TOWARDS
AN

ANTI-RACIST
FEMINISM@®

JENNY BOURNE

Institute of Race Relations
Race & Class pamphlet No. 9
(© 1984 The Institute of Race Relations
ISBN 0 85001 027 6

This pamphlet is reproduced from Race & Class, Vol. XXV,
No.1, Summer 1983.

Race & Class s the quarterly journal of the Institute of Race
Relations, London. Write for subscription details to the Institute
of Race Relations, 2-6 Leeke Street, London WC1X SHS.

Tel: 01-837 0041.

Cover design by Susan Hobbs
Typesal by Lithcprnt Lid (TU), 329 Upper Street, London N1
Printed by The Russell Pross, Gambla Street, Notingham

3

consciousness become a part of the discussion of social reality.
Reality itself comes to encompass the relations of class and sex and
race ... the dialectic will be self-consciously extended to the relations
between consciousness, ideology and social reality.”

For Hartock, feminists have !
model for the rest of the lefl

In Britain the struggles of feminists and black people have held upa
mirror to the left revealing its inadequacies — its reliance on arid
dogma, on cconomistic formulations, and on its own little hierarchies.
Both women and black people have stressed the nature of their oppres-
sions and the need to fight them on their own terms without subsurming
their struggles o the class struggle or indeed of deferring them till
‘after the revolution’. They have emphasised the importance of not
viewing racism and sexism purely in terms of their economic function.
And implici in these demands to organise autonomously around their
own oppressions and redefine the content of political strugele is the
redefinition by both groups of where that struggle takes place. For the
orthodox left, the factory floor has been the site of strugele, with the
wraditional political fight defined as that between the owners of the
means of production and the sellers of labour power. But for both
white women and black people, fighting an oppression which goes
beyond (or is disconnected from) direct economic exploitation, the
focus of the struggle has moved to the community. Women and black
people have since the 1970 been at the forefront of community-based
fights. The black uprisings of 1981 and the demonstrations of the
women of Greenham Common are simply the dramatic examples of
that trend.

“The role of women outside mainstream factory production has been
variously viewed by the WM. Analysts have mainly concentrated on
‘women’s isolation and powerlessness in the home or on their role in
reproduction. A few commentators have turned the issuc on its head to
show that because women have been less directly incorporated into
capitalist relations, they actually bear the seeds of a more revolutionary
consciousness than men do. Samir Amin, for instance, argues that
women’s houschold tasks and relationships retain an clement of use-
value in a society where all other relations are dominated by exchange-
values.* Alain Touraine takes up the same theme more explicitly.

OF all social movements, the women’s movement is the one most
able to oppose the growing hold exercised by giant corporations
over our daily lives. Only women have preserved those personal
qualities which male domination has crushed out of men. Since they
have been completely excluded from political and military power,
women have succeeded in maintaining a capacity for affective rela-
tions from which men have been estranged by the structures of
power.®

invented Marx's method to provide ‘a

A. Sivanandan contends that capitalism has over the years not anly
divided and separated ‘the economic and cultural aspects of struggle
the standard of living and the quality of ", but has concealed them
from cach other and therefore divided the struggles. And because of
the traditional labour movement’s concentration on the standard of
living, it has been left 10 black people and white women 10 Struggle over
the quality of fife and restore that dimension o class struggle
generally. ! I we accept that women in the home are not merely
teproducing labour power but social rlations and ideology (00, and
that they, probably far more than their husbands, have a hand in
fashioning the ideas and values of the nex! generation, then the con-
cern of women over the ‘quality of ife’ and their capacity for ‘affective
relations’ carry within them the potential for anti-racist values and
commitment

11 s against this promisc that women hold out and in terms of the
principles of feminism itself that | examine the nature of racism (or the
limitations of anti-racism) in the white British WM. The purpose is not
10 suggest that we women are more or less racist than other groups or
thal there s a moral reason 10 bring us 10 ook, but to show that anti-
sacist practice is closely allied (o the way that feminist principles have
been applied, betrayed or distorted. Essentially, | see ant-racism not as
something outside of the WM but as intrinsic (o the best principles of
feminism itself. The extent 10 which the WM has failed its own prin-
ciples s the extent 10 which it s racist. Conversely, and this s the direc-
tion 1 am writing from, to analyse our ‘lapses’ from anti-racism is 10
analyse flaws in the contemporary practice of feminisn itself.

Borrowing from the left

To understand how we can fight racism as women, it is important (o
cvaluate critically our past practice and learn from our past mistakes.
And for that reason | want (0 100k back at the main strands of feminist
activily (or lack of activity) on race over the last few years. This falls in
10two broad phases: 1977-9, when anti-fascist anti-racist activity had a
relatively high profile on the left generally, and 1980 to the present.
‘The British WM, probably unlike any other, does have a distinct
though short-lived campaign against racism (and fascism} to its credit:
that carried out by the Women Against Racism and Fascism (WARF).
It arose out of a major mobilisation against a fascist march in North
London in April 1977 when a number of women not affiliated to any
political party took part and out of that experience felt the need 10
‘organise more systematically to protect women in street confrontations
and 10 raise the issues of racism and fascism with other women. A few
months later, the first WARF group was launched in London - follow-
ed by others throughout the country. Women attracted to WARF

7

as racial violence, police harassment and racist court decisions, it did
50 in the main as a result of pressure from blacks within its ranks and
the fear of losing its black members. Even today, the lefts response
conlinues to be ad hoc, piecemeal and lacking a genuine comprehen-
sion of state racism.

But if the left partics failed to address themselves in a coherent
organised way to the questions of racism and fascism, there were still
individuals on the left who, fecling the impact of racist and fascist
thugs on the ground, came together from 1976 onwards to form local
anti-racist ant-fascist groups. The composition of these local commil-
tees differed from area to area, as did the issues that were taken up.
‘Sometimes the committees were seen as little more than adjuncs to the
state’s Community Relations Committee network, sometimes they

imply embraced a “tea-party philosophy’ of racial harmony, to be
achieved through cultural and social events. But on all committees sat
members of the left parties — the SWP, the IMG, the CP, the Labour
left — and they were all primarily interested in fighting fascism. There
was as yet no British tradition of fighting racism.* The liberal view
reduced the issue to one of interpersonal relations — educating pre-
judice away — the militant view reduced anti-racism to anti-fascism.

Fighting racism would have involved sccing racism as a white pro-
blem which it was the responsibility of white people to deal with. It
‘would have necessitated slow uarewarding educative and campaigning
‘work in those areas where working people were already involved - such
as tenants associations, trades councils, etc. Though most groups
postured at doing local work, they rarely undertook much practical ac-
tivity. Their excuse was that black people did not join and tell them
what 10 do — thus they neatly absolved themselves of serious respon-
sibility. In fact, if they had taken up local campaigns against racism,
based on local issues, in eamest, black people might well have joined
them — as was demonstrated in the support that the paper CARF (Cam-
paign Against Racism and Fascism) got (and stll gets) from black
groups. (CARF s still the only political anti-racist forum in the UK.)

Because there were no strong guiding anti-racist principles, and lit(le
orientation towards truly local work, it was inevitable that fighting the
Fascists, cither at clections or in strect confrontations, would become
the most popular and most publicised aspect of the work. Many local
committees were dormant *paper’ organisations fired into reluctant
activity by a fascist march or a fascist meeting on their patch and, lack-
ing a local mobilising capacity, had 10 turn o the left parties for
organisation and numbers.

* Some of us busd at the Instituc of Race Relations were responsiie for bringing
ogethe twenty.sixlocal broad ronts into an All London Anii-racst Ani. ascis Coor-
dinating Committe (1977.9) which sl publshed 3 newspaper, CARF.

And it was this basic weakness of the anti-racist ant
Lo draw out a clear anti-racist perspective grounded in local activity
{hat madeit possible for a powerful anti-fascist movement like the Anti
Nazi League (ANL) 10 take over and submerge them. Whatever local
anti-racist potential there had been was diverted even more readily into
movement against fascism, albeit popular and national - and tem-
Dorary. The ANL, whose aim was to defeat the fascist threal at the
Poll, organised around slogans and definitions which were simply
Throw-backs (o the 1930s. It made no pretence at analysing contem-
porary fascism or its relationship to racism and black people. (To be
Fair, it must be stressed that WARF aways opposed the ANL's
attempts o take over and subvert the chicf concerns of the movement.
But this resistance probably owes more 10 a reflex distrust of male left
organisations, which backed the ANL, than a commitment (0 anti-
racism.)

‘Since the ANL, we have seen a downturn in activity against fascism
and racism - not because cither has diminished, on the contrary hey
have increased, but because left groups generally have turned their
attention 10 other issues — unemployment, social and welfare cuts,
huclear disarmament. And lefl-wing_ Labour-controlled_counci
prefer to fund ethnic culturalist programmes rather than support anti-
racist political activities.

Women Against Racism and Fascism: form and content of struggle

Where does WAREF fit nto this scenario?* WARF was a broad front of
women opposed 10 racism and fascism who for the first time could
organise together outside the confines of the left parties. The group
brought large contingents of women o its public activities. WARF
women prided themselves on their impressive turn-outs and organiscd
ranks, adopting slogans and songs to events: *The women united will
never be defeated’ and *Oh sisters don’t you weep don't you moan ...
the women's army is marching .." But what were we mobilising for?
Essentially, we followed the lead of the white left parties into two
key areas — both firmly within the traditional purview of left politics —
industrial disputes and mobilising in counter-demonstration against
fascist marches. In the Grunwick strike, for instance, white women
took o the picket ine, not when the black women had stood alone for
months outside the gate and desperately looked for allies, but when the
left had changed the underlying issue from one of racial discrimination
1o one of unionisation and made the dispute an ‘official left concern.

< This ccount i based on my cxperiences n North London WARF and that group’
elationship with other WARF groups and the All London Auti-acist Ani-
Coordinating Commitiee.

i

The tendency to supervene form over the content of struggle is ol
Anirely absent, even n the best of socialist feminist writings - such 8¢
Gevond the fragments. " Here, thice while feminisis who have ol
Bered both in left parties and in the WM explain how and why
ormen had to fight against and outside the male left. For the first lime
I British feminist writings the issue has bec tackled as one of polit
" he problem, that i, is located not in the sexism of individual men
ut inthe basis on which (male) left poliics is organised. As such, the
b uthors have provided some very exciting and influential ideas for the
WM. But when they exiend that analysis o how (as one of the con-
Wibutors. put i) ‘mew forms of organising within the women's
movement: could become ‘part of a larger recovery of @ libertarian
Socialst tradition’, they splutter and s1op, their promise unfulflied. 1t
“capes them completely that black people were having o wage 2

ilar struggle to women’s against the left and under identical cir-
Sumstances. Mukti, Samaj, Black Socialist Alliance, Flame, Awaz,
OWAAD and so many other organisations bear witness to the battles
black people (male and female) were waging in the 19705 against
White 1eft which relegated their struggle and tried to sidetrack their
Tight, In this book, as in women's politics generally, ther has been no
genuine recognition that it is the same left which is male towards
Somen's politics that is whie towards black politis.

“The betrayal of the black cause, however, does not rest here; it has
been extended into what amounts to denial of the inspiration that
Svomen's liberation’ owes 10 the 1960s black movement. As David
‘Edgar put it “The struggle for black rights in America was the first and
deiaing political struggle of the 19605 ... Without Black Brotherhood,
Ihere would have been no Sisterhood; without Black Power and Black
Pride, there would have been no Gay Power and Gay Pride.’ In &
recently published collection of personal narratives from those involy-
d in the struggles around the Vietnam war, civil rights and women's
iberation in the USA in the 1960s — They should have served that cup
of coffee - American feminists recall this history. ‘We were aided
our recognition of cultural domination by the black movement's point-
ng to the power of the (white) Man’s ideology in forming black self-
perception. The black movement countered this domination in part
Vith the slogan *“Black is Beautiful””, Could women together, make a
Similar affirmation about ourselves?" ‘The fact that the Civil Rights
Movement had torn apart assumptions about equality and freedom in
America allowed us the space (o question the reality of our own
freedom as women."

Compare this with the history recalled by the authors of Sweet
Freedom.? For them, posi-war feminism owed its inspiration 10 the
pill, the ideas of Betty Friedan and the experience of sexism in political
movements. 1t simply ‘adapted the terminology of black liberation and

Boes a step further and actually denies the legacy of the
black struggle. For her, no left organisation *had any rea) understan-
ding of the subjectivity of oppression, of the connections borme per-
Sonal retations and public politcal organisation, or of the emetice.]
boouponents of consciousness, until the Women's Movement hes
Brought these issues to the surface and made them pary of political
{rought and action. But long before the WM, the protagonises of o

sonal life-style, behaviour, belicfs and the pursuit of iberation
politics, that who you are and what you do belong to the sue oy
tinuum. The difference in emphasis between the two types of Meicor
oot solely because one s British and the other American, for earicy
Britsh feminits did own to the influence of black power. Gorar.

itish feminist history, however, is shifting the debate abayt
the genesis of the WM from ts inspirational origins 10 ts orgacses
tional formation and, in so doing, is expurgating history o coaste s
revisionist ‘white” history,

‘Women and the stat

But even if white women fail 10 understand the paralll struggies for
ooy by black people, even if they fail to acknowledge the ispira.
{ional debt owed to the black power movement, one could still expect
them (o find common ground with black people through their comp,
cxperience of the state. The WM, though, finds it dificult,like thelefr,
idea of state racism — not because it is hung up on the
ploitation, but because it finds it hard to

ividualised sexism of particular men and the
systematic o institutionalised nature of state oppression of women
find there s even now a tendency in the WM 1o sec men (en masse)
father than a system as primarily responsible for the oppression of
women, Loosely stated, the extent to which the WM has viewed a
i whatever) as responsible for oppression is the
hered (o socialist-feminist ideas as opposed to
. A class analysis necessarily underlies an
understanding of the state. Where marxist women have analysed the
state, it has often been in a very abstract way, bearing little reality to
actual or potential struggle. Consciously fighting state power rather
than male power has hitherto been alien to the WM. Very often, where
women have fought the state, it has been over ‘local state" issues
around welfare demands such as more nursery provision. Where
fomen have tackled the national state, it has been around strictly
feminist demands such as abortion. One can perceive in the WM a

15

undergone change, from *how do we fight racism as women” (0 ‘why is
{he women's movement o white'. OF course, feminists have (0 ques-
tion why their own movement is white — it is the arca that they have

irect experience of and have the power to change. Bul in the way that
they tackle the question, feminists are moving from examining the
basis of racism in society, and their complicity in it, to examining an
organisational problem in the movement. The line of argument follow-
ed - 10 explain that whiteness — neither takes the WM outward (o ex-
‘amine state racism, nor takes it deeper into itself to cxamine feminist
principles, Instcad, it treats racism as a moral problem, a defect in
Sisterhood, and reduces it (o an interpersonal issue. To understand how
{0 treat one’s black sister, one has to understand one’s own prejudiced
behaviour. To understand one's own prejudices, one has to become
conscious of what they are and where they came from. Hence, con-
sciousness raising (CR) and racial awareness raining are being ad-
vocated (and taken up) in the WM today.?

“Advocates of CR on race for women argue tha racism dehumanises
‘women (just as sexism dehumanises men). True feminists cannot 0p-
press the black women that they work with. And they cannot expect
black women to keep clarifying their racism for them — they musi take
on the burden of recognising it themselves. CR is a female form of
thrashing out an issue; it ‘encourages the “‘personal”® change that
‘makes political transformation and action possible’.

Firstly, the argument for combating racism the CR way is a moral
rather than a political one — it is about rescuing white humanity from
itself, Second, it suggests that one can parallel the sexism visited by
men on women with the ‘racism’ visited by white people on black. But
this does not in fact hold true, Women fee! their oppression by men
directly and personally in the relationships of the home. Men's sexual
oppressionof women does not merely reflect society’s inbuilt
discrimination against women, for men directly benefit from women’s
oppression and subjugation and individual men hold physical and
economic power over individual women in the home. This is not to say
that the individual sexism of the man is not derived from the structural
sexism of society, but it is o say that what most women feel most
‘poignantly and are first conscious of s the power relationship between.
the man and the woman in the home, The same s not truc of relations
between black people and white people. Though most white people
hold racialist aititudes, they are not engaged with black individualsin &
relationship where they act out those feclings, nor do white individuals
benefit in a direct personal sense from the oppression and subjugation
of black individuals. But white people do benefit indirectly from the
fact that a whole system exercises power over black people via institu-
tionalised racism.

CR may be an ideal and tested female form for coming to

16

conseiousness of one’s own oppression as a woman, but that does not
mean it can be extrapolatcd as a method of dealing with other issucs
such as racism. (Women have, in fact, told me that it often serves as
way of cxonerating racialist attitudes - to acknowledge them and
discover that others share them has confirmed some women in their
racialist views.) In fact, CR on race i neither a female innovation nor a
subversive technique. It has become a popular programme with race
relations professionals in the US and in Britain. Feminism is borrowing,
apractice which belongs squarely within the conservative integrationist
wing of race relations practice. Its underlying tenet is that bad race
relations are caused not by state racism and discrimination but by
misunderstandings between people. White people need only (o be
educated out of their prejudices - black people need only to be allowed
their cultural identity. What is essentially a question of power and
cconomics becomes transformed into a personal and cultural question.
CR takes us away from a position where we can work with other
&roups (including black peopie) on racism and into a discussion about
our attitudes, prejudice, etc (racialism). Working against racism means
tackling political issues. Working on racialism means tackling ideas
about black people.

Some feminist advocates of CR have argued that one needs both a
political/historical understanding of racism and a personal/political
understanding of how it affects one’s daily life.” But, in allowing that
there are two separate understandings and by implying that the fist is
“orthodox', the second, “feminist", they encourage feminists to tackle
attitudes without tracing them to their material cause. Rather than in-
tegrating the *personal’ understanding with the *political’ understan-
ding, CR divorces ideas from their acting out in a social context, so
that it becomes a sort of special therapy through which one
mechanistically learns how to relate to people not as normal as oneself.
(Are we t0 have courses on hiow o deal with the elderly, the disabled
and 5o on?) Instead of relating to black people through practice, CR
tries to relate through ideas about them. The world, says CR, isin your
head, not out there.

Secing race as a personal problem rather than a *structural’ one is
part of a more general trend within the WM against intellectualising
and abstracting issues. The WM has quite rightly stressed that ‘the per.
sonal is the political’ in opposition to the white male left's dogmati
reductionism. But the tendency now, and the WM’s attitude to race is
only one example of the trend, i 10 go so far along that road as to
reduce the political to the personal. Thus, the personal transformation
becomes the be-all and end-all. Sexual poliics has come to re-define
“the personal is the political” in reactionary middle-class terms to mean
personalising the political, reducing politics to inter-personal relation-
ships, political power 10 personal power.

19

“black and white working-class women have been the leaders of the real
feminist struggle’. Even if this is what Angela Davis says (and she
does not), she would only be giving primacy (o the activities of the ma-
Jority of women. Her book is actually one of the first to connect the
hitherto disconnected struggles of women and of black people and 1o
analyse them through an understanding of class formation and class
struggle.

“The movement appears to find it divisive to acknowledge material
and historically specific differences between women and relentlessly
asserts the commonality of women qua women. In an cagerness 10 pro-
mote the idea of sisterhood, it has ignored the complexities of ex-
perience. While claiming 1o liberate women from biological deter-
‘minism, it has denied women an existence outside that determined by
their sex. And behind the idea that every woman is equally oppressed
biologically is the idea that gender per se, rather than a particular
system or set of relations, is the primary enemy of women.

"And because the Westcrn WM is the most developed in the battle of
the genders, it scems to think that it holds the key (o women’s libera-
ion everywhere. There is, even in the writings of avowedly ‘socialist’
feminists, a sense that western feminism is more liberated and
liberating. Maxine Molyneux, writing on Third World ‘socialist’ coun-
tries, for example, aitributes the low level of debate on feminism in
these countries' women's organisations (0 the fact that western WM
literature has often not been allowed (o penctrate there.* Sue
O'sullivan, writing on *How Cuba doesn’t cope with sexuality’,”
‘manages, despite her expressions of solidarity with the Cuban revolu-
tion, 10 judge Cuba’s socialism on western feminism’s sexuality scale.
She tries to balance her assertion that ‘as feminists, we believe that sex-
uality, the possibility and struggle for choice around sexual preference
and questions about sexual practice, are completely relevant to any
questions of revolution’, with the view that few feminists ‘would deny
the crucial importance of class, race, imperialism’. But instead of i
tegrating the two approaches, she categorically throws out the notion
that “the complexity of women's different situations worldwide’
should modify our conception of women’s oppression which was
‘recognised through the emergence of autonomous women's
‘movements during the last 15 years" — in other words, via the recent
western WM. And, throughout, her article is permeated with the view.
iha esbanim (which i foridden in Cuba i the highest sage of

eminism.

There s nowhere in western feminist writing (save that coming from
the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague) a sense that Third World
‘women actually have an indigenous history and tradition of struggle
from which western feminists could learn. This is the more significant
since, in many ways, western feminists often try artificially 0 recreate

But the obiect here is not so much 1o point out the cuitural im-
berianam of the WM — though thal there s - 35 1o sho 1 absurdity
and inappropriateness of the universalist tences of western feminism

f a complex
the custom of clitoridectomy: in
h superexploit all female labour,
- But this is to isolate and judge

By taking a practice out of it socio-economic context, byattributing
it toa country or culture, rather than 1o. hittorfoq] stage, feminists are
el on the way (o racial sercotyping. Instead of seepy e arranged
Mistores gparcumeision, dowries and so on have been part of oy bor
istories they atribute the customs not 0 an epach or e for-
fext. Sheous to racial group. And by taking customs out of spce cor-
ot ot only fail o earn about parallls i ther history, by oy
distort the very struggles of Third World women whon: they claim to
Socia) Selp- In the metropolis, the inabilty 1o relae custores o ey,
social and econommic relations s to.range femiisty alomets L.
Somary ‘ethnic” sociologiss at best, or the Powelite lobhe, at
Sucha view omits from consideration the facts of col
that Britin cajoled black labour here after destroying ‘colonial
fronomics, and that black ‘customs” appertain 1o the peasary o

o black people were wrenched, and that the soeal relations
imported from another economy and society tend to gey {defensively)
frozen in an alien racist capitalist society.

By examining the position of
point of western feminist priorit

about their orgasms. E NS
The western WM has concentrated on extending individual sexual
freedoms as part of liberal democracy rather than on fundamentally
21

changing society. What Third World, black and working-class women
pose is a much more profound and total reorganisation of society itself
and the relations within it. The idea of individualism is alien 10 Third
World countries where familial, caste, tribal or national interests are
often dominant. And in these countries the scparation of women’s
freedom from other freedoms becomes impossible. Freedom from
hunger, from dictatorship, from foreign domination struggles which
by necessity challenge fundamental power structures and benefit whole
classes or nations - define their priorities. But they in turn should telf
us about our own and shape our feminism - and point s, once again,
towards the holism of which we are the legatees and to which we aspire.

References

Lwant 0 thank Liz Fekete and Vron Ware, who though no necessaily in agreement with
all my views, have helped me i formularing them.

| Juliet Mitchell, Woman's Esiate (Harmondsworih, 1971).
2 Zilla Eisenstein, “Developing a theory of capitals pairiarchy’, in Z. Eisensicin
(e, Capitalis Patriarchy and the Case for Socialst Feminism (New York, 1979)

3 Nancy Hartock, “Feminist theory and the development o revolutionary siraicgy’,
2. Eisensten, ibid.

4

5 Shila Rowbotham, Women, Resstance and Revolution (Harmondsworih, 19721
& Markene Dixon, Women in Class Siruggle (San Fransisco, 1980)

7 Eisensten, op. i,

& Hartock, op. <

5 Samir A, I pease of socialsn, Monthly Review (Scpicamber 1974)

10 Alsin Touraine, La revolution culturele que nous-vivons", Le Nouvel Ofservarcur
(hupus 197) quced in And Gorz, Frewel 0 the Workin Ciss tLondon.
1982).

11 A. Sivanandan, ‘The colooy of the colonised’,in A Diferens Hunger (London,
1982).

12 Sec, for example, Susan Hemmings, “Wha, me racist?”, Spare Rib (ssue 101).
13 Veronica Ware, for example, amply demonsirates hese connections in Women and.
the National Front (Birmingham, 1978)

Sec inerviews with A. Sivanandan in Big Flame (No. 60) and Race & Class (Vol.
XXI, 0.3, Winter 1980).

15 For an analysis, sec A. Sivanandan, ‘Challenging Racism
19805, Searchighi (May 1983).

16 Sce 'UK commentaris'in Race & Clas (Vol. XIX, nos. 1 and 3, Summer 1977 and
Winter 1978).

17" Women and G sy rop, Boedrs for Rce and Nation (Bieminghan,

18 Sheils Rowbotham t a, Beyond the Fragmens (London, 1979)

19 Davi Edgar, “Reaga'shdden agnda’ Race & Clss (V. XX, .3, Wter
1981).

a suategy for the

20 Ann Popkin, The personal s politca: the women's iberation movemea’, in D.
Cluste (cd.), They Should Have Served that Cup of Cofjee (Boston, 1979)
21 Leslie Cagan, “Something ncw cmerges:the growth of a sociais femist’ in ibid.

22 Avna Coote and Beatrix Campbel, Sweet Freedom (London, 1982).
Tight to choose’ when black and working-class women pointed out that
they were having (o fight not for the right not to bear children, but for
the right (o keep their fertiliy against enforced terminations, sterilisa-
tions and the use of dangerous drugs such as Depo-Provera. Some
feminists have refused to take part in protests against male violence in
red-light districts, where many black people happen (o live, because
they fecl that the WM marches there give credence to the racist
stereotype promulgated by the police and the state that all blacks are
muggers and assaulters.

But even so, there is a reluctance in the WM to really question what
underies such ‘errors of judgement". ‘We did not mean (o be racist, so
we weren't really being so', the argument runs. Adricnne Rich has used
the term “tunnel vision' - literally the physical inability to see beyond a
certain narrow range - (0 explain this inadvertant racism and this has
gained currency as a way of letting white feminists off the hook. ‘Ex-
planations' such as these, however, pass off the act for the intent, they
suggest no anti-racist yardstick to measure feminst practice.

Black feminists have pointed out that behind the WM's ‘tunnel vi-
sions' lies the inability of the WM to provide policics or programmes
which speak (o the oppression of the majority of women which
‘would mean working.-class women including black women - or the dif-
ferential oppression of women according (o race, class or history
(social formation). What it has done is to universalise the middle-class
woman's experience of oppression and her demands which have cen-
tred around her sexuality.

That the movement originated in and is still dominated by middie-
class women is hardly contentious. But that middle-class and working-
class women may perceive their oppression differently and have dif-
ferent ways of fighting it has hardly been examined. Ann Foreman
hinted at it when she wrote that ‘though the growing contradictions for
women in the feminine stereotype together with a structural crisis in the
position of women in society” affected both working-class and middle-
class women, it was the latier who experienced it as a conflict between
“the traditions of femininity and their aspirations and abilities’, and it
was they (and not their working-class sisters tied by material necessity
1o their families) who were free 10 explore such contradictions. Ann
Foreman goes on to point out that working-class women have organis-
ed at a different level struggling over pay and job discrimination.™
But, as Eleanor Leacock succinctly wrote some ten years ago, there isa
very strong tendency in the WM not to deem the struggles of working-
class women as fights for women’s iberation at all. This tendency to
exclude as ‘non-feminist’ perspectives (0o closely bound up with black
or working-class struggle is clearly revealed in a recent review of black
feminist literature. Ellen Wills. atiacked Angela Davis as an ‘anti
feminist’ on the basis that in Wormen, Race and Class Davis states that

7

CR’s route into anti-racism, for instance, is through the instlling of
guilt into women for being white _and leads 10 kind of confessional
situation, with black people (irrespective of class or values) in the posi-
tion of arbiters of our racialism dealing out the mea culpac. It absolves
us from the responsibility of making our own judgements or shaping
our own coursc of action and it actually suggests that white women arc
incapable of developing a practice that is anti-racist. Accepting
anything black, promoting the black experience, a sort of cultural
pluralism, passes as surrogate for a white feminist anti-racist practice.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the recent *cult” that has been
made of the black female expericnce. Feminist magazines and
bookshops have suddenly “discovered” the writings of black women.
‘There has been in the last few years evidence of a very strong desire in
the WM 1o include black women within sisterhood o include black
feminist_experience in ‘their’ experience, black history in ‘their’
history. It is @ conscious ‘taking account of", reminiscent of the way the
white male left ‘tags on” race or gender.

‘The challenge of the black experience

‘The irony is that very often the black experience availed of by white
feminisis in Britain is from American literature and not from the
events iranspiring before their eyes. From the early 1970s, black
women began 10 ‘defect” from the British WM 1o address themselves (o
the issues of race and gender. Black women's groups sprang up all over
Britain, with an umbrella organisation, OWAAD, a paper FOWAAD,
annual conferences for black women, black women's centres and
refuges, black women’s marches and demonstrations a black
women's movement. But the WM, so self-conscious about *hierarchy"
and its own disassociation with a male left which had systematically cx-
luded its interests, was conspicuously unmoved by the disaffection and
flight of black women. And instead of examining how their sisterhood
had in practice been antithetical to black inerests and exclusive of
black women - instead, that s, of examining the nature of ‘sisterhood"
itself on the touchstone of *blackness" - the white WM has resorted (0 a
policy of CR on the one hand and of cultural pluralism on the other
The ‘blackness’ of the feminist experience is seperated off, either for
mindless celebration or as an ‘odd" experience (like being disabled or
an older woman) which ought 1o be learnt about. But, as Hazel
Carby has pointed out, what black women are asking white feminists
is ot to render them “visible" but to ‘challenge the use of some of the
central categories and assumptions of recent mainstream feminist
thought'

Some concession 10 this view has been miade in recent years. The call
for *abortion on demand", for instance, was changed to ‘a woman's

14

Tapist of weniy-three women in North London was convicted, Im-
mediately. a number of his victims came forward in defence of the
police and praised them for their sympathy and support. The fact tha,

nant the task — between a rapist who happens (o be biack and (L
Stercotype (often police) view that all blacks are rapists, the women had
inadvertently reinforced the hierarchies of police oppression.

A similar lack of understanding of the state was illustrated recenily
in the magazine Outwrite, when a lead article in issue 13 calling fo.
Mvomen's support for black community worker Dorothy Gbebikan and
her family, brutally beaten up by police in their home, was headiined.
Say NO to all male violence'. Would it have been all right i the palice
ited into the police force,
Would black Dorothy be safer? It is like saying that if you had more
blacks in the police force, the police would behave better towards black
people.

What feminists should be doing is showing that the state s responsi-
ble both for the oppression of black people and of women. 1t s the
$ame police force that does not protect women from male violence,

st attack. It is the same

Of the role of the system in our oppression that we can clearly see at
What point we have to fight male oppression and at what point the
state. And, as anti-racist women, we have to find a way of fighting the
Violence from men on the streets without at the same time enhancing
state racism against black people.

In America, where the question of rape has played a crucial role in
the enslavement, lynching and oppression of black people and con..
tinues with all its emotive connotations to be used as a method of
criminalising black men, feminists have advanced positions from
which we could learn. For example, in the January 1981 issue of Off
our backs, Aimée Sands asks which side she should be on when a white:
woman is pressing rape charges against a black man who says he has.
been framed. She concludes: ‘We have to create a “niew side"": an in-
dependent feminist presence which offers support to the man and the.
woman in these cases, while maintaining steady and accurate cr
of the police and courts."

Taking race personsily

But the likelihood of building the ‘new side’ now seems more remote.
than ever, Even the question that is being posed for women has
&)

ambivalence towards the state. 1s it an instrument of oppression or is it
a welfare state whence concessions can be won? Often the strong
reformist’ wing of the movement, having confused parliament for the
state, has implied that lobbying against laws consttutes the whole fight
against the state.

I their failure (0 understand the state, the women fail (0 side with
the blacks; in failing 10 side with the blacks, they play into the hands of
the state. Take, for example, one aspect of state racism in Brita
today. In order to justify police harassment of the black community
and the demand for increased police powers, the state is, through the
‘media, highlighting ‘mugging’ - a term used to criminalise the black
community: black youth are all muggers, their victims all white
women. If we keep silent, appearing (o concur with this view, we
become in effect a parly to state racism. Furthermore, because as
feminists we have been campaigning against male violence on the
streets, we can, if we do not consistently attack this type of siercotyp-
ing, even as we fight male violence actually give racism credibility. Un-
fortunately, there are examples to show that women have fallen into
the trap of reinforcing racist stereolypes of male violence - their views
being promulgated on the women's pages of the national press. Gillian
Widdicombe, in the Observer’s ‘Living Page’ (1.2.81), wroie on street
theft: *A black skin must be regarded as an advantage for the profes-
sional mugger: far more difficult (o see in the dark, or describe and
identify afterwards.” Jane Kelly, writing on ‘The rape of the liberal
conscience’ in the Guardian’s ‘Women's Page’ (5.8.81) during the
summer ‘riots’, analysed her fcelings after a rape attempt on her.

My attitude towards black people had received a massive jolt ... 1
could no longer accept an unselfcritical approach from the black
community and felt vastly irritated by the idea of people making
vociferous demands on society while continually putting themselves
above and beyond that society’s laws ... to my mind it is no part of
feminist struggle (o put black men above the law.

An aggrieved black woman writing in reply pointed out that though
many black women had been attacked by white men, they ‘did not
make the mistake of thinking that all white men are rapists and
therefore that all white people see themselves as above the law’. Jane
Kelly, after attaching importance to the race of her attacker, had then
generalised her individual experience to the whole black community.
Even when not engaged in this type of stereotyping, women, by fail-
ing to understand the parallels between their experience and that of
black people, can fall into the trap of supporting the state’s racism; by
default they allow a wedge 10 be driven between women's struggle and
the black struggle. For example, following closely in the wake of a na-
tional exposé of how callously the police treat women rape victims, a

10

approaching problems that prevented the formation of & specifically
fominist broad front. Having thrown off male forms of organising
{and continuing t0 do 5o in the fight with the ANL), the male poitical
Iogacy was surreptitiously present at every turn. Instead of examining
I reality of a situation, weighing up the contradictions, formulating &
(irategy, WARE tred 1o fit every event into a pre-set mould, deriving,
Draciice from dogrfa. If one did not accept one dogma, one was
P omatically branded another type of dogmatist. It was as though i
Tejecting a male left approach o politis as inappropriatc for women,
oaly half the lesson had been learned: the rejection of male organisa-
Sional forms and the adoption of female forms instead.

"And it was this concentration on forms of struggle (o the exclusion
of their context (in terms of race, class and sex) that led o the
Gisintegration of WARF and stifled the anti-racist development within
the WM. Conversely, because women did not have a feminist view of
fighting racism, they concentrated on reformulating and reorganising
Struggle along feminist lines as a political end i itself. When women
‘were confronted with forms of struggle reminiscent of those they had
Tejected or with which they were out of sympathy, they branded them
2 ‘male- and fought them as though they, rather than racism or
fascism, were the enemy. In one WARF group, for example, women
Suggested that the whole political practice of confronting fascists on
The sireets was male not female, implying that men liked violence and
\women did not, " This completely missed the point that as anti-fascists
\we were actually being given no choice in our tactics - none of us had
hosen violence. And it was largely the organisational form of the first
hationa) anti-racist anti-fascist conference in 1978 — its adoption of
Tigid TUC rules, its concentration on plenary sessions and guest
tpeakers — that caused the WARF (and gay) groups to disrupt the
‘Whole conference. It was their insistence tha the conference break up
into workshops because workshops are a feminist way of doing
things - that halted a plenary session aimed at locating racism in the
Tight against fascism — one of the conference’s principle tasks. And in
imposing their priority over and above the concerns of the conference,
they were actually imposing on other groups a line that they did not
‘accept _in particular, negating and overriding the political pricrities of
the black groups present.

It was a unique conference, in that it had brought together from all
over the country rank-and-file trade unionists, black groups, local and
\Women’s anti-fascist groups. And there was a unique opportunity there
1o work out the politics of class, race and gender in a commaon fight
‘against fascism. It could even have been a dry run for the bigger strug-
gles to come.

9

Similarly, the women remained bound to the white mal left's ordering
of priorites in the anti-fascist figh, re-acting to fascism rather tha
acting against it — stomy i i

from but a femirist involvementin actvitis defined and sanctioned. 11
not ordained, by the left

And in supporting the left, we were actually supporting a political
line which ran counter to feminist principies. For what the left was d.
g in fighting fascism rather than racism was subsuming the race ques.
fion lo the class question. And, in the Grunwick case, the left actually

weigled black people into giving up their right to autonomous
organisation. [ronically, we feminists, who had fought for the right to
our autonomy against the male left, were not prepared to extend the
same principle to black people in their struggle. Instead, when it came
Lo anti-racist practice, we succumbed, if only by default, to white male
Ieft politics - and betrayed in the process one of the fundamental tenets
of f If.

WARF raised the issue of racism and fascism mainly within the
WM, speaking and writing for women similar to ourselves - middie.
class and left inclined. WARF (like the left) did not speak to working-
class women —it neither had the commitment nor the opportunity to d
50 (except for a minority of women who were engaged professionally
on social and welfare issucs). The majority of WARF (like the lefr) was
without a community base and, inevitably, its work became abstract
and theoretical. Not working in the community meant not reaching the
very women likely to be attracted to racist or fascist ideas. And without
that area in which practice could have informed theary and vice veraa,
it became even harder to develop an anti.racist feminism, Instead.
WARF fell back on dogma and sloganeering. As we marched through
Hackney on an anti-racist demo chanting, “The women united will
never be defeated", the heckling of fascist women on the pavements
brought home to us the falseness of the proposition. WARF, like the
left, had fallen prey to romanticising its constituency.

‘The influence of the left tradition was even more obyious in our in-
ternal meetings. For the majority of white women, WARF provided
the first opportunity for anti-racist activity as women: the WM had
none and the left was alienating. But they brought with them a whole
baggage of ideas and concepts from both. To a group of us coming in
as anti-racist women, who had not travelled via the
cither 10 find our ant the dif-
ferent strands of feminist and left politics were real impediments to
thrashing out a common anti-racist position. Leaving aside debates
that WARF did manage o transcend (for example, about racism being
male o all men being fascists), it was the way that women coming from
the white left had been trained into thinking, orpanising anct

6

the entrenched nature of British working-class racism —as though it
Were a sacrilege 10 acknowledge that the agents of revolution were not
entirely without sin.) It is no sophisticated ideology that wins recruits
Tor fascist parties today, but a quite simple belif that groups like the
National Front and the British Movement are going to rid Britain of
the ‘coloured immigrants’ who have taken working people’s jobs,
homes, schools, daughters, breed like rabbits, revel in crime, and so
on. It may not be the working class who have created these idcas; that
has been done by the British culture of racism and the policics of both
Tory and Labour governments, * but fascists have capitalised on these
beliefs in the working class to win recruits and build their organisa-
tions.*

“The inability of the left to make these distinctions, to understand the
nature of contemporary fascism stemmed from the flaws in its own
anti-racist practice. Seeing black struggle as part of orthodox class
Struggle, the white left would only take up the cause of black workers
‘qua workers. It would support them in industrial action because that
\Was the sort of ‘legitimate" activity that unifies the working class. Any
demand not related to legitimate white-defined struggle, however, was
written off as black nationalism. And the black activities of the carly
1970 directed to fighting racism in the community — against the police,
the courts, the education system, the attempis to build a black
infrastructure. through organising supplementary schools, youth
projects, community organisations - weni unsupported and
unacknowledged. The left had no conception of state racism or of
black oppression and was unable to comprehend, let alone applaud,
any black ‘self-activity or any black analysis of society which stressed
aspects other than those of class exploitation. It viewed thesc as
“splitist’ (at best) or as racism in reverse (at worst).

'When gradually through the 1970s the white left was forced by black
struggle 10 acknowledge racism, it was still unable (0 define it in terms
other than immigration law — and the 1971 Actin particular. And then
the arguments it brought to bear against the Act were based on moral
precept rather than political analysis. Lacking a theorctical grasp of the
cconomics of immigration and the politics of state racism, the left was
enticed into the liberal lobbyist orientation of groups like the Joint
Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and the National Council for
Civil Liberties. When, subsequently, it was to take up other issues such

1 the inability of the white Ift (0 accept his analysis made it el
Srueghe, the inclination of the women (0 foflow theeft in moving the e
ihe purcly declogical plane o them 0 compete with black fo irst place n the oppres-
om stakes. 1 dud ot matte that, on the round, it was black people more than (white)
omen wha were under hreat Fcist deology gave them both an cqual staius! Hence,
i anti-ascist front had 1o be equally an ani-icxis front a5 an ant-acis one.

5

ictivities were almost all white and already active on the left of the
WM. WARF groups were usually composed of a hard core of wommey.
ho gave primacy 1o fighting racism and fascism and acted as a copeer

fhovement, * but without really examining what it was about WARE
that made it so transitory.

{Any notion that WARF was the prototype for women’s anti.racism
is based on a fallacy. The WM at that time was nof anti-racist af g 1
s, fora short period, like much of the left, anti-fascist and only

the relationship between them has an important bearing on how strug.
gle should be conducted, and therefore needed to be examined more
closely. But the WM, in borrowing uncritically the Iefts analysis ang.
approach o fascism and racism, replicated its failure to develop a
coherent integrated anti-racist practice or strategy. So that when, after
the general election to which it was geared, the aniti-fascist movement
wwound down, women too, packed up their ‘anti-fascist” bags and went
home.

The chief crror of the anti-fascist movement was and is to confound
the explici ideology of fascism with it organisational tactics and prac-
tice on the streets, and in 5o doing to concentrate the attack on facciyy
ideology and its outpourings to the exclusion of everything clse. Where
tha ideology is not suficiently cxplicated in current fascist analysis
and writings, it 100ks to the 1930s for a fleshed-out picture of what
fascism is really about. Jews, gays, trade unionists, women are all
under threat from fascism in terms of its ideology ~ all have a reason
for fighting it. White women can see that fascists do not believe in
abortion (for white women), that fascism would relegate them to the
home under the thumb of the white patriarch, that fascism i the incar-
nation of sexism in extremis." But to concentrate in this way purely on
the faseists" structure of idcas and ideology and their promulgation of
them is to lose sight of the organisational basis of contemporary
fascism — which is racism, anti-black racism. It s o leave out of thy
reckoning the breeding ground of fascism today - the fact that it has ity
ro0ts in and derives sustenance from vast areas of ordinary working.
class racism. (But then, the left has always had difficulty in facing up to

- The campaign againt he use of Depo-Provera on black and Third World women was
20 important offshoot ~and i lagely responsible or focusing ational ey

2

Feminism's anti-racist potential
Feminism locates the oppression of women not merely in the in-
dividualised actions of men but in a system _of patriarchy. Such a
system in its urn is conceived of as incorporating more than just ex-
ploitative capitalist relations. So that oppression comes to ‘reflect the
hierarchial relations of the sexual and racial division of labor and
society’. Or, as Eisenstein continues, ‘exploitation speaks 10 the
economic reality of capitalist class relations for men and women,
whereas oppression refers (o women and minorities defined within
patriarchal, racist and capitalist relations’.2

And the way that white women and black people come to an
understanding of their oppressions is not through an abstract analysis
of exploitation, but through their every day personal perception. ‘By
calling attention to life rather than theory, the women's movement has
called attention 1o cultural domination as a whole has begun a
political analysis that does not take place in isolation from practical ac-
tlivity.” Whereas the politics of orthodox class struggle does not
necessarily demand that those involved ‘question their very
individualily’, feminist (and black) struggle cannot be undertaken
without questioning both the values, ideas, images imposed on women
and black people and the relationship these have 0 the overall ex-
ploitative system. Thus the integration of both personal and political
change s of the essence. According to Nancy Hartock:

By working out the links between the personal and the political, and
by working out the links between daily life and social institutions,
we have begun 1o understand existence as a social process, the pro-
duct of human aclivity ... changed consciousness and changed
definition of the self can only occur in conjunction with a restruciur-
ng of the social (both societal and personal) relation in which each
‘of us is involved. Thus feminism leads us to oppose the institutions.
of capitalism, and white supremacy as well as patriarchy. By calling
atention 10 the specific experiences of individuals, feminism calls
ttentionothe otaly ofsacial relatlons, o the socia ormation 5
awhole.t

The same idea is echoed in Sheila Rowbotham’s argument that ‘the
liberation of women necessitates the liberation of all human beings',*
and is picked up and amplified by Marlene Dixon: *As women we must
fight all injustice because ours i the universal, the fundamental image
and reality of inequality and exploitation — to end ours, allinequality
and exploitation must be abolished
Feminism at root provides a new way of seeing things, a new series of
questions to ask, a new way of conceiving of political struggle. It

necessitates a reordering of priorities, particularly the question of
consciousness in refation to the conditions of society. Questions of

‘When the Women’s Movement (WM) as we know it today, took off in
the latter part of the 1960s, the debt of inspiration it owed (o the black
movement was obvious and acknowledged. ‘Black" slogans became
“feminist” slogans, the new perspectives thrown up by the anti-war,
civil rights and black power movements harnessed by the WM served to
show up their potential for all oppressed groups. The debt found its
way without apology into feminist writings.' But since then the bonds
have become frayed, the roots discarded, the lessons unlearnt, not least
because of the changes in political direction within the WM itself.
‘Today the relationship of the WM (0 black people is once again on the
agenda. What is of concern, though, is the way the subject is being for-
mulated and the uncritical way in which recent women’s antj-racist
practice is being assessed - not least in Britain. And as racism in Britain
becomes more structured and pervasive, the task of setting our sights
ht becomes that much more imperative and our fight against it that
much more urgent. The role of women in that fight should and does
have its own particularity. But in its origins and development and in its
particular understanding of oppression and exploitation, it has much
in common with the struggles of black people.

Jenny Bourne works at the Insitut of Race Relations and has becn active in the anti-
racit movement since the early 19705,

Race & Class, XXV, 1(1983)
3

3
36

o et s colums of magaines ke Spare R and Working vithgirs newser.
Ler (ssue 10 July/ August 1983).

S5 e T: Hollcaecds.). Bt some f usre bave (New York, 1982, pp .52,
See bid., pp 52.6.

e Carby, "White woman lisen: black feminism and.the boundaris of
o odin Centr for Contemporary Cultural Studis (64, The Fpmerncytor
Back (London, 1942),

Peneare Rich, ‘Disloyal o ivisation: feminism, racism, gynephobie’, in O
Lies. Secrets and Silence (New Yook, 1979,

rehoonenan, Feminity as Alenaton: women, the famiy in marsism and
psvehoanaipsis (London, 197,

ranet parke Lescock, Inroducion o F. Enges, The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and ihe Siate (London, 1973

{necla Davis, Women, Race and Class (New York, 1981),

o Willis,"Sistes uncer he sin?”, Voice Litrary Supplement (Nurnber 8 fune
1982),

Mone Molneas. “Soialis soietcs: progess oward women's emanciation',
Monihly Review (uly-Augast, 1982)
e Sultivan, ‘How Cuba doen't cope with sexuaity', Spare Ri(lssue 125).
‘S Rachac| Grossman, ‘Women's plac n the nterated cheut Sosiecsy ot
Chronicle (No. 66, January-February 1979).

Sz ourne and A Sivanandan, ‘Checreaders and ombudsmens the sociology of
N relations in Bitsn', Race & Clas (Vol. XXI, 10. 4, Sping. 1061,

Al 1 Saadawi, " Arab women and wester femini’, Race & Clos (vol, XXI1,
0.2, Autuma, 1980).

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