“SHE WANTS THE BLACK MAN POST”: Constructions of race, sexuality and political leadership in popular culture

abstract

Recent feminist scholarship on women in politics focuses in part, on the commodification of women's leadership and statecraft. A consequence of how globalising capitalism permeates political processes, this trend has grown alongside higher premiums being placed on political power and influence. The instrumentalising of leadership for personal and capitalist gain is especially pronounced in the global South, where the state becomes a pivotal means for groups to secure economic power. This Article critically assesses the conclusions associated with this state of affairs, asserting that women's entry into leadership, unless insurgent, has the tendency to include their capitulating to the neo-liberal and neo-imperialist status quo. What deserves fuller study is the ways that women, once in power navigate, practice or adopt authoritarian leadership styles: while black women in leadership may seem simply to be “wanting the black man's post”, a variety of layered practices complicate any clear cut conclusions about the impact of individual women politicians in statecraft.

My analysis proceeds by examining one phase in the rise to leadership of an Indian woman to become the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. Surrounding discourses and practices of black women's leadership in the African Diaspora are entry points for this discussion. Intersecting discourses of race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality are explored in media, popular cultural imaginaries and political positioning. Documentation via newspaper and campaign ads, ethnographic accounts, interviews and popular cultural texts are used to demonstrate the value of a multi-faceted reading of black women's leadership in the context of globalising capitalism and intersections of gender, class, race, ethnicity and sexuality.

Keywords:

• Black women and gender
• Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Michelle Obama
• sexuality
• political leadership and state power
• Trinidad and Tobago

Notes

1. Examples in the twentieth century are Indira Ghandi (1966–1977 and 1980–1984) and Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan (1988)–1990; 1993–1996).

2. For example, Ashwood was tasked with membership and in the laying out and documenting of its initial objectives, published in October, 1914, under the hand of the secretary, Amy Ashwood.

3. Merced, May 15, 2009.

4. In the history of calypso, the Caribbean's popular song form, with a genre of political commentary, calypsonians or calypso singers often show up at the House of Parliament and Court Houses to get material to put to song and for this reason used to be called the unofficial newspapers. See Liverpool (2003).

5. Appointed by the Prime Minister as special envoy on Women's and Children's Issues to the Caribbean Commonwealth on March 8, 2011.

6. I conducted an interview (March 2008, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago) with Yvonne Bobb at her residence on this subject. Bobb had worked as a workshop leader for some of these projects of preparing women for political leadership at local, regional and national levels.

7. Patricia McFadden (2001) makes a similar point in ‘South Africa, African Feminism and the Challenges of Solidarity,’ and Desiree Lewis (2009) in ‘Baleke Mbete: On Queens Who Would be Kings,’ the latter suggesting that “the national machinery has offered extremely limited scope for transformation.” Mc Fadden's position is that:

“many women position themselves conservatively in response to the state's new ruling function… . To as great a degree as men, women within the state bureaucracy act in accordance with class logic. They become ruthless defenders of the status quo and operate in ways that protect their power and authority” McFadden, 2001:page number)

8. Winston Rawlins, Calypsonian CroCro, sang a calypso for the 2011 season, commenting on Hazel Brown's support for an Indian woman as prime minister including these words:

“Shame on Hazel Brown, look how all yuh have black woman head dragging on the ground. If Rosa Parks was alive hear what she'd a do, put you in de back of de bus and spit on you. So…on you Brown I frown, give African back they head tie and gown. I'm so disappointed in you woman, another lick bottom African.”

9. See the work of Rhoda Reddock (2001) and Shalini Puri (2004) and others on this. Dougla is a racially pejorative word in a variety of cultures from Persia to India and refers to bastardisation, stain, dirty, polluted which like the word “nigger” has been reappropriated by some.

10. Interviewed March, 2010 at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago.

11. I witnessed this performance by Brown, known by his singing sobriquet as Brown Boy, on February 10, 2010 in the Kaiso House, Port of Spain.

12. Attending the African Diaspora in India conference in 2006, I learned that there is a prior identity for Indo-Africans or Afro-Indians in India which supercedes the category ‘dougla’ and that many of the Trinidad and Tobago Indians may have indeed come from an already prior racial mixture since Africans had been in India since the days of Malik Amber and before, and possibly as early as the 5^th century. There is a developing literature on this and on the Siddis of India. See the Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora (2008) which has good information on this issue.