When people are being bigoted or
obliviously discriminatory, they tend to cover as many bases as possible.
Case in point: Racialized sexism.
Racialized sexism is what happens
when Women of Color (or WOC) are targeted not as gender minorities, not
as People of Color, but as both at the same time.
What makes it trickier than racism or
sexism alone is that Men of Color, even those who claim to be progressive,
often perpetuate racialized sexist ideas.
Also, some self-proclaimed feminists
make a mistake in thinking that sexism and racism are separate issues, or that
all women share a universal experience of sexism that can be talked of
generally.
For WOC to have their experiences
with race being denied on the basis of their gender is invalidating, and it
keeps their concerns from being addressed by a movement that needs to include
them.
Furthermore, Black women, Asian
women, Latina women, and other WOC are rarely just read as “women.” They
are read as Black women, Asian women, and Latina women, and as such, are
pressured to meet white expectations of beauty and culture in ways that Men of
Color and white women don’t encounter.
That’s why, even when generalized
racism and sexism are weeded out, racialized sexism sneaks into spaces that
claim to have the best interests of women and People of Color at heart.
What Racialized Sexism Looks Like
This is what racialized sexism sounds
like: Black women are so sassy. Asian women are so submissive. Latina women
are so exotic. Arab women are so oppressed.
All of these stereotypes and insults
that are specifically meant to mock and devalue WOC cannot be
treated as sexist or racist alone – because they’re both.
WOC are also pressured to meet
Western standards of beauty, which overwhelmingly favor stereotypically “white”
(or Eurocentric) features: Straight hair, light skin, and light eyes. From the
time of birth, the eye shape, hair texture, and skin color of WOC are under
scrutiny.
Judgments come not only from the kids
at school or the lack of representation on television, but from friends and
family.
Dark-skinned girls are pitted against
light-skinned girls, girls with “good hair” against girls with “bad
hair,” all based on the erroneous belief that being acceptable or
attractive to men — especially white men — is a source of power and
social mobility.
This is not the same as the pressure
to be beautiful that all women face, or the pressure to fit into white culture
that all People of Color in white-dominant societies face.
Nor is it the same for all WOC.
The issue of skin color is different
for Southeast Asian women than it is for East Asian women, for example, and it
doesn’t apply to People of Color worldwide.
In all of these cases, the racism and
sexism can’t be isolated and treated as separate issues. For WOC, they
intersect.
In Social Movements
Another problem with racialized
sexism is that it isn’t just “society” or “the patriarchy” that
dishes it out. It can come from people who believe they’re working against
those systems.
When a Woman of Color stands for
gender and racial equality, her allegiances get pitted against each other.
For example, within her own
community, a pro-choice Black woman gets accused of supporting Black genocide
or hurting Black families – at times by other Black
women.
In a feminist space, the same woman
is dismissed or talked over when she tries to discuss issues that specifically
affect Black women due to the combined influences of racism, sexism, and
classism.
The lack of visibility and inclusion
WOC face in the very movements meant to benefit them are symptoms of privilege.
Men of Color may feel that the racism
they experience somehow entirely negates their male privilege, or white women
may feel that the sexism they experience negates their white privilege.
This allows unchecked, unacknowledged
issues of sexism and racism to trickle into social movements.
The fact of the matter is, privilege
doesn’t go away because of oppression, a hard life, or having it “worse” than
someone with less privilege.
And so you get white, Western
feminists trying to “rescue” women from hijabs, or Men of Color asking
that their women stand by them while limiting their choices.
The autonomy of WOC is therefore
ignored not only by those who are both racist and sexist, but also by racist
feminists and sexist Men of Color who should know better.
Addressing It
Dealing with racialized sexism means
dealing with the fact that every person holds multiple political and social
identities that blend and intersect.
I don’t get to take my race hat off
and put my gender hat on or vice versa.
It’s a packaged deal.
In the case of feminism, ignoring
people’s racial identities in favor of their gender identities unintentionally
excludes the majority of women from women’s rights. Feminists can’t afford to
ignore race or the way it colors different women’s experiences.
Racialized sexism has given birth to
a range of stereotypes about the sexuality of WOC that increase their risk of sexual assault.
Racialized sexism means that WOC are
often fetishized, othered, treated as “exotic,” or passed over in the
dating world.
Racialized sexism says that it’s okay
for people to reach out and touch a Black woman’s hair because it looks “different.”
Racialized sexism treats WOC like
token minorities in self-proclaimed feminist spaces that haven’t made
themselves truly safe.
All of these things, big and small,
that sometimes fall under the radar of white feminism and the broader feminist
movement, need to be acknowledged as real – not for
the sake of playing the oppression Olympics and finding out which race has it
hardest, but for seeing each other’s realities and vulnerabilities.
Assuming that all experiences of
sexism are just variations of the same thing is a mistake, and it ignores the way people move through space in the world
– as whole beings with multiple identities and ways of presenting them.
