Poor, Black, Female Students: A Sufficiently Specific Standpoint
In Struggling to Survive, the first chapter from Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, Monique Morris discusses the systemic oppression that Black girls in underfunded schools experience, which ultimately leads to their disproportionately high likelihood of dropping out. Invoking intersectionality, she demonstrates that the “pushout” of Black girls is due not to their additive status as both Black and female, but rather to the more nuanced oppression rooted in Black femininity as a holistic identity. Her solution to the problem invokes standpoint theory, suggesting that the only way to truly understand what Black girls experience in school, and thus to create productive solutions to their oppression, is to listen to their stories. In Rethinking Black Feminist Theory, Hazel Carby critiques Black feminist standpoint theory, suggesting that allowing a few Black women to speak for all is a detrimental oversimplification of Black womanhood. The Combahee River Collective’s A Black Feminist Statement resembles those critiqued by Carby, emphasizing the value of lived experience in creating an autonomous conception of Black womanhood. They echo Morris’ emphasis on the intersectional identity of Black women, asserting that racial, sexual and class based oppression function together in a way that can’t be comprehended simply by adding the effects each specific identity. The Combahee River Collective would likely agree with both Morris’ intersectional assessment of the problem, and the centrality of standpoint theory in her method of moving forward. Though Carby has her qualms with standpoint theory, I argue that she would also agree with Morris’ analysis, as it focuses on the specific issues of Black girls growing up in ghettos and underfunded schools, and not on Black women – or even Black female students – as a whole.
Morris’ writing confronts the disproportionately high rate at which Black girls drop out of school, focusing on those in poverty. She begins her intersectional approach to Black girls’ education by identifying that the majority of dropouts attend “ghetto schools” (Morris, 21). She debunks the equation of equal access to a school and equal access to education saying, “Globally, education is by and large recognized as a key pathway out of poverty. However, not every type of education opens up that path, and the quality of education has everything to do with being prepared to thrive as an adult” (Morris, 31). The intersectional oppression of poor Black girls in schools is thus cyclically detrimental, because it warps their key to success. Through parallels between the personal narratives of Black girls in a juvenile detention facility, Morris demonstrates that the dropout rate is not just a collection of individual stories, but a pattern of systemic “pushout” through hypersexualization, criminalization, age truncation and other forms of intersectional oppression which harm Black girls, and particularly poor Black girls (Morris, 34, 33-44). She writes, “Institutions have an obligation to understand why… the collection of policies, practices, and consciousness that fosters [Black girls’] invisibility, marginalizes their pain and opportunities, and facilitates their criminalization – goes unchallenged” (Morris, 24). This analysis asserts that we have a responsibility to see “pushout” not as individual stories of failure, but a broken system in need of fixing. Finally, she suggests that the way forward is to “reimagine and construct different paths for Black girls by listening to them and learning from their experiences” of “gendered racial oppression.” Her ultimate proposal suggests a Standpoint based approach to understanding and solving intersectional oppression.
The Combahee River Collective would agree with Morris’ call to listen to Black girls' experiences because they believe that self-defining oppression through storytelling begins to heal internal oppression, which is a necessary precursor to mending external oppression. Morris defines internalized racial oppression as “the process by which Black people internalize and accept, not always consciously, the dominant white culture’s oppressive actions and beliefs towards Black people” (Morris, 43). This is evident in many conversations between Morris and the girls featured in Struggling to Survive, to the extent that an 11-year-old girl self-identified as a “ho” rather than a victim of sexual oppression (Morris, 18). The Combahee River Collective explains this phenomenon, demonstrating that racism is so pervasive in the lives of Black women that it “does not allow most black women to look more deeply into [their] own experiences and define those things that make [their] lives what they are and [their] oppression specific to [them]” (Combahee River Collective, 233). The conversations themselves are forms of what the Combahee River Collective calls consciousness raising, a crucial step in healing internalized oppression. They write, “In the process of consciousness-raising, actually life-sharing, we began to recognize the commonality of our experiences and… to build a politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression” (Combahee 233). The Combahee River Collective’s endorsement of consciousness raising supports Morris’ suggestion that talking to Black girls about their experiences of oppression is the first step towards its remedy. They would also support allowing the girls to be the authority on their own experience. Evoking standpoint theory, they write, “We believe that the most profound and potentially the most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression” (Combahee River Collective, 234). Thus, they would Support listening to Black girls’ experiences not only as a necessary healing measure, but also as a means of claiming autonomy over their oppression.
The Combahee River Collective would also endorse Morris’ intersectional analysis of the girls’ “gendered racial oppression” (Morris, 44). They describe the importance of confronting identities as intersectional saying, “We know that there is a such things as racial-sexual oppression that is neither solely racial nor solely sexual… and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking” (Combahee River Collective, 232-234). They would encourage Morris’ discussion of racism, patriarchy, and poverty not as additive oppressions, but as part of an intersectional struggle that’s more than the sum of its parts. Morris vividly illustrates intersectionality in the story of Portia, a genderqueer teenager who was told to wear a dress to her court hearing. She writes, “What was intended to interrupt Portia’s contact with the criminal legal system – an approach supposedly shaped with her gender in mind – failed to consider the gender continuum that includes not only ‘girls’ and ‘boys,’ but also those who identify in between or outside of polarized notions of gender.” (Morris, 29). For Portia, beauty standards rooted in the gender binary were applied to compensate for gendered racial stereotypes that muted her innocence in the eyes of the court. The Combahee River Collective would agree with this affirmation that one must consider the “whole self” in order to accurately analyze the oppression of poor Black girls in school (Morris, 23).
In Rethinking Black Feminist Theory, Carby critiques Black feminist critique, like that of the Combahee River Collective, for oversimplifying the experience of Black women and excluding all other groups from the study of Black feminism. She condemns members like Barbara Smith, who assert that “the critic should write and think ‘out of her own identity… the implication being that the identity of the critic would be synonymous with that of the author under scrutiny” (Carby, 8). She takes issue with this element of standpoint theory for two reasons. The first is that “reliance on a common, or shared, perspective is essentialist and ahistorical” (Carby 16). The second is that it denies Black women allies in the name of autonomy when they can’t necessarily afford to do so. Black Feminism, she writes, is “on the periphery of the already marginalized, we could assume, a very precarious and dangerous position from which to assert total independence” (Carby 11). After criticizing several supporters of Standpoint theory, she suggests instead that Black Feminists should avoid assuming that all Black women have a common tradition, consciousness, vision or language (Carby, 13). In her view, though Black women share a common oppression, it manifests in ways too diverse to be defined by a select few voices.
While Carby is vehemently opposed to condensing Black women into one common identity, I argue that she would accept Morris’ analysis of poor Black female students as a specific fragment of Black females whose oppression shares historical, social and systemic consistencies. Morris begins the chapter by fixating on poor Black girls in underfunded schools. The displays of power described resemble the sort of “shared language” Carby rejects as essentialist (Carby, 9). However, rather than describing all Black women regardless of circumstance, she describes patterns of expression rooted in a common history, culture and situation. Morris writes:
For Black girls who live in ways that align with and result from a castigated identity, the struggle to be a ‘good girl,’ especially in the ghetto, is connected to performances of power. For black girls, to be “ghetto” represents a certain resilience to how poverty has shaped racial and gender oppression. To be ‘loud’ is a demand to be heard. To have an ‘attitude’ is to reject a doctrine of invisibility and mistreatment. (Morris, 19)
Morris doesn’t suggest that upper middle class Black girls at wealthy suburban high schools express themselves the same way. Rather, she suggests that the specific situation in which these girls are raised creates a form of common language, which Carby would have a difficult time critiquing as ahistorical. Morris further distinguishes her focus group from Black female students as a whole in the contrast between Faith, a poor, Black, queer, female ward of the state, and Sasha and Malia Obama. She writes, “The Obamas’ smiles felt inappropriate in an institution that provided so little response to girls with such significant needs. In that juvenile hall, the image and the privilege it represented felt unreal, out of touch, and unfair” (Morris, 53). This juxtaposition demonstrates that Morris, like Carby, understands that treating Black girls, even Black female students, as a homogenous group with necessarily common issues and behaviors is out of touch. For this reason, I argue that Carby would find the intersectional identity of poor Black female students attending “ghetto schools” satisfactorily specific.
Carby demonstrates her acceptance of characteristically describing more specific groups in her validation of Cornel West’s writing on the dilemma of Black intellectuals. West describes the academy saying:
It is existentially and intellectually stultifying for Black intellectuals. It… not only generates anxieties of defectiveness on the part of Black intellectuals; it also thrives on them. The need for hierarchical ranking and the deep-seated racism…cannot provide Black intellectuals with either the proper ethos or conceptual framework to overcome a defensive posture. (Carby, 15; italics added)
He finishes by suggesting that the academy cannot be fixed by the powers within, but rather must be reformulated by those oppressed by it. If you replace the word intellectual with female student, you get a decent summary of Morris’ piece. The need to radically reform the “terrain” of the academy isn’t far off from the need to “reimagine and construct different paths” in schools. Because Carby finds the category of “Black intellectuals” sufficiently distinct, she would likely accept Morris’ even more nuanced subject matter as well.
While The Combahee River Collective and Carby may not agree with each other, Morris occupies something of a common ground between the two. Like the Combahee River Collective, she highlights intersectionality and advocates for the power of naming one’s own oppression. She echoes their view that telling your story both heals the effects of internalized oppression and promotes autonomy of the oppressed. However, she doesn’t assume that one person’s standpoint should speak for too broad of a population. By focusing her analysis on the intersectional oppression of poor Black girls in school, she has created a sufficiently specific population to avoid Carby’s overarching criticism. Carby is also demonstrably in agreement with the need to radically reform academic institutions. Therefore, both the Combahee River Collective and Carby would support Morris’ suggestion to “reimagine and construct different paths for Black girls by listening to them and learning from their experiences” of “internalized racial oppression.”
References
Carby, Hazel (1987). Rethinking Black Feminist Theory. In Reconstructing Womanhood: the Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist (pp. 3-19). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Morris, Monique (2016). Struggling to Survive. In Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools (pp. 16-55). New York, NY: The New Press.
The Combahee River Collective (1977). A Black Feminist Statement. In Beverly Guy-Sheftall (Ed.), Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought (pp. 232-240). New York, NY: The New Press.
