A Roundtable Discussion of Hood Feminism

On the 17th October Feminist Society hosted a discussion of Mikki Kendall’s book Hood Feminism. Hood Feminism is a collection of 18 essays looking at how quite often feminism has excluded issues for women of colour.

This prompted roundtable conversations of what the definition of feminism should be. It was interesting to hear different thoughts on this. The central theme to this conversation highlighted how easy it is to forget that people of different background and experiences will have different experiences of feminism to you. For example, black women have often been forgotten in the feminist movement, despite having always been an integral part of it, due to racism, meaning they were often silenced which no doubt will have affected their present-day expression of feminism. The other thought that was interesting that was raised was how feminism is forever changing on a larger scale but also on a personal level as the meaning of feminism changes to each individual as they grow.

Kendall further highlights this point in her book arguing that “it’s not enough to know that other women with different experiences exist; you must also understand that they have their own feminism formed by that experience.” Often, there is a solidarity amongst white women, but this same solidarity does not exist across racial lines between white and black women. This prompted us to discuss the Netflix documentary about CJ Walker where it was clear that she as a woman, in an arena dominated by men, who were also white, could not separate her identity as a black individual from also being a woman. We took this idea further and looked at how black women cannot wait for white women to understand where they are coming from, in order to further their rights. For example, fighting for more female CEOs can feel very out of touch for many women from the black community, when there are black women fighting for basic rights. This is very much an issue in the UK, where women who are born into poverty in London for example, are likely to end up in poverty. Understandably therefore, the fight to have more women in positions of power, which is also no bad things, can however feel very unrelatable if your main concern is leaving the poverty cycle.

Historically, white women have expected black women to stand up for them in the feminist struggle without supporting them back in their struggles as a marginalised race. Black women are often only seen as “the help” for wealthy white women, and white women have failed to help change this narrative in society, due to internalised racism. We explored this idea further by discussing how the media is still quick to paint black women with a different brush to how they pain white women. For example, during the BLM protests black women were often depicted as aggressive and law breaking, whereas the women at the women’s march against Trump were celebrated for being “strong independent women”. Many white women were therefore outraged at the way women were treated at the Sarah Everard protests. Unfortunately, this treatment was nothing new for black women. Women like Audrey Lorde had been trying to highlight this issue for years, demonstrating the privilege that white women do have and the lack of understanding we have of issues facing black women.

However, history has shown that when women from diverse backgrounds come together it can be exceptionally powerful. For example, Dorothy Hughes and Gloria Steinem during the 70s were able to reach a much wider audience as women from different racial backgrounds, as they were able to relate to more women and empathise with a broader range of issues. Like most issues, this needs to be sensitively achieved as it is easy for white women to slip into the role of being a white saviour, rather than working with black women to solve issues affecting all women of different backgrounds. This idea is critical to the future of the feminist movement because if we are only empowering white women then they effectively take the same status in society as white men in power, leaving behind vast swathes of other women.