Black is Always in Reaction to Race
Amina Mama
February 27, 2023
So location, nation, which part of the black clouds you are from is hugely important. If politics happens locally and people live in material realities that are very different, you can't just dream of the unity. We have to actually address the contradictions within and among black people.
Amina Mama is a Pan-African feminist intellectual, a writer and academic. Amina is a founding editor of Feminist Africa, a co-producer of two documentary films, The Witches of Gambaga (2011) and The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo (2014). Her published books include The Hidden Struggle: Statutory and Voluntary Sector Responses to Violence Against Black Women in the Home (1989), Beyond the Masks: Race, Gender, and Subjectivity (1995), National Machinery for Women in Africa: Towards an analysis (2000).
Feminist
Transcript
Mariam Armisen: Just to briefly know, when you were coming here to the black feminist forum, what were you looking forward to, where were your expectations?
Amina Mama: I will be very honest with you, I was a little ambivalent because I've had so many different encounters with different ways of, different forms of blackness and identification as black that I wondered how it would work out. And when I say that specifically because for the majority of African feminists black identity is not our primary identity it's an identity we acquire when we go out so we're very different positioned in relation to blackness and that we live on the continent of Africa. So we have a very real knowledge of Africa. On the other hand, that the diaporans have many dreams of Africa which draw on long historical myths and legends and Africa plays a hugely important imaginary role for them and there is a tendency particularly strong among African- Americans, to not be able to understand that we don't have race consciousness as primary and therefore to assume we're simply lacking consciousness so that's for me the main parameter. And because as someone in Africa who recently lived in the States I have to say I wondered if that key separation would be discussed because it's always been very difficult and we're at earlier global black women's conferences where this was a major fracture so I wondered if it would be addressed. And if it wasn't what would be the premises of unity and what would be the major different other differentiations than that one was in my face. So for that reason I didn’t, I wasn't just uncritically optimistic.
And the 2nd reason was more personal in the sense that I began my life as Nigerian and then I went to Britain and there, I was subjected to a lot of racism but it was only when I was older that I understood it because there's not really any such thing in our lives, we have other divisions quite extreme ones but white on black racism was something I had to learn about. So if you like I was African by nation, Nigerian and then Black-British and then black in the Holland and then black in South Africa and then coming to the US. So in my own history I would say I went from being a Nigerian-British child, to being a Black-British. I was part of developing the Black-British consciousness in identity through the black women's movement. And then I started really just working with African groups because of the way I experienced the diaspora as having a singular narrative rooted in slavery, whereas we on the continent have a very different historical narratives that slavery is there but not very much possibly suppressed but it's certainly not the primary core source of the unity of black people. So in that respect, I myself have moved from no race, to black and then ultimately to my African identification. So I'm a feminist who is African identified. So it felt almost lack a backward step, having moved through all that and these racially defined identities. Actually I did quite a lot of work on that because it baffled me and took me a long time to understand why blackness was so important.
And there's always been a little bit of me that's resistant to it because although it's asserted as a global paradigm it cannot be, it cannot be that. So are we going to wrestle with the diversity within it or not? That was my main question and I was very curious and excited to see.
Mariam: Ok, what did you think? Did you see that discussion?
Amina: First of all, the event has been fabulous! The sheer joy of bringing that many black people. I mean, I met an Eritrean born in Australia. You know, black women from over the world. The sheer physical beauty. The joy, the exuberance of everyone finding everyone else and a huge spectrum of black people from all around the world. I think that was thrilling to everybody. Look at the joy! Look at the expression of that in the discussions, in the dancing, in the Brazilian rituals. So, there was a lot of a sort of cultural and consciousness level which was fabulous. But, the divisions that were not discussed in which we have to grapple with, if we actually do want to have a transnational black feminist movement and we're not really engaged with. I think, it was completely historic, it was the 1st in a very long time and it's certainly the 1st in the recent period, in which there's been this ongoing production of the multiple diasporas. So, we have for every decade different sets of African diasporas being formed. Now this is problematic, in all those countries the relations between Africans from the continent and African Americans, as you know is extremely fraught but it is a new moment where there is a lot of mobility. There are hundreds of thousands of young Africans now in the US system from all over Africa so it is a new opportunity and with globalization involving so many extended and new expressions of racism and we really do have a global issue. Look at global tourists, look at what I've described in terms of the location for where we have this conference as in carceral tourism, which is gated and ranked by class. So we're occupying a space that is profoundly colonial space in the global era which is the contemporary inscriptions of very old racism. So we are served by natives who are separated from their own communities to serve the tourist economy and they serve white people predominantly; and this is global so what was in South Africa is now global, what was in the Jim Crow is now global and they say it's not racist money but the fact that the economy is racially segmented by larger groups, we have already seen they have some rich black people in the US but not that many in terms of population. So, maybe some of the vast majority of people from Africa and of African descent is really a globalization of manifesters. So we're in a new moment when we really need to regroup across borders cause earlier black identities were very parochial and was Black-British who mostly copied Black-American and found their own Caribbean origin actually for the most part. And then there are young Africans, Nigerians, Ghanaians over Britain also called British-Ghanaians, am I a British-Nigerian yes but I identified as a Black-British woman mainly with the Caribbean community. So there's a lot going, a lot of possibilities within the space. My main and this is probably the last major point I'd have was that actually the division's were discussed somehow but the primary divisions that came up were generation and sexuality.
Mariam: Yes
Amina: This thing about young feminists and a lot of them I was hearing they don't want to be referred to as young, that's as well and emerging, maybe next generation or maybe millennium feminists or whatever it is. There must be new ways of articulating the issue of aging and experience and responsibility. Not just as young and who's young or who's old and who's graduating so why are we polarizing it? But that one was discussed in a separate young feminist forum.
Mariam: Yes
Amina: The fact that we could have a black feminist forum is due to the huge agitation of a few very politicized and let's say courageous, assertive black women who've got into this particular international structures. So that's any reason to create the space, because otherwise black women have always been at the very margins so having a black feminist space is hugely important even if the main organization wants to retain any credibility.
So, I think it's been really good in a number of ways. But I also think for me it's flags some of the things we're gonna have to deal with it soon. So location, nation, which part of the black clouds you are from is hugely important. If politics happens locally and people live in material realities that are very different, you can't just dream of the unity we have to actually address the contradictions within and among black people. So those are the contradictions of class and above all material differences within every black country they're quite extreme because these were former colonies so they've got some of the most extreme inequalities globally. And then there's the global thing of North-South inequality within which black diasporans are located some very favorably some are usually the oldest diasporas are very unfavorably situated. So in every context we need to really have a structural analysis, a materialist analysis, of class and other major dimensions of privilege and equity which I'm calling class of course there's a whole range of things because we're not classed in the traditional sense. Africans in formerly colonized territories, the manifestations in the material features of class are very different. So it's like this is a broader question we need to unite some of our greatest thinkers to theorize. But in the feminist spaces there's a great reluctance. We are still sort of get together, touchy-feeley, take care of each other, love each other. So much love self-care and to me that reflects how unwell we feel.
And I wish we all felt a lot better and a lot less battered and damaged, you see that health and self-care narrative comes from a place of damage and having been oppressed. And I'm not sure that self-care is gonna deal with the systemic inequalities that some of us, you know, our fore-mothers through that entire lives died penniless or died in the course of the struggle or were horribly treated by others. So clearly we need to take better care of ourselves, I'm tired of Black women being muttered, being sacrificed in wars, being, you know; used as sex and all this stuff is important.
Mariam: I’m want to come back to the beginning. We were talking about the different shades of blackness because this morning I was starting to talk with people and this person from Cameroon, a participant from Cameroon. She was like, “I was shocked. I'm coming from Cameroon, black, who is black for me, to come into this room, to see so many shades of people who identify as black. I would not have, I would not be related to them as black. For me they are not. To come and see that here.” I was looking forward to us to be talking about that. I really wanted to understand, to that that discussion about how do we relate to, how we should relate to that, you know, what is the essence of our identity as a black person? That I did not see that in this forum. And so I was wondering how could we, how we could start thinking about it for the next forum to see how we can create a space to start that conversation and not come with the assumption that everybody have same understanding of it. You know, because it is struck me also looking at the working groups and also seeing the locations of the working group currently and where people are working also that it does make sense that they are thinking, ok, maybe we are all on the same page
Amina: Of course, I would agree with it, even what she said and with the experiences I highlighted in some places, I certainly wouldn’t. In Nigeria I am not considered black. I am considered privileged and light skin and I take the heat from that and I enjoy the privilege. But that’s the cast privilege, it’s not the race privilege, it depends on who you’re with in Nigeria. But I was not considered black, I had to go Europe to discover what it meant to be black and how important that was but it is not important there.
So that's, hence, you know, it's in a sense I get them completely and I do think and I'm wondering if we are still a little afraid to do that because when it's been addressed before it's blowing up. But I think one of the point of having a black space is that we can actually do with these uncomfortable issues of skin privilege which is linked to skin tone privilege which often has a reverse in our movement and I know this not from working in Nigeria or working in a sense, being much freer because one is a citizen of the country on the ground you can, once that's accepted you can be whatever character you want. I certainly have learned in Diasporan spaces it's very interesting black national spaces, particularly in the Caribbean, I've been screamed as you know and kicked out as the child of rape that is their narrative on mixed race. And I've responded and said well which part of Africa do you even know? One, you are lighter than me, secondly my parents are happily married so how dare you. This was one of my 1st major public events, I didn't know why they put me on that platform to be attacked by male black nationalists who were lighter than me and are more likely to have been the product of slavery than myself. In Caribbean space this is a function. And I know in Nigerian spaces it creates hostility between women. I mean my relationships with black women all the time tell me that they know that their experience is not the same, but I wish you could talk about it instead of being resented.
We know the experience of a woman with hair that's looser is different from a woman with true African hair. We know that a light brown or dark brown woman is treated differently from a Malian or a Senegalese with that blue black or your complexion you know, a different treatment because the West doesn’t, well, you are either a fetish like poor Lupita, Lupita Nyongo, poor thing and Alec Wek. So there is one, always one the internet, a mask and the rest will be likely changed with the fashions of the West and they always have a fetish. Some black fetish and they accuse us of being the people with fetishes and idols. And if you're black you're better to serve as a fetish.
Mariam: Yes exactly, by maybe
Amina: It can't be dealt with. I spent my early years as a psychologist working on this. I think we have in the community and I can think of a number of people with that kind of background and multiple and multi-rationalized identities or just the skills who are black brown, whatever but II think we need to. It's like a consciousness raising we must have, to bring us up to speed with that reality. Our reality is so far beyond black-and-white that the persistence of these narratives needs to be questioned.
Mariam: Absolutely you know, I'm talking about the reality of an African woman compared to the reality of an African American woman. t's not the same, so we’re assuming that because we share the same skin tone then therefore our daily life will resemble one another.
Amina: Which is funny, it is funny because a lot of us, nowadays, because of the mobility of the 21st century, a lot of us are equipped to support those conversations and I mean; because I found myself doing it on a daily basis. I mean I identified myself to a young black queer woman. And first of all I was surprised to find she was Nigerian because the Nigeria I grew up in, there would be nobody designed in such a beautiful trans short very black very clicked brilliant, you know, who I mean because she's on the dance floor and spectacular. I mean you know so I had to be told she was Nigerian and because of she's been this cosmopolitan and queer Nigerian woman from Lagos. But she also didn't believe I was Nigerian. So I'll say I am guilty because I didn't believe her because she was queer and she didn’t believe I was a Nigeria because I am light. So I was quick to accept as I thought wow! How exciting it is in Lagos. But generally she and other Nigerians will dispute that I'm Nigerian or the alternative is, ha, you must be half-cast. I said where do you come from? If it’s the south there are so many shades of Nigerian all along the coast and it's not just interracial there are Igbos who are lighter skin and then being from the north, Arabs are lighter than me and they are Nigerian. So this is a nation with a whole range not many white people, white people tend to be foreigners and that is right. So a black nation, the most populous in Africa has a full
And the self was kind of a finite individual, you reach but you were not fixed. Whereas now the term consciousness or in terms of subjectivity is a much more extended one that allows for the possibility of collective experiences. And indeed we are collectively subject into a global system that positions us to me. So I would want it to be situated within a systemic analysis so the micro and the macro politics have to be worked together and I'm not sure that we did much of either here. But I see huge hope, as I said, the exuberance the joy. Wonderful. It's historic and I think it went a lot better than, do you remember the WAD forums? It was before your time, there was a big initiative and they've had a series of women of Africa and the diaspora. There's a history of…And I think one of the big issues that when WAD was held and this was probably 20 years ago, the first was held in the diaspora and then in Nigeria. But the one in Nigeria, Nigerians were hosting it. And the big fight broke out because the African-American large group did not want any whites and some did not want light people present. And the Nigerians just couldn't understand it because some of the organizations have, you know, white people in them. And they certainly, the Nigerians probably wanted to invite donors, you know, who wanted to come maybe because they are giving money, but there was sort of exclusive black, you know, it was a source of division and that.
Mariam: Well, I wanna come back to it because…
Amina: At least we hung together, and danced together. I mean, that was the only community building, that fabulous party and the drumming. So they're all, you know, the fact that the Brazilian woman sang and then Coumba from Mali, sang back to her the same song and turning that. So that in a sense, that kind of cultural glue. Yes, the food! I mean there are things, we share, which should we, it's easy for us to eat together. It's easy for us to dance together. I mean these are foundational things that you know, that I do think that what eating is pretty basic in life, as we know and what do we eat, we could do a workshop, to see on what we eat and where it is coming from, and or on fashion. And all of these are indicators and I think that might be a, because now fashion is traveling good, that might be inventing the tools.
Mariam: And the hair because the black women hair is…
Amina: And these would be wonderful entry points into those conversations.
Mariam: I thing so, definitely.
Amina: I’m gonna include it on my imagine, my vision of the pan African curriculum for feminists, but, you know, that I've been trying to pursue for 20 years.
Mariam: Yes I always do that when I travel. I’m really looking at the African women and how they present themselves, you know, the dress, the hair, the shoes, the handbags, I have always been documenting that.
And talking about, really relating, you know, the politics of hair! And even having that kind of discussion in here. I just want to end up with two questions. One is the format of the forum, it's itself. As you say we are really communicate more spontaneously when things are less structured. People thought they were being talked to, you know, and then those on the panels were people with the knowledge. And then there wasn't a lot of interaction or a lot of space where people just come together and share more and had then and so, then questioning even the way, that when we gather, and how how can we do that differently from the classic way of organizing conferences and forums? Well, what do you think? That kind of..
Amina: Actually, I think they did very well on that in the sense that all the, even the plenaries that we put it that way, were conversational. And that's a, that's a skill. You know, people generally, I mean, under some of the people I was moderating had notes and they wanted stiff statements and I broke up the questions and we did several rounds, that kind of moderation. Not everyone has, you know, it's, it's not common. As I put it TV presenter style. It's spontaneous, it's easy to be part of. I thought it was very good compared to the conventional but and then you know, the smaller sessions should have been those where there weren't any experts, but these generative conversations. Yes, I do think it could have been better designed. But I, I'm also very cognizant of the fact that the organizers, they're not young, young. But they are young. Yeah, grades of youth. Now, some of the older women because I got to hear them as well. I'm so glad I brought my daughter. So I could hear what, all the young people were talking. And then I know the organizers and I know someone, quite a lot of the older women, I guess, I'm one of them, but actually most of, were at least 10 years older than me like, well, I don't have to call the names. These women have been far more dissatisfied, one of them said to me, I just feel old. They just made me feel so old. And then another one said, “Oh my god, we're just reinventing the wheel. Because even during the days of the South African liberation struggle, we had conversations where I mean, what is all this about self-care and sexuality?” So, you know, long career long activists, who are now coming to the end of their careers and have never been paid because none of these women are ever going to be wealthy, they live with precarity, they've given their entire lives to the struggle only to find. First of all, a lot of what they experienced was a lot of disrespect because this generation really don't seem to realize what was given to get them to where they are. I mean, they can all be feminists working in organizations, like okay, the salaries aren’t great, but there are jobs, there are consultancies, there are, there is childcare with everyone. I mean there have been so many things that we fought to for now for and paid for that. We don't want them to go through that. That's why we did it. But it, I understand why people who have given their entire lives to it feel a bit upset when their lifetimes work is dismissed by young people who just feel we were backward because we didn't identify as queer. That's kind of rough.
range, the majority being let’s say on dark brown you know of course but it's a spectrum and yet this country does not know that for itself and the citizens of that country. I get stopped at the ports of entries all the time because I have a Nigerian passport and I don't even expect to ever not to be contested. But when they've and again this is the skin thing, when they find out that I'm Nigerian and I’m acknowledging that and it’s very obvious to them that I could be something else, they are usually delighted!
Mariam:I have an opposite experience because of my hair and my tattoos. I have to produce my ID in Burkina and all the time I have to say that I am from here and people automatically think of anywhere in the world except from being home and it is so depressing It is so hard to get used to.
Aminna: Get use to it! Just think of yourself as raising their race consciousness, every time you cross the borders.
Mariam: Absolutely!
Aminna: That’s interesting. See, this is so reassuring, I thought it’s just because I'm pale, you know, relatively light skin. Now you're saying it's your tattoos. It's your style and fashion. So you know, we black, black people. I prefer to say African because for me black is always in reaction to race and I don't like that and that was my other concern. I don't like being defined by race. I spent a lot of my life and work insisting that neither sexuality nor race defines a person, defines a community because we can't have any kind of political community until we accept the inclusion. All of these. You know what? And there's been a lot of talk about community in this forum but in it I raise the question. So there's so many kinds of communities. What do we mean? You know, do we want love villages, which are rooted on, you know, free love, peace, tried it, what prevail? Yeah, some of them still have polyamorous families. Probably a descendant of communes, that's one kind of village. Then there's the economic village, which is an economic community, saying a farm, farmland, and then there are political communities, there are intellectual communities. Yes. So, that's another thing I would want to push forwards on. But do we mean by community, what kind of community do we want and why?
Mariam: And then the word community as you know has been used…
Amina: So, so badly.
Mariam: So, even, first of all, defining that and going back to that roots of you, where community, where does that come from, and where do we want to really take it, I would, to actualize, to make it, to, you know, contemporary, whatever I don’t know the word, how do we say it, the word is escaping me. But understanding it, I thing, a lot of things we really need to work around assumptions. Because in a room when you are talking about community, a woman coming from a rural area, her understanding of community may not be from your understanding from where you’re coming from, from Mississippi or something, for example. You know, so, it’s very very different, so, I think really coming in from, checking our assumptions first, having first-hand discussions with, let’s check our assumptions that are in the room, so that we know, you know, to really see where we come from, and can come together to be able to be speaking at least from a place of understanding where each other is from. For me I felt there were a lot about assumptions.
Amina: I think that the first session which I was moderating on black feminist features was an enormous opportunity. Because the second question was, what are the assumptions that inform your vision? And I sort of modify that say what are the experiences and assumptions that inform your vision? But it was a plenary and it was a lot discussion. And I did what we could, but this kind of work have to happen in small groups situations. Otherwise it becomes a fight and I think, the good news is we didn't have the fetishcization of an imaginary grassroots community. The whole community is stratified. Yes, We didn’t have this imaginary grassroots collective you know, very much a projection of the development industry, the new neo-colonial colonization where the only real authentic Africans are from these communities in the imagination of white people. Learning recent style, you know the last of, but the development industry is informed by that kind of imaginary. Anyway. And so that's a lot of big points there.
Mariam: Just two more questions, as we don’t have a lot of minutes. One is still on the subject of what, we will talk about the economic aspect and I wanted to touch a point on and that, but even starting with something as particular as getting here as a black woman…
Amina: It illustrates everything.
Mariam: Yeah. So we had two days to talk about things that we did not. There was not a big place and it didn't have prominent…
Amina: Location. See, that would have been a very good exercise! To just have a discussion group on how you got here and in a sense, that would be a way also. I mean for me the African diaspora thing is very big and looking at how we travel to get here would be one way. Because I think the longest journeys were those of people from the African continent. I have to say I was surprised. They took so long to get here from California, this is a big continent. It was four hours for our layover, plus 10 hours, plus a three-hour layer of a plus. So I was checking with my sisters from the continent, in an independent way, what would be the way…
Mariam: Absolutely
Amina: We need to develop pedagogies and tools and but I'm confident we could do it. I'd love to do it and I think Margo who was one of the organizers, that is her strength to. We both have a lot of social-psychology before our political analysis. Just one more point, even that kind of micro, I call it micro political work, others might call it psychological or identity work. That has to be located within a global framework. We are not just individuals. So what bothers me about the self-care discourse is that is anti-collective, it's in self is an individual concept as a psychologist. I rejected the idea of the individual isolated, atomized, self, as a psychologist because we're all socially and culturally constitute and as we constitute our cultures and societies.