Can (or should) white women do Black feminist theory?: exploring tensions, contradictions, and intersectionalities while performing justice-focused research

ABSTRACT

Black feminist thought is produced by and for Black women, but could it be applied by – be the conceptual lens for – others? How do/should I position myself as a white woman doing Black feminist work? How do I de-centre myself, centre Black voices, and also use the power that my whiteness provides to do the type of social justice work Black feminist thought approaches demands? Here, I wrestle with the answers to these questions mainly through my ‘conversations’ with Black feminist intellectuals such as Collins (2000), Lorde (2007), Cooper (2018), and Kendall (2020). In this reflective piece, I explore six ‘lessons learned’ which emerged from the tensions/conflicts I encountered while doing this project in the confines of academia with the goal of considering how academics and practitioners can create knowledge in anti-racist ways.

Résumé

Le livre sur la pensée féministe noire Black Feminist Thought a été publié par et pour des femmes noires (Collins, 2000), mais peut-on s’en servir comme angle conceptuel et l’appliquer au profit d’autres personnes? Comment nous positionnons-nous, devrions-nous nous positionner en tant que femme blanche qui étudie le féminisme noir? Comment se décentrer, recentrer la parole des Noirs et exploiter le pouvoir de ma race blanche pour obtenir le type de justice sociale dont parle la pensée féministe noire? Il s’agit de s’interroger sur les réponses à ces questions, surtout dans le cadre de conversations avec des intellectuelles féministes noires comme Collins (2000), Lorde (2007), Cooper (2018), et Kendall (2020). Notre réflexion explore six leçons tirées des tensions et conflits vécus durant ce projet réalisé en milieu universitaire pour examiner comment chercheurs et spécialistes peuvent créer du savoir d’une façon qui combat le racisme.

KEYWORDS:

• Black feminist theory
• white women
• anti-racism
• feminism

MOTS-CLÉS:

• théorie féministe noire
• femmes blanches
• combattre le racisme
• féminisme

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Throughout this entire manuscript, ‘I’ represents Alayna (a white woman); ‘our’ represents Alayna, Callie, and white women as a collective; ‘we’ represents the authors (myself; Corliss, a Black woman feminist; and Callie), and ‘we all’ represents all women working towards justice.

2. I used nature (with strikethrough) in my research to indicate placing the concept of nature under erasure (Derrida, 2016), highlighting nature as a social construct with shifting meanings and decentring popular white definitions and preferences.

3. We, the authors, would like to note that this manuscript was written prior to Elon Musk buying ownership of Twitter.

4. A zine is a small self-published work used as a vehicle for social, political, personal and/or artistic expression that features illustrations, graphic design, photography, mapping and various forms of printmaking.