and by objectifying the “object” of study (Keller 1985; Asante 1987). A second requirement is the absence of emotions from the research process (Jaggar 1983).Third, ethics and values are deemed inappropriate in the research process, either as the reason for scientific inquiry or as part of the research process itself (Richards 1980). Finally, adversarial debates, whether written or oral, become the preferred method of ascertaining truth: The arguments that can withstand the
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greatest assault and survive intact become the strongest truths (Moulton 1983). Such criteria ask African-American women to objectify ourselves, devalue
our emotional life, displace our motivations for furthering knowledge about Black women, and confront in an adversarial relationship those with more social, economic, and professional power. On the one hand, it seems unlikely that Black women would rely exclusively on positivist paradigms in rearticulating a Black women’s standpoint. For example, Black women’s experiences in sociology illus- trate diverse responses to encountering an entrenched positivism. Given Black women’s long-standing exclusion from sociology prior to 1970, the sociological knowledge about race and gender produced during their absence, and the sym- bolic importance of Black women’s absence to sociological self-definitions as a science,African-American women acting as agents of knowledge faced a complex situation. In order to refute the history of Black women’s unsuitability for sci- ence, they had to invoke the tools of sociology by using positivistic frameworks to demonstrate their capability as scientists. However, they simultaneously needed to challenge the same structure that granted them legitimacy. Their responses to this dilemma reflect the strategic use of the tools of positivism when needed, coupled with overt challenges to positivism when that seemed feasible (Collins 1998a, 95–123).
On the other hand, many Black women have had access to another episte- mology that encompasses standards for assessing truth that are widely accepted among African-American women. 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 stand- point. Moreover, a set of principles for assessing knowledge claims may be avail- able 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 femi- nist epistemology.
This alternative epistemology uses different standards that are consistent with Black women’s criteria for substantiated knowledge and with our criteria for methodological adequacy. Certainly this alternative Black feminist episte- mology has been devalued by dominant knowledge validation processes and may not be claimed by many African-American women. But if such an epistemology exists, what are its contours? Moreover, what are its actual and potential contri- butions to Black feminist thought?
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L i v e d E x p e r i e n c e a s a C r i t e r i o n o f M e a n i n g
“My aunt used to say, ‘A heap see, but a few know,’” remembers Carolyn Chase, a 31-year-old inner-city Black woman (Gwaltney 1980, 83).This saying depicts two types of knowing—knowledge and wisdom—and taps the first dimension of Black feminist epistemology. Living life as Black women requires wisdom because knowledge about the dynamics of intersecting oppressions has been essential to U.S. Black women’s survival. African-American women give such wisdom high credence in assessing knowledge.
Allusions to these two types of knowing pervade the words of a range of African-American women. Zilpha Elaw, a preacher of the mid-1800s, explains the tenacity of racism: “The pride of a white skin is a bauble of great value with many in some parts of the United States, who readily sacrifice their intelligence to their prejudices, and possess more knowledge than wisdom” (Andrews 1986, 85). In describing differences separating African-American and White women, Nancy White invokes a similar rule: “When you come right down to it, white women just think they are free. Black women know they ain’t free” (Gwaltney 1980, 147). Geneva Smitherman, a college professor specializing in African- American linguistics, suggests, “From a black perspective, written documents are limited in what they can teach about life and survival in the world. Blacks are quick to ridicule ‘educated fools,’ . . . they have ‘book learning’ but no ‘mother wit,’ knowledge, but not wisdom” (Smitherman 1977, 76). Mabel Lincoln elo- quently summarizes the distinction between knowledge and wisdom: “To black people like me, a fool is funny—you know, people who love to break bad, peo- ple you can’t tell anything to, folks that would take a shotgun to a roach” (Gwaltney 1980, 68).
African-American women need wisdom to know how to deal with the “educated fools” who would “take a shotgun to a roach.” As members of a sub- ordinate group, Black women cannot afford to be fools of any type, for our objectification as the Other denies us the protections that White skin, maleness, and wealth confer.This distinction between knowledge and wisdom, and the use of experience as the cutting edge dividing them, has been key to Black women’s survival. In the context of intersecting oppressions, the distinction is essential. Knowledge without wisdom is adequate for the powerful, but wisdom is essen- tial to the survival of the subordinate.