week #5- Black Feminism and the Caribbean

        In this week readings, the ideology associated around identity, womanhood, and color, all encompass a rite of passage to which ALL women seem to face globally. In different avenues of life, but nonetheless encounter. Women, woman, Black woman, White woman, and lady are all the main aspects associated around gender. Being a woman or lady is classified by gender, color, and class. These identities for Black women are assumed in a familiarity of lesser value, inferiority, or only associated with the gender basic specific of a woman. White women on the other hand, are assumed in all walks of life whether lower, middle, or upper class to be “ladies.” “Ladies” referring to the way in which they carry themselves, the history of family and foundation, and the most important of them all- race. According to Gina, race, gender, class, and sexuality are ridiculed in relation to the African American race or women of color whether in the states or the islands. Also the idea of feminist thought among women of color is produced, exaggerated, and dissected in the knowledge production of other Black feminists in comparison to the fight for women’s rights, creating and producing power relations, and discourse.

            In “Downtown Ladies”, Gina speaks on constructing womanhood through femininity. In this statement, I believe she is referring to the expression of a woman and her gendered identities she given over time. Whether these identifications are historically given, altered according to a particular time frame of action, or politically created to justify certain ownerships in the patriarchal frame of mind set to which we as a people have been so brainwashed to adhere to. She quotes Nancy Scheper-Hughes stating, “Embodiment concerns the ways people come to inhabit their bodies...All of the mundane activities of working, eating, sleeping, having sex, and getting sick, and getting well are forms of body praxis and expressive of dynamic social, and cultural, and political relations.” This statement was a very important aspect of this piece, because these are expressions I believe some women are unaware they are a part of subliminally. By subliminally, I am referring to notions of self which one interacts with, without noticing such social influences which have bombarded even the simplistic ideas of their lives as women. Politically, everyone wants to be correct in some shape or form both for women and men. Embodiment is inevitable almost for women. The social constructs have beastly placed assumptions on us regardless of choice. Is there a womanly instinct anymore? Is it present only in times of motherhood, or conditioned ideas behind the “true veil” or a woman? Is there a veil to which to unravel, or have the political economy pushed reflexivity among all women to the point where personal reflexivity is reversed to the initial stripping of women’s rights and privileges as has previously accomplished?

            Gina also speaks on color. Color in Haiti, Jamaica, and the U.S. She allows us as readers to look beyond just the colors or black and white? Or does she? I asked in the mention of the beauty/scholarship pageants of Jamaican women. She refers to them a Black, brown, and lighter skinned individuals. I like this difference expounded upon mainly in the idea that it surfaces the idea of race in the eyes of other people of color or “people of the same kind.” This distance in choosing to prim and pretty for modeling agencies or other promotions of life show how the created system of white hierarchy has developed and been bushed against women of color among their own race. This mention allowed me as a Black women, but of lighter tone to rethink my own personal ideas about identity and race, and how it has lead me in different directions of choice and power per se.

          In Barriteau, she expounds upon the critical ideas of knowledge among Caribbean women, women of color, and African American women. She uses feminist’s critiques about proposed knowledge to question the fight for certain women. Lesbians, heterosexuals, black or white women all have possessed different oppressions as well as pedagogy. To speak on behalf of certain women or other women only questions the validity of those educated individuals and gives permission for even their knowledge to be questioned entirely. She questions the idea of sisterhood. In my thoughts, after reading this article so did I? I know it may seem funny, but is there “sisterhood” among any group of women anymore? She also suggests new methodological approaches in feminisms among race, social relations and power among Black women in the world of White wall paper. This article was interesting, but I’m looking forward to an in depth discussion involving all of its fluidity.