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ABSTRACT
Black women are a structurally oppressed group in a subordinate position in the power hierarchy. Language is an important demonstration of group identity and is used to manage the day-to-day realities of being both Black and women. Scholars have devoted attention to explaining why Black women’s discursive practices are a function of their particular vantage point and can serve as a measure of protection against social and political hostilities. While there is a great deal of research acknowledging Black women’s ability to resist, the work can be extended by analyzing the specific resistance strategies Black women employ in common social environments. This essay uses Black/feminist standpoint and power and discourse frameworks to analyze Black women’s communicative resistance across three communication contexts: (1) education, (2) workplace, and (3) personal relationships.
Notes
1 Teun A. Van Dijk, “Structures of Discourse and Structures of Power,” Communication Yearbook 12 (1989): 49; bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End Press, 1981).
2 bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From the Margins to the Center, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000).
3 Karla D. Scott, “When I’m with My Girls: Identity and Ideology in Black Women’s Talk About Language and Cultural Borders” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne, 1995); “Crossing Cultural Borders: ‘Girl’ and ‘Look’ as Markers of Identity in Black Women’s Language Use,” Discourse & Society 11, no. 2 (2000): 237–48; Lisa R. Jackson, “We’re Fighting Two Different Battles Here: An Exploration of African American Women’s Definitions of Self at Predominately White Schools,” Journal of Adult Development 5, no. 3 (1998): 171–82.
4 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2000); Nancy C. M. Hartstock, “Foucault on Power: A Theory for Women?” in Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings, ed. Charles Lemert (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), 545–55; “Standpoint Theories for the Next Century,” in Politics and Feminist Standpoint Theory, ed. Sally J. Kennedy and Helen Kinsella (New York: Haworth, 1997), 93–101; Van Dijk, “Structures of Discourse and Structures of Power,” 49.
5 Olga Idriss Davis, “A Black Woman as Rhetorical Critic: Validating Self and Violating the Space of Otherness,” Women’s Studies in Communication 21, no. 1 (1998): 77–90; “Theorizing African American Women’s Discourse: The Public and Private Spheres of Experience,” in Centering Ourselves: African American Feminist and Womanist Studies of Discourse, ed. Marsha Houston and Olga Idriss Davis (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2002), 35–51.
6 Collins, Black Feminist Thought; “No Guarantees: Symposium on Black Feminist Thought,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 38, no. 13 (2015): 2349–54; Minoo Alinia, “On Black Feminist Thought: Thinking Oppression and Resistance Through Intersectional Paradigm,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 38, no. 13 (2015): 2334–40; bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1989).
7 Nancy C. M. Hartsock, “The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism,” in Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, ed. Sandra G. Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 1983), 283–310; “Foucault on Power”; “Standpoint Theories for the Next Century.”
8 Kristen Intemann, “25 years of Feminist Empiricism and Standpoint Theory: Where Are We Now?” Hypatia 25, no. 4 (2004): 785.
9 Marsha Houston and Karla D. Scott, “Negotiating Boundaries, Crossing Borders: The Language of Black Women’s Intercultural Encounters,” in The Sage Handbook of Gender and Communication, ed. Bonnie J. Dow and Julia T. Wood (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006), 397–414; hooks, Talking Back.
10 Patrice Buzzanell, “Standpoint Theory,” in The Sage Encyclopedia of Intercultural Competence, ed. Janet M. Bennett (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2015), 771–74; D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, “Where Standpoint Stands Now: An Introduction and Commentary,” Women’s Studies in Communication 23, no. 1 (2000): 1–15.
11 Collins, Black Feminist Thought; “Black Feminist Thought as Oppositional Knowledge,” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 5, no. 3 (2016): 133–44.
12 Collins, “Black Feminist Thought as Oppositional Knowledge.”
13 Collins, Black Feminist Thought; “No Guarantees.”
14 Alinia, “On Black Feminist Thought”; Collins, “No Guarantees.”
15 Teun A. van Dijk, “Discourse and the Denial of Racism,” Discourse & Society 3, no. 1 (1992): 87–118; “Discourse, Power and Access,” in Discourse and Power (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 65–84.
16 van Dijk, “Discourse, Power and Access.”
17 Teun A. van Dijk, “Knowledge, Discourse and Domination,” in Pragmaticizing Understanding: Studies for Jef Verschueren, ed. Michael Meeuwis and Jan-Ola Östman (Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, 2012), 151–96.
18 van Dijk, “Discourse and the Denial of Racism.”
19 Teun A. van Dijk, ed., “Discourse as Interaction in Society” in Discourse as Social Interaction: Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, vol. 2 (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997), 1–37.
20 Van Dijk, “Structures of Discourse and Structures of Power.”
21 van Dijk, “Discourse, Power and Access.”
22 hooks, Talking Back; “Tongues of Fire: Learning Critical Affirmation,” in Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery (Boston: South End Press, 1993), 31–40; Marsha Houston Stanback and W. Barnett Pearce, “Talking to ‘The Man’: Some Communication Strategies Used by Members of ‘Subordinate’ Social Groups,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 67, no. 1 (1981): 21–30.
23 Marsha Houston and Cheris Kramarae, “Speaking from Silence: Methods of Silencing and of Resistance,” Discourse & Society 2, no. 4 (1991): 387–99.
24 Ibid.; hooks, Talking Back.
25 Collins, Black Feminist Thought; Patricia S. Hill, “And Still I Rise: Communicative Resistance of African American Women in a Culturally Diverse Community,” Electronic Journal of Communication 13, no. 2–3 (2003): http://www.cios.org/EJCPUBLIC/013/2/01327.html; Houston and Kramarae, “Speaking from Silence.”
26 E. Patrick Johnson, “Quare Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know About Queer Studies I Learned from My Grandmother,” Text and Performance Quarterly 21, no. 1 (2001): 1–25; Martin F. Manalansan, Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).
27 Johnson, “Quare Studies.”
28 Ibid., 12.
29 Ibid., 13.
30 Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself, ed. L. Maria Child (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); Cynthia Lyerly, “Religion, Gender, and Identity: Black Methodist Women in a Slave Society, 1770–1810,” in Discovering the Women in Slavery: Emancipating Perspectives on the American Past, ed. Patricia Morton (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 202–26.
31 hooks, Talking Back, 15.
32 Ibid., 18.
33 Houston and Kramarae, “Speaking from Silence”; Houston and Scott, “Negotiating Boundaries, Crossing Borders”; Kumea Shorter-Gooden, “Multiple Resistance Strategies: How African American Women Cope with Racism and Sexism,” Journal of Black Psychology 30, no. 3 (2004): 406–25.
34 hooks, “Tongues of Fire.”
35 Ibid., 31.
36 Marsha Houston, “Multiple Perspectives: African American Women Conceive Their Talk,” Women and Language 1, no. 23 (2000): 11–17.
37 Rachel A. Griffin, “In the Salon: Black Female Faculty ‘Talking Back’ to the Academy,” Women & Language 35, no. 2 (2012): 75–79; Karla D. Scott, “Communication Strategies Across Cultural Borders: Dispelling Stereotypes, Performing Competence, and Redefining Black Womanhood,” Women’s Studies in Communication 36, no. 3 (2013): 321–29.
38 Collins, Black Feminist Thought.
39 Ibid.; Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (London: Routledge, 2004).
40 Danielle Popp et al., “Gender, Race, and Speech Style Stereotypes,” Sex Roles 48, no. 7–8 (2003): 317–25.
41 Brenda J. Allen, “Feminist Standpoint Theory: A Black Woman’s (Re)view of Organizational Socialization,” Communication Studies 47, no. 4 (1996): 257–71; “Black Womanhood and Feminist Standpoints,” Management Communication Quarterly 11, no. 4 (1998): 575–86; Patricia S. Parker, “African American Women Executives’ Leadership Communication Within Dominant-Culture Organizations,” Management Communication Quarterly 15, no. 1 (2001): 42–82.
42 Jackson, “We’re Fighting Two Different Battles Here”; Jioni Lewis et al., “Coping with Gendered Racial Microaggressions Among Black Women College Students,” Journal of African American Studies 17, no. 1 (2013): 51–73; Christine Hannon et al., “The Meaning of African American College Women’s Experiences Attending a Predominantly White Institution: A Phenomenological Study,” Journal of College Student Development 57, no. 6 (2016): 652–66; Subrina J. Robinson, “Spoketokenism: Black Women Talking Back About Graduate School Experiences,” Race, Ethnicity, and Education 16, no. 2 (2013): 155–81; Subrina J. Robinson, Elena Esquibel, and Marc D. Rich, “‘I’m Still Here’: Black Female Undergraduates’ Self-Definition Narratives,” World Journal of Education 3, no. 5 (2013): 57–71; Scott, “Communication Strategies Across Cultural Borders.”
43 Scott, “Communication Strategies Across Cultural Borders,” 320.
44 Lisa R. Jackson, “The Influence of Both Race and Gender on the Experiences of African American College Women,” The Review of Higher Education 21, no. 4 (1998): 359–75.
45 Robinson, Esquibel, and Rich, “‘I’m Still Here,’” 64.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid., 66.
48 Ibid., 62.
49 Ibid., 61–62.
50 Robinson, “Spoketokenism.”
51 Ibid., 164.
52 Grace Evans, “Those Loud Black Girls,” in Learning to Lose: Sexism and Education, ed. Dale Spender and Elizabeth Sarah (London: The Women’s Press, 1988), 183–90; Jacqueline Koonce, “‘Oh, Those Loud Black Girls!’ A Phenomenological Study of Black Girls Talking with an Attitude,” Journal of Language and Literacy Education 8, no. 2 (2012): 26–46; Edward W. Morris, “‘Ladies’ or ‘Loudies’? Perceptions and Experiences of Black Girls in Classrooms,” Youth & Society 38, no. 4 (2007): 490–515.
53 Signithia Fordham, “‘Those Loud Black Girls’: (Black) Women, Silence, and Gender ‘Passing’ in the Academy,” in Beyond Black and White: New Faces and Voices in U.S. Schools, ed. Maxine Seller and Lois Weis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 81–111.
54 Ibid., 82.
55 Ibid., 104.
56 Elizabeth Bell and Kim Golombisky, “Voices and Silences in Our Classrooms: Strategies for Mapping Trails Among Sex/Gender, Race, and Class,” Women’s Studies in Communication 27, no. 3 (2004): 294–329.
57 See Marsha Houston, “When Black Women Talk with White Women: Why Dialogues are Difficult,” in Our Voices: Essays in Culture, Ethnicity, and Communication 2nd ed., ed. Alberto González, Marsha Houston, and Victoria Chen (Los Angeles: Roxbury, 1997), 187–94.
58 Scott, “When I’m with My Girls”; “Crossing Cultural Borders,” 244.
59 Robinson, Esquibel, and Rich, “‘I’m Still Here,’” 67.
60 Bell and Golombisky, “Voices and Silences in Our Classrooms.”
61 Shannon Miller, “African-American Lesbian Identity Management and Identity Development in the Context of Family and Community,” Journal of Homosexuality 58, no. 4 (2011): 555.
62 Bell and Golombisky, “Voices and Silences in Our Classrooms.”
63 Aisha M. B. Holder, Margo A. Jackson, and Joseph G. Ponterotto, “Racial Microaggression Experiences and Coping Strategies of Black Women in Corporate Leadership,” Qualitative Psychology 2, no. 2 (2015): 164–80.
64 Patricia S. Parker, “Negotiating Identity in Raced and Gendered Workplace Interactions: The Use of Strategic Communication by African American Women Senior Executives Within Dominant Culture Organizations,” Communication Quarterly 50, no. 3–4 (2002): 251–68.
65 Shorter-Gooden, “Multiple Resistance Strategies.”
66 See Camille Hall, Joyce Everett, and Johnnie Hamilton-Mason, “Black Women Talk About Workplace Stress and How They Cope,” Journal of Black Studies 43, no. 2 (2012): 216; Houston, “Multiple Perspectives,” 14.
67 See Bianca Wilson and Robin Miller, “Strategies for Managing Heterosexism Used Among African American Gay and Bisexual Men,” Journal of Black Psychology 28, no. 4 (2002): 371–91.
68 Shorter-Gooden, “Multiple Resistance Strategies,” 418.
69 Ibid.
70 Hall, Everett, and Hamilton-Mason, “Black Women Talk About Workplace Stress and How They Cope.”
71 Shorter-Gooden, “Multiple Resistance Strategies,” 419.
72 Charisse Jones and Kumea Shorter-Gooden, Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America (New York: Harper Collins, 2003), 62.
73 Shorter-Gooden, “Multiple Resistance Strategies,” 420.
74 Parker, “Negotiating Identity in Raced and Gendered Workplace Interactions.”
75 Susan L. Bryant, “The Beauty Ideal: The Effects of European Standards of Beauty on Black Women,” Columbia Social Work Review 4, no. 1 (2013): 80–91.
76 Wendy Greene, “A Multidimensional Analysis of What Not to Wear in the Workplace: Hijabs and Natural Hair,” Florida International University Law Review 8 (2013): 333–62.
77 Nadia Brown, “‘It’s More than Hair. . . That’s Why You Should Care’: The Politics of Appearance for Black Women State Legislators,” Politics, Groups, and Identities 2, no. 3 (2014): 295–312.
78 Nekita Huling, Creshema Murray, and Marsha Houston, “Sister-Friends: Reflections on Black Women’s Communication in Intra- and Intercultural Friendships,” in Our Voices: Essays in Culture, Ethnicity, and Communication, 5th ed., ed. Alberto González, Marsha Houston, and Victoria Chen (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2012), 85–92.
79 Maria Lugones with Pat Alake Roszelle, “Sisterhood and Friendship as Feminist Models,” in Knowledge Explosion: Generations of Feminist Scholarship, ed. Cherise Kramerae and Dale Spender (New York: Teachers College Press, 1992), 410.
80 Shardé Davis, “The ‘Strong Black Woman Collective’: A Developing Theoretical Framework of the Communication Process Among Black Women,” Women’s Studies in Communication 38, no. 1 (2015): 20–35.
81 Marnel Niles Goins, “Playing with Dialectics: Black Female Friendship Groups as a Homeplace,” Communication Studies 62, no. 5 (2011): 531.
82 Marsha Houston, “Writing for My Life: Community-Cognizant Scholarship on African-American Women and Communication,” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 24, no. 5 (2000): 673–86; Patrick C. Hughes and Amy N. Heuman, “The Communication of Solidarity in Friendships Among African American Women,” Qualitative Research Reports in Communication 7, no. 1 (2006): 33–41; Niles Goins, “Playing with Dialectics.”
83 Karla D. Scott, “Conceiving the Language of Black Women’s Everyday Talk,” in Centering Ourselves: African American Feminist and Womanist Studies of Discourse, ed. Marsha Houston and Olga Idriss Davis (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2002), 64 original emphasis.
84 Scott, “Communication Strategies Across Cultural Borders,” 242.
85 Hughes and Heuman, “The Communication of Solidarity in Friendships.”
86 Michele Foster, “‘Are You with Me?’ Power Solidarity in the Discourse of African American Women,” in Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self, ed. Kira Hall and Mary Bucholz (London: Routledge, 1995), 330–50; Linda Nelson, “Codeswitching in the Oral Life Narratives of African American Women: Challenges to Linguistic Hegemony,” Journal of Education 173, no. 3 (1990): 142–55; Scott, “When I’m with My Girls”; “Communication Strategies Across Cultural Borders”; Pamela Hobbs, “In Their Own Voices: Codeswitching and Code Choice in the Print and Online Versions of an African-American Women’s Magazine,” Women and Language 27, no. 1 (2004): 1–12.
87 Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 102.
88 bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Boston: South End Press, 1990); Niles Goins, “Playing with Dialectics.”
89 Joëlle M. Cruz et al., “The Ekwe Collective: Black Feminist Praxis,” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 5, no. 3 (2016): 77–100; Ashley Patterson, et al., “Black Feminist Thought as Methodology: Examining the Lived Experiences of Black Women,” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 5, no. 3 (2016): 55–76.
90 Alexis C. Dennis and Julia T. Wood, “‘We’re Not Going to Have This Conversation, But You Get It’: Black Mother–Daughter Communication About Sexual Relations,” Women’s Studies in Communication 35, no. 2 (2012): 207.
91 Sinikka Elliott and Elyshia Aseltine, “Raising Teenagers in Hostile Environments: How Race, Class, and Gender Matter for Mothers’ Protective Carework,” Journal of Family Issues 34, no. 6 (2013): 719–44; Sinikka Elliott, Rachel Powell, and Joslyn Brenton, “Being a Good Mom: Low-Income, Black Single Mothers Negotiate Intensive Mothering,” Journal of Family Issues 36, no. 3 (2015): 351–70; Jean M. Ispa and Linda C. Halgunseth, “Talking About Corporal Punishment: Nine Low-Income African American Mothers’ Perspectives,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 19, no. 3 (2004): 463–84; Catherine Taylor, Lauren Hamvas, and Ruth Paris, “Perceived Instrumentality and Normativeness of Corporal Punishment Use Among Black Mothers,” Family Relations 60, no. 1 (2011): 60–72; Anita Jones Thomas and Constance T. King, “Gendered Racial Socialization of African American Mothers and Daughters,” The Family Journal 15, no. 2 (2007): 137–42.
92 Thomas and King, “Gendered Racial Socialization.”
93 Isis Seettles, Jennifer Pratt-Hyatt, and NiCole Buchanan, “Through the Lens of Race: Black and White Women’s Perceptions of Womanhood,” Psychology of Women Quarterly 32, no. 4 (2008): 454–68.
94 Marie-Anne Suizzo, Courtney Robinson, and Erin Pahlke, “African American Mothers’ Socialization Beliefs and Goals with Young Children: Themes of History, Education, and Collective Independence,” Journal of Family Issues 29, no. 3 (2008): 298.
95 Ibid.
96 Ispa and Halgunseth, “Talking About Corporal Punishment.”
97 Ibid., 479.
98 Meri Danquah, Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman’s Journey Through Depression (New York: One World, 1998).
99 Shardé Davis and Tamara Afifi, “Harming the Relationship While Helping the Friend: The Outcomes of Seeking Social Support About a Romantic Partner from Women Friend Groups,” Journal of Friendship Studies 2, no. 1 (2014): 18–44.
100 Ibid., 35.
101 Stanback and Pearce, “Talking to ‘The Man.’”