Gender, Race, and Radicalism: Teaching the Autobiographies of Native and African American Women Activists Author(s): Joy James Source: Feminist Teacher, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Fall/Winter 1994), pp. 129-139 Published by: University of Illinois Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40545678 Accessed: 02-05-2019 19:25 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms University of Illinois Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Feminist Teacher This content downloaded from 184.74.26.10 on Thu, 02 May 2019 19:25:48 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Gender, Race, and Radicalism: Teaching the Autobiographies of Native and African American Women Activists By Joy James 1992- The Post-Columbus Classroom: students perceive "women of color" whom they encounter Women's Resistance to American Racism as "texts," particularly those activists who critique the U.S. state. I imagined that it was difficult for academics to In American society where indigenous and African conceptualize such women as something other than fashion- Americans signify the primitive, exotic (often dangerous) able literary commodities, colorful accessories to euro- "Other," anti-Black and anti-Indian racism coexist within centric a as well as trans-ethnic conservative/liberal larger context of political opposition to radicalism. Anti- paradigms. With the ascendancy of post-colonial/ radicalism often appears in reactionary or conservative postmodern/postracial discourse, I was also curious as to politics. At other times, radicalism is depoliticized and whether students considered antiracist, radical activists as coopted into trendy rhetoric and fashion: for instance, TVpolitically antiquated, cultural throwbacks or ethnocentric commercials inform that the soft-drink Mountain Dew is oddities. My pessimism about the academic reception for "radical" and that Revlon makes "revolutionary cosmetics the worldviews and politics of Native and African Ameri- for revolutionary women." As in pop culture, within cans confronting genocide was tied to a general reading of academe, radical and antiracist politics are usually dis- dominant, academic politics in which most teaching (con- torted if not denigrated. With some exceptions, dominant servative, liberal, or postmodern/colonial hybridity) priv- trends in academic studies seem to either denounce radical- ileges eurocentric or multicultural paradigms over antiracist ism and antiracism as misguided approaches to redress frameworks: with little critical juxtaposition with radical injustices (that are increasingly denied) - even the liberal critiques from nonacademics or non-elites. remedy of affirmative action is now considered "reverse The year 1992 was a watershed for education analyzing racism/sexism" - or reduce radicalism and antiracism to a structural violence and genocide. That fall, community, surrogate liberalism or literary "insurgency." Obviously student, and faculty intellectuals worked to critique the there are exceptions: those who most often go beyond quicentennial and celebrations of the "discovery" of the rhetorical antiracism and radicalism are student and faculty Americas. In Amherst, faculty, staff, and students initiated activists engaged in social justice organizing. My own curriculum changes, held campus forums, and promoted student experiences reminded me of how academic sites recent publications by Native Americans and others on tend to silence or view radicalism suspiciously. contemporary indigenous oppression and resistance. This Since my days as a student organizer, the meanings of call issued by progressive academics led to various re- "radicalism" have encompassed not only political ideas or sponses. Mine was to develop and teach a first-time course rhetoric about political ideas but also practices and strat- offering at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst the egies for uprooting oppressive structures rather than assim- following semester called Gender, Race, and Radicalism: ilating into or reforming them. After several years as a full- Native and African American Women Activists, which was time academic in western Massachusetts, estranged from opened to students in the Five College system (UMASS and the urban activism I had known in New York City, I was Amherst, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, and Hampshire Colleges). I unsure about the nature of progressive politics and race had taught the autobiographies of Black women active in the discourse: most of what I had known as "radical" from civil rights/Black liberation movements of the 1950s, '60s, NYC organizing and teaching ethics with religious leaders and '70s in other courses. Over several years, Mohawk was generally received, by more seasoned academics, scholar-activist as Donna Goodleaf, who co-lectured in this inappropriately political (polemical) or academically "un- course, had introduced me to the writings of contemporary civilized" in a university setting. As an assistant professor Native American women in resistance to state domination in women's studies engaged in antiracist education, or my colonization. Gender, Race and Radicalism: Native and work focused primarily on marginalized Black and, African in- American Women Activists seemed an ideal oppor- creasingly, indigenous women. Both groups of women tunity to synthesize studies of women in two marginalized figured prominently in my courses, given that material ethnic and groups into a unique, comparative women's studies "existential" wealth in the U.S. /Americas was (is) accumu- class. That the women to be studied were also radical lated through systemic exploitation of these women and activists brought added significance: more than its mar- their peoples. ginalization of conservative-liberal "women of color," aca- While teaching, I often wondered, pessimistically, howdeme has erased radical "women of color." Feminist Teacher Vol. 8, No. 3 ♦ 129-139 129 This content downloaded from 184.74.26.10 on Thu, 02 May 2019 19:25:48 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms journey: some failed to submit the journals which focused on student introspection and reflection on their relation- The familiar, shared context ship^) to text, class, pedagogy, instructor, and women's radical antiracist politics.) for linking South African On the first day of teaching, I was pleased to encounter a fairly diverse women's studies class. Two thirds of the apartheid to genocide, or students were female, nearly half of the students were of African, Latino, or Asian descent; the remaining half were even Nazi anti-Semitism to Euro-American. The students held politically diverse views as well, although all generally considered themselves pro- genocide in Qermany, has gressives. A quarter or more of the class identified them- selves as community activists. Most of those with extensive no counterpart connecting organizing within nonacademic/middle-class communities racism to genocide in the were (upper) middle-class White women in their third year at Hampshire College, an "alternative" small liberal arts U.S.I Americas. institution. As self-identified activists, these European and Jewish American women had political organizing experi- ence on issues of sexual and racial violence which increased their receptivity to developing critical perspectives on the connections between women's struggles, antiracism, and Often comparative women's studies centers women of genocide. A small number of these women activists European descent as well as liberal or conservative women provided the student comments reprinted below (I thank as normative. Most studies of radicalism emphasize men, Rebecca Gould, Joanne Lehrer, and Jenna Magruder for as does the comparative literature on Black/Red-Black permission to quote from their course papers). Indians and Native and African Americans (an estimated The political experiences of student activists shaped one third to one quarter of African Americans have Native their ethnic and gender identities so that they tended to ancestry). Departing from those norms, Gender, Race, and more quickly disengage from self-absorbed reflections or Radicalism emphasized writings by Native and African narrow identity politics. During the semester, other stu- American women radicals from "captive communities'" dents, White and people of color, male and female, who had within nonconventional analytical frameworks. As an up- little or no experience in political organizing more often per-level elective, it brought together approximately twenty disassociated introspection from structural analyses to students, mostly juniors and seniors interested in not only emphasize their personal anxieties and desires over race "women of color" but political radicalism in the lives of and acceptance over critiques of racism and genocide. Native and African American women activists engaged in Perhaps because they had a pragmatic approach that con- liberation movements for humane, democratic societies. nected critiques with practical applications, women student activists tended to advocate classroom attempts to build useful critical analyses: Classroom