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Mirror Images and Shared Standpoints: Black Women in Africa and in the African Diaspora

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Cheryl Johnson-Odim
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Extract

Let me begin by defining two terms that I use in the title. By “mirror images” I mean people who look alike based on certain physical characteristics they have in common. These characteristics may not be exactly the same, but they are close enough that people are both self-identified and other-identified as looking the “same.”

By “shared standpoints” I mean that people who have these are commonly enough situated in a set of circumstances or conditions due to shared factors such as ‘race,’ class, ethnicity, religion, sex etc. that they have a common perspective vis-á-vis a number of issues. People can have a shared standpoint on the basis of any one of these factors in common, or, a combination of them.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , 1996 , pp. 18 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1996 

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Footnotes

*

Cheryl Johnson-Odim is Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Department of History at Loyola University, Chicago. She is co-editor of Expanding the Boundaries of Women’s History (Indiana University Press, 1992) and co-author of the forthcoming For Women and the Nation; Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti of Nigeria (University of Illinois Press).

References

Notes

1. Throughout this essay I use the term ‘race’ in quotation marks and interchangeably with ‘gene pool.’ I do this because though ‘race’ has powerfully salient socio-cultural, historical and political meanings, ‘gene pool’ has the greater biological meaning. Moreover, ‘race’ has been differently defined historically, and even today is sometimes contested terrain.

2. Takaki, Ronald, Iron Cages: Race and Culture in Nineteenth Century America, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 117 Google Scholar.

3. I use “sex” here advisedly, rather than “gender,” given that the construction of gender is disparate within Africa and within the Americas, as well as between the two.

4. I would argue that while class is not entirely incommutable, it is intransigent. Class can certainly create distinctions of identity and experience between those who share sex and ‘race’ in common. However, being Black and female is more likely to foster a position among the economically dispossessed as well, creating a tripartite of sex, ‘race’ and class oppression. Further, even where class does create distinctions, sexism and racism are pervasive factors in the lives of Black women, across class lines.

5. Throughout this discussion I use the term African American to mean the descendants of Africa in the Americas.

6. For an interesting discussion see Jacobs, Sylvia, “Give a Thought to Africa: Black Women Missionaries in Southern Africa” in Chaudhuri, Nupur and Strobel, Margaret, Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992 Google Scholar.

7. See Johnson-Odim, Cheryl, “Grassroots Organizing: Women in Anticolonial Activity in Southwestern Nigeria” in African Studies Review, vol. XXV, nos. 2 and 3, June/September 1982 Google Scholar.

8. Correspondence in Abeokuta Archives; Ake 2/1 Box 10, File 30.

9. See Johnson-Odim, Cheryl, “Common Themes, Different Contexts: Third World Women and Feminism” in Mohanty, Chandra, et al., Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991 Google Scholar.

10. Achola Pala Okeyo, “Reflection on Development Myths,” Africa Report March/April 1981, p. 7-10.

11. Steady, Filomina Chioma, “Introduction” in Steady, Filomina Chioma, ed., The Black Woman Cross-Culturally, Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Company, 1981, p. 3 Google Scholar.

12. See Walker, Alice, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1983 Google Scholar.

13. Many white women were equally disturbed by Walker’s work. Here I just discuss the reactions of Black women.

14. Among these are Women in Africa and the African Diaspora, Terborg-Penn, Rosalyn, Harley, Sharon, Rushing, Andrea Benton, eds., Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1987 Google Scholar; Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology by Women of African Descent, Busby, Margaret, ed., New York: Ballantine Books, 1992 Google Scholar; Theorizing Black Feminisms, Busia, Abena and James, Stanlie, eds. New York: Routledge, 1993 Google Scholar.