Unknown Speaker  00:00
disappointed and upset as you weren't there, believe me, I thought she was the anchor person. I was just going to kind of respond.

Unknown Speaker  00:11
But I brought a talk where Barbara is

Unknown Speaker  00:20
ya go, maybe got lost. Then what I'll do is I won't begin. And then as Barbara enters, she'll interrupt, jump, disrupt what I'm doing and that'll be appropriate. I want to just take off from something Hazel Kirby was saying Hazel just walked in Anika Hazel's analysis of the hidden pluralism, which isn't very hidden in feminist theory. And the absence of a confrontation with structures of power was absolutely right in the center of what we need to be thinking about. I also, however, had a question about whether Hazel's statement about the presence or the absence of the African American presence versus the presence of women in institutions of higher learning in the academy addressed the particularities of different institutions, I would ask which women, which Institute's institutions? Where is your focus in terms of the academy? And I would like to refocus because as someone who works all the time in City University of New York, I think that conditions there represent a very different reality. And so what I'm going to be talking about is the race gender system in the City University. I also want to say when I called Barber, disabled Barber, what are we supposed to do? This barbarous conversation helped me a lot to think about contextualizing this talk. And I was, we were also thinking right in tune with Hazel's discussion this morning, that feminism and feminist theory, has perhaps become so entranced with the cultural meanings and representations of power as to ignore its material roots. We do this at our peril, not only because we disarm ourselves for direct struggles with what Barbara calls the white voice, over resources and political decision making, but also because we then become less able to see the real power differences among and between us as women. Power in post modernist language becomes fragmented and disembodied, and we forget that it's still very unequally divided and lodged in money, and control over institutions that we as women have little access to, but particularly, I think, I do think that women of color and black women have less access to and we have to look at that directly. And I'd like to look at it in the context of university systems, and particularly the City University. Now, a few months ago, I was asked as a director of women's studies, to participate in a conference of directors of women's studies from all over the country. And I was asked, I was mandated to give a talk as part of a panel called the politics of surviving as progressive programs in academic institutions. And one piece of the mandate said to me, all right, talk about how your institution is largely structured without your views in mind. And I thought about that, and I thought, oh, wait a minute, where I come from, which is Hunter College in the City University of New York. There's a specific historical formation, race, gender class formation, that constructs that institution and my place within it. For example, I mean, if you don't know about Hunter, you may not know that its history is that of an institution, a public sector institution that was established predominantly for white immigrant women, and the daughters of immigrants, who would then become teachers, and perhaps professionals in New York City. If my Jewish immigrant grandparents had settled on the Lower East Side of New York instead of wandering to Oklahoma As

Unknown Speaker  05:02
my mother probably would have gone to Hunter College instead of the University of Oklahoma, people who look like me, have taught at Hunter College for generations have formulated its academic and administrative policies. In other words, while male Eurocentric ideas and values do predominate at that institution like many all others in this country, on some level, I have to acknowledge that institutions like Hunter College were structured if not exactly to promote my use since they changed a little in my lifetime. But then to promote my privilege and power as a white middle class woman in the United States relative to many other women and also some men. Now, another phrase in this mandate to me in this conference, referred to living on the margins of academia. This assumption to with reference to my position as a director of Women's Studies at Hunter College or in the United States, must be taken relatively, I am very aware of my own and my programs marginality. When I go to a place like Princeton, or yam, or even Wesleyan, or Bryn Mawr, or when my colleagues who are department chairs and have similar experience, rank, academic credentials, and so on, have to fill me in on what happens at divisional and college meetings. Because I as an interdisciplinary program head have no status or vote, equivalent to department chairs. But for many other vantage points, those of my students are students of untenured. younger colleagues, the adjuncts we have resources to hire, or applicants to fellowship programs that we preside over and are authorized to award or the many other programs even within CUNY who don't have offices or even telephones or staff or any budget. Our position is perceived as part of an institutionalized power structure that has the wherewithal to affect their lives and interests. And indeed, it is. That is, from the vantage point of all of these people, we are near to the center and the margin, and they aren't wrong. And then when I venture outside the institution, and I discover I discovered this in my job, there's this phenomenal funding network. There's an old girls funding network that controls journals, that has positions as program officers in foundations, that controls very big conferences, you know, on women's history and scholarship. That is, in some respects aversive, but in other respects, highly institutionalized and respectable to which I have access. Sounds really stupid. And I used to say this, to say that I didn't have any idea that I would have access to these things. But not to acknowledge it is to deny the politics of power, as opposed to the politics of difference. Janella Butler at the same conference made a remark saying Janella Butler is a really terrific Women's Studies person who's now at University of Washington. She says that communist organizations in the 1990s, not only academic ones, but all feminist organizations hang suspended, between institutionalization and transformation. Some programs and institutions are more institutionalized than others. In this precarious in between place, I think it's critical that we think about our power location. And we by we, I mean, every one of us in this room. Think of our power location in its total complexity, while relative not only to those structures and people who have power over our survival, but relative to those many whose survival we affect, and for whom our decisions to become more institutionalized, or more respectable or more legitimate, may mean real losses. If perhaps also gains, I think we have to think beyond the rhetoric, I got to a point where I heard intersection of gender, race, class ethnicity, one more time I was going to throw up. I don't know what that means. And I don't know what people who say it think it means or how they wish to affect it in the world in terms of a tool of transforming power structures and what we are talking about in this session, social change. I think we have to look at the specific structures of power and the barriers to social change that derive from gender, race and class as divisions as daily realities.

Unknown Speaker  10:04
Okay,

Unknown Speaker  10:05
should I carry on? What should I carry? Okay, she'll get out here. Oh, hi, Barbara. So let me now talk some about the institutional structure in which I work, which is the City University of New York, and its crisis. And this will connect some to some of Ruth messengers. message to us this morning. Because I want to talk about public higher education and the race gender system, but specifically in CUNY. And what I'm going to address theoretically is what I would call the periodic crises of over enrollment. You see, the periodic crises of over enrollment in the city university system that has been associated with re privatization of resources. But I would also associate it with the white masculinization of state power, through retrenchment and disciplining, of students and university workers who predominantly black and Latin women in New York. Last year, we were, we were and we found ourselves in the midst of a real crisis, and we had one of the most widely and we are successful, in some ways, strikes, student strikes in the City University that we've ever had, that seem to blow away, we seem to win, and there was not a tuition hike. But now we're facing again, very serious threats of budget shortfalls, and tuition increases and service cutbacks. If this crisis were only fiscal, and not mainly political, why would the slack have to be taken out of precisely those areas, education, health, Ruth discussion about our hospitals, very to the point here, and Human Services, out of the highs of poor women and children, who make up the majority of clients of these services in New York City, and not, for example, the banks and their taxes. I mean, this seems very simple. But the proposed budget cuts, I would argue, are designed not only to re privatize public revenues or services, but to discipline clients and workers in public higher education, and to use the university system to assert the state's managerial and patriarchal and white patriarchal authority. These are profoundly political ends. So I'm looking at CUNY as a constellation of the race gender system. Programs and institutions within CUNY have increasingly come under attack as wasteful, fiscally unsound the target of harsh cutbacks, producing hiring freezes, drains on financial aid, diminished Student Services, loss of courses, students need to graduate, and a general deterioration of the quality of student life doesn't take a social scientist, probably you shouldn't have a social scientist to understand that there's a direct relationship between these cutbacks in a period of fiscal and social conservatism and the fact that our students within the CUNY system are mainly poor women of color, and the majority of them, African American and Caribbean women, Afro Caribbean women. You don't see the same processes happening, please, I'm sorry, if it seems obvious. At foreigner for Wales, like the purpose is to reduce enrollments. And that's to change the race, class and ethnic composition of the student body in this in these institutions, the public sector and particularly City University institutions. But this composition is precisely our source of strength. When I say AR this time, I mean in women's studies, as in Black Studies, Puerto Rican studies, Asian Studies. This attack on public higher education in New York is a manifestation of the racism and the anti woman backlash that marked the Reagan and Bush years. It undermines our efforts to expand our power base raises the threshold of institutional resistance to demand for resources such as positions or mines for a black woman in

Unknown Speaker  14:49
our faculty I want to talk for a little bit about who where students are, and the history a little bit of the demographics of the City University of New York. You may recall that open admissions was instituted in about 1969 or 70. And then after that, in 1976, there was a fiscal crisis very much like the one we seem to be undergoing now. In which some 50,000 students were excised from the City University, they were laid off, so to speak, along with many adjuncts and regular faculty, even some tenured faculty was at that time that Medgar Evers College, in the city university system was demoted to a two year status and he really began to be a two tier system within the City University. Medgar Evers is referred to in a minute is predominantly made up of students who are African American and Afro Caribbean and predominantly women. Since 19 676, there's been a gradual rebuilding of enrollments to the point where Kunis enrollment now is 188,000 students the highest in over a decade. You have to put this in the context of what's happening with jobs in New York City. The deterioration of jobs and the demand of young people to get out of low paid clerical and in service and restaurant jobs. CUNY is the third largest public university system in the nation. It also has the highest ratios of women, blacks, Hispanics and Asians in the nation, as well as the highest ratios of poor CUNY as one of my colleagues in the system has reminded us is, for example, the largest Caribbean University in the world. This is true 70,000 of its 188,000 students are from Caribbean and primarily Afro Caribbean descent, also Hispanic Caribbean. The gender composition is of course interesting to all of us. Women, as a percent of total undergraduates in the CUNY system have increased steadily since 1976. They now constitute 60% of the students in the senior colleges 66% or two thirds in the two year colleges. Many of these women are returning women, they're over 25 or 30. They are women who are struggling to support their children, and many of them struggling on welfare. Let's look however, at the racial composition of the students. Because when we talk about the women who make up the majority of CUNY students, we're talking primarily as I said before, of black women and also Hispanic and Asian women. In 1970, CUNY senior colleges were 80% White, by 1986. They were 42% white 23% Black, 90%, Hispanic 11%. Asian, the Community College's the changes has been greater 62% White in 1970 27% in 1986. That is, I don't know what 63% Black, Hispanic and Asian CUNY students today are 40% White compared to 84% of colleges and universities nationally. If we look at just one class index, poverty, an appalling number of our students are poor 33% in the community colleges had family incomes below 8000 $8,000 a year in 1986 56%, had family incomes below $16,000 a year in 1986. Many of our students are migrant immigrants as well. Trying to set up a life for themselves. We have many students who don't have green cards who are struggling with immigration. They are

Unknown Speaker  19:34
trying to upgrade their skills trying to consolidate their laws. They are trying to deal with a job structure in New York City which is increasingly deteriorating. Some of the conditions and reasons why they're in school are positive things. They are free in Marxist sense, that is freed from the bonds of marriage or freed from the bonds of male dependence that is Free to be independent and survive on their own. Some, the loosening of welfare regulations has made it more possible for poor women to attend school. The provision after long struggles, particularly at places like Medgar Evers have on campus childcare. The growing awareness of issues of violence and battering in the network in New York City of battered women's shelters has made it more comfortable for some women to go to school. access to safe legal abortion in New York anyway, still has made it more possible for women to go to school. The students that we have, I just want to give you some profiles of I don't know this isn't at all scientific, but it's just an impressionistic of some of the students that I have had in my classes who've been especially courageous to try to stay at Hunter under existing conditions. DW divorced white working class lesbian many years a battered wife alcohol and drug abuser two grown kids trying to reconstruct her life on welfare in school full time. J H. Black single mother to young kids on welfare in school full time of orange teacher these are just some of my notes to myself. A Oh, white working class skilled electrician left well paying trade after says his history of systematic daily sexual harassment on the job, attempt to retrain now now in poverty. JF older black woman, age, undetermined. 50s 60s battered wife for 30 years five grandkids works two jobs goes to Hunter at night, taking mainly Women's Studies courses, runs the legs race still hides from a violent husband. College is a sanctuary, as well as a place to learn MC Jamaican immigrant left abusive husband in a teaching job and a much beloved child to come to New York, raped and abused again as a domestic worker without a green card, trying to get residential status, education and economic independence so she can bring her child to New York, their main incentive to lift themselves and their children out of poverty. CUNY is a bridge out of poverty for 10s of 1000s of women. So why is it under attack? It is under attack. The enrollment, patricians are going to squeeze out a lot of these women, what we see happening now is a return to the situation in 1976, in which a lot of those women that I've described are going to be forced out of school, either directly by financial need increased tuition, lack of financial way, or by conditions in which because of cutbacks, it's harder and harder to get the courses that you need to graduate. And it takes longer longer to get your degree. And ultimately, you drop out because you just can't hack it. The reduction of classes and retrenchment of adjunct and regular faculty will mean that students are shut out of these courses, their frustration levels will rise, their economic situations will be closed. Admittedly, this devastation, I think it's devastation potentially, is structural. It does exist to some extent independently of ideology and the ideological attacks on feminism, and on the frills of the education of the 60s and 70s. Nonetheless, there's also an important gender dimension and race dimension to this attack. And I want to talk about this in the context or in under the rubric of the patriarchal the white patriarchal politics of managerial control in the public sector University, the feminization of CUNY and SUNY has called forth I would say the masculinization of state authority over the university structures and its clients.

Unknown Speaker  24:21
But at the same time, this masculine assertion of authority is an assertion of white power over ethnic and racial groups who are predominantly African American and Afro Caribbean, in Hispanic in New York City. At least two things are going on here. And they have little to do, I would say, with budgetary restraints. First, there's an anti feminist politics. That is nationwide. It's taken the form of a tax on affirmative action on women's studies, and so on. But there's also a pro masculinist politics in the Reagan era, which defines the meaning of white manhood, in relation to public office, especially in relation to a chief executive, as president or a governor, in terms of a politics of toughness, playing hardball. And what that means in practice, is asserting authority over black women. It seems to me this is just self evident. At the federal level, it may take the form of cutting back on welfare programs and trashing domestic spending. As Bruce messenger said this morning, with all the outbreaks of peace, this peace dividend is very elusive, it just doesn't come about. And I believe unless we fight very hard on a very massive basis in this country, we are simply going to see military budgets, chant rechannel into policing this hemisphere, and the so called drug wars. At the level of the state, and I'm talking specifically about Cuomo and the politics of the budget in New York State. Seems to me that Cuomo, who is supposed to be a liberal, force to show is not a wimpy liberal, that he's tough and strong, and how he shows he's tough and strong, is through discipline, belt tightening, and that imposing that belt tightening on public institutions. No public institution is larger, has more resources in New York state than the state and city universities. That's true. nowhere is it more visible for him to show that he's tough. These are the bank, core banks and corporations. Then in relation to the state and city university CUNY and SUNY are Cuomo is Grenada, or panelized. But that's not update. Panama. The politics of discipline are different from the politics of reprivatisation. Discipline means showing the corporate and financial establishment, that he is a real man in their terms, while not touching their assets, that is not really causing a big tax. But of course, the politics of masculinization in the state are not about Marielle cromoz Personal foibles, there's an inherent tendency of state power, which is cyclical. As popular demands and pressures lead to an expansion of services. They then become excessive, especially when those services are bestowed on and we forget that they are won by women, and black and Latin, Asian people. The content of the political stakes has everything to do with the gender, race, and class composition of CUNY student body. And its unprecedented numbers. You can't say that women and particularly women of color are marginal in CUNY as students, although they certainly are. In fact,

Unknown Speaker  28:12
what we're facing here then is the cyclical crisis of over enrollment. This time, mainly of black and Latina, working class women, that calls forth measures of discipline intended to reduce the numbers of educated trained women who might demand non existent jobs and equality, and to display the managerial to display managerial efficiency as a badge of white, public patriarchal authority over all these uppity women of color, the fact that the objects of this discipline are mainly black and poor women is not incidental, but rather evidence that those women's lives are less valued by and their empowerment and potential threat to white male authority more salient in this period, that is dangerous. Now, as I said before, these are not struggles or issues that are rising to the surface in institutions like Barnard, Wellesley or Smith, those are institutions and put them down. I am a graduate of one of those institutions. But I do want to understand that there are differences among our institutions, and among us as women in our location within these institutions. The private sector institutions that I just mentioned, are institutions primarily of white women with strong ties to the most powerful white men. Those schools have formidable old girls networks, benevolent mothers, who will not let them go down and you have the wherewithal to not let them go down. So I do think that the question of privatization of resources, reprivatisation of resources, affects and divides us as women. The division between public and private institutions of higher education is also a division between not only women and men, but women and women, and particularly between white women and women of color. There are fiscal and political strategies that extract resources from public institutions to refurbish the public sector. And these are strategies that directly perpetuate race and class divisions among women. The other side of this, and I'm still kind of a Marxist feminist on this is that CUNY. And one reason I just love it. CUNY is one of the most potentially powerful concentrations of women, particularly of women of color, in alliances with white working class women as students, and white women committed to that kind of alliance. Like I hope many of the people in the program I work in one of the most powerful concentrations of women anywhere in the United States. I think there was evidence of that in last year students strike the leadership of the strike was entirely African American, Caribbean, Asian women and men but mainly women. The leadership of the Student Government is the same they forced the administration to keep the library open most evenings and weekends because of what their needs are as working class students. And I think that

Unknown Speaker  31:44
we'll see a lot more

Unknown Speaker  31:50
feminism is in the middle

Unknown Speaker  32:18
Sorry, I was late I guess I'm going to pick up somewhat we arrived let's try to be I will in a minute and try to be as brief as possible to allow time for discussion and questions. But I want to start from to two places. And most of it comes out of my thinking about the Tijuana Brawley case, although I don't want us to get into that discussion. I'm going to begin by reading a piece from something I wrote about that case, because I feel that that that the issues especially early understanding of what happened to the one abroad, and what I see as a parallel, feminist, black and white being paralyzed, and that we didn't do anything is somewhat some symbolic of some of the problems of feminism and also illuminate some of the kinds of feminism that black women have been involved in. Of course, we've learned about what Black Women's feminism what their practice looks like. So bear with me, feminism is an ideology which views the world from a perspective of women's experiences and seeks to transform social, political and economic institutions in order to liberate women. Black and white feminism. feminists have long knowledge the silence of women's voices, if they have been virtually no feminist outcry about tuwana brollies rape, feminist failure to defend Tawana Brawley publicly has further muted her voice. This lack of a consistent response represents a serious inability of feminist rhetoric for Envision to become applicable to political practice. Black and white feminists have neglected to address the significance of Tijuana brollies rate in different ways. why feminists like most of the left, white lists have become paralyzed over how to treat issues of race and racism. During the early 1970s, white feminist, callously ignored black women and other women of color. Now they claim to us anxious to discuss and analyze the connections between race and gender. But the need to publicly respond to racism and racial violence has not been seen by white feminists as a feminist issue. What Be clear because this does not mean that white women individually or in groups have not participated in demonstrations, etc. But as the top of a feminist agenda is not racial violence, or racism, as I would suggest, is certainly at the top of a black feminist agenda. At the fighting anti abortion is suffering from internal strife about pornography and some other issues. white feminists have seemingly retreated from organizing against institutionalized racism because they've grown to exchange political activism for intellectual and cultural activity. And they've substituted research and writing all good about women, for organizing women to fight their oppression. In contrast to the white feminist organizing campaign around Roe v Wade, few white feminists have even written or comments on Tijuana ball rolling. Black feminists have made a few attempts to draw address the Brawley campaign and there was a very of course unpublicized press conference at the Bethany Baptist Church on June 8. The church was the place that was providing sanctuary with one on Brawley and a mother that the she refused to cooperate with the grand jury. Law Nora Fulani and Andre McLaughlin from MyBiz college and other black feminists spoke publicly on the case. Dr. McLaughlin expressed to abuse we women of color have a right and duty to demand equal protection under the law for our children, our future.

Unknown Speaker  36:37
Governor Cuomo has declared a New York State decade of the child and eight to one child. We must stop racist and sexist violence. Stop the victimization of the victimizing of the victims and stop attacks on defenders of justice is the government elected officials cannot provide the leadership necessary to protect all children. We ordinary citizens must assume the baton for Tijuana is everybody child, and I was asked whether she was raped or not. She's perceived itself to be our child. The few public statements made by black feminist however, do not fully represent or reflect the widespread concern that black women hold are held for Tirana, Brawley and black feminists often submerge their feminism in order to join with black women and black men and fighting racial violence. They black feminists are frequently unable or unwilling to raise feminist issues within national struggle. National Solidarity has been used by black men to block any feminist critical analysis of their black men practice private and public practices. Under these circumstances, black feminists have also failed in the main to stand up for to one independently or with black men. We have stood up as black women, but not necessarily because black feminist parade has become the symbol of black nationalist oppression, not women's resistance to oppression. One reason for this might be that black feminists are also black women. And unlike many black male nationalist black women have no wives or other groups to give them financial and moral support whether activist efforts. Black Feminist especially like feminist activists are among the poorest of poor women. Black feminists are constantly stymied by the lack of time and resources resources, which might have allowed one of our own to become a full time adviser to Tijuana brought his family to bear because black feminist remain at the intellectual cutting edge of political and social transformation. Many have participated in national organizations and civil rights movement, and black community struggles. In addition, there are many black feminists who advocate and struggle for healthcare education employment opportunities for black women. They also aid in organizing black women and unions, churches, and communities and raise black women's consciousness about sexism and racism. A black feminist movement would have made this case pivotal to a political strategy, capable of exposing the crime of rape against black women, whether perpetuated by white or black men, and could thereby have broken the historic silence surrounding black woman's rate a black feminist activist political strategy, but first of all shown the motivations underlying rate such as racism or male dominance through violence and challenge the negative views of rape victim. Second, it could have presented a more sympathetic understanding of Tawana Brawley and her family, both to the black community and to the larger community. And third, it could have organized in rally financial and political support for black women. Like tomorrow, both black and white feminists do share a philosophy that's supposed to give women voice and power. We said we would take on the personal and the political. But while we are attacking the personal oppression and intellectual foundations of women's oppression, the political struggle cannot stop. Only a feminist analysis of the sexual abuse of women can prevent women's rate from being further muted. But only a black feminist political movement can enable black women to tell their own story in their own words, and a context that will bring about justice and public vindication. And the kind of summary points that I think are important that I would like some discussion around this first, white feminists lack of public response to racism and racial violence. Because anti racist political work is a feminist issue. When if ever is anti racism, not a feminist issue, what boundaries have feminist particularly white feminism put up around and constructed around feminism, so that they cannot even think about racism, health care, for example, and those issues as feminist issues.

Unknown Speaker  41:24
One of the struggles which I was involved in and I know was want to speak to around reproductive rights was the very beginning was defining abortion differently than putting abortion in a context that was General around health care. And when you said it was in that context, in the old days, we would be attacked by white men as being not feminists. So the boundaries around feminism, which I think is something that if we're going to have a feminist practice, and not just intellectual discourse, we'll have to deal with what things are not feminist, all the ever any issues, racist issues that are not feminists, as a black feminist, I would say that they all are and happen simultaneously, they feed each other, that racism constructs gender, it constructs class. And then it also in this in a funny kind of way, gender also fosters, I mean, sexism also fosters racism. So I see them all very, very interconnected. But I would like to hear how other people put those boundaries around feminism. Define it in ways that might be very distinct from the way I would, which I would say, Michael students, that was a feminist issue for me. It was a very much a feminist issue. It has a lot to say, Michael Stewart was a young man who was killed by the police because he allegedly was doing graffiti on the subway, I'm sorry, just stop me if you don't. But and those kinds of cases are, to me feminist issues they have to do with how violence is constructed in this society. And the oppression of black men is part of sexes oppression in my understanding. The second thing black feminist in their relationship, identification, the black community and black nationalists, often blonde and mute, feminist issue. That is very constrained and restricted. And we often have the both differed and agreed that Jesse is going to be the leader to represent our collective black issues as opposed to all kinds of different voices, we've often selected one male, black male voices. So I think that's another issue for blacks. And, like, Why? Why are our voices so muted in that public presentation about issues? Thirdly, why are both black feminists and white feminists more often, these days working within the cultural and intellectual sphere, as opposed to what I would call here, the political sphere, and I was against the power structure in the system. In my own kind of 1960s version of you go up against the state, you demonstrate your challenge you sit in, you're aggressive and assertive. Like the students last semester, like, for example, in CUNY was talking there are a lot of women faculty and staff I've talked with I really, really want women study. They think women's studies will be good, they want women's centers, but the chairman lesson and the President doesn't want them and all of that. And the response is not we need to take it over. We need to get the students to, you know, sit in and you'll sit in and stuff. It's like a real, intellectual political, already been negotiating and we haven't even gotten the man to the table to do the negotiation. So the question is, why are we more directed to it that these days and I I'm not political, political struggle. And some of the reasons I think might be that, because we've defined perhaps feminism very narrowly, we really don't know, all of the many political forms and efforts of feminists, maybe in pockets in places like if you weren't here today, you may not know about megabits, and you may make certain assumptions as I'm making. The second might be that the personal and the personal, we have conflict about our own personal and intellectual work, and, in some ways, have gotten very comfortable. And many of us who were early feminists in the 70s are now more middle age, more middle class more comfortable. And it's quite a risk, to be political, to go up against the Golden State. That you're a tenured professor, it's really all your things, you might want to be attending professors really hard to say, let's take on, let's have a sit in, in the president's office, you know, no, but that means the end of a certain kind of epidemic. So it may also be, however, that feminism is, is an ideology and a movement confined to changing the social and private domains, the middle instance institutions, such as schools, the law family, but not the economy, or the state

Unknown Speaker  46:27
doesn't know how to or is unwilling to challenge the state. Something that was also mentioned, I think it's important to why I think this direction of being more cultural and intellectual, as opposed to political is that many, many of the most brilliant white feminist I know, I have deep personal commitments to the Patriot to the racial patriot, in the sense that white women are often married to many powerful feminists read America, many powerful men. And in some sense, identify with them in terms of their class and benefit, get financial benefits from that. So you can do your feminist research, because you have a husband who makes to make a lot of money, a lot of money, we're classes and all that, because that's really very different some lessons, because black feminists committed to black men, in some sense politically, but often do not live to certain don't have any wealth from them. Most likely, if we are married to black men, we both are struggling for the bare necessities. So it's a very different kind of dimension of our relationship to the Patreon. Which is why when I hear black women speak, there's a lot of rage against personal things that black men have done to them, but a lot of sympathy and empathy for the political status and class. So that when we began to talk about the patriarchy is a very different kind of patriarchy, when you have a patriarchy that our biggest example, is saved. So you pray in the day it gets elected, but he doesn't have any economic power to take care of me and my kids. You know, so that is a very strange, patriarchy is under develop has been consistently under developed by white male power. And so we have a very different relationship to black men, and to men and to patriarchy is I would say, than white. And our analysis often doesn't reflect that. I think that white feminists have articulated a feminism as if the given food, clothing, shelter, and health care and education all are in place for all women. And I was pleased to hear last discussion, because there's very few of that kind of discussion, from the perspective of women don't have access to any doctor for anything. And when you have to now build a movement that gets that woman access to health care, of which abortion is poor, and prenatal care is caught in dental fears. Where I think Wi Fi feminism still today is articulating the feminism as if these Givens are in place, as if all the men are patriarchy, is this old patriarchal systems are the same, and all forms of patriarchy are evil. white feminists have claimed the intellectual the head, the feelings as an arena of discourse, I think also have responded to internalize the white Raven or the Reagan years. I think that part of this is not simply in white in feminism or white feminists, but also in the way in which they have responded to all of us have been kind of haunted and I think we've internalized a lot of the conservative agenda and how we begin to think about political work. not simply the white men it's risky and frightening to be politically, are we to focus on changing that cannon and not changing women's lives? Is the question. white feminists have framed and define issues in wage because privilege, their own viewpoint perspective lies, and marginalize other notions to kind of idea or lead into as black feminist. My response to that, you know, we can kind of feel funny saying white feminist because there are a lot of black feminists who I would throw into the other categories and myself included in various other hats. But as a black feminist, activist, I think I'm beginning to try to work through what our practice looks like. And the best model for that. And the case studies for that is what the experience of black feminist in central Brooklyn, which is a predominantly overwhelmingly black community, black Brooklyn, which has had a long history of black women's organizing, you must surely Chisholm came from that area.

Unknown Speaker  51:11
And also, it also has had a strong presence of black nationalist organizations setting up independent institutions, educational institutions, political institutions, the black United Front, which for their part in the 70s, was doing a lot of active work in the city around the question of police violence came out of central Brooklyn, also coming out of central Brooklyn, especially through the last 10 years, there's been a very definite group of black feminist who named themselves feminist who work around a pro feminist agenda, who worked in sessions oppression, both the end within the black community and outside. And I think that has made one of the most effective challenges to the race gender system. Because it blows, one because it rose out of black women organizing in the black community and groups. It has remained connected to the day to day needs of Blackwings. So that the women I don't know what they do with the Women's Center here at Barnard, with the Women's Center with Medgar Evers college helps women around welfare advocacy, spousal abuse, legal issues, alcoholism, childcare, anything a woman comes in with, people began to try to work on helping that particular woman around changing her particular situation. And those women, of course, then become part of the community of women who become one of the best success stories, I think, is into the 8182 struggle. A woman named Alice Alice aterna, who was a teenage mother of three children and 22. She said, No, welcome, Rachel. Whenever you have those words, you can just get rid of she then do whatever that may give us college door started out as an accounting major was the chief. She was the head of security for the city. And also, through that sit in process began to realize her own skills and her own insights and home power. Finish Meg Evers, went to Columbia School of Social Work is now back working at the Medicare was Women's Center counseling and helping single mothers. That's the kind of feminism that I come out of that's what I think, is a black feminist practice. But she began to help other women who take on who become equal to you and not just clients and students come in so we helped her and she's graduated with, but really he will become a much larger system. And also we work in coalition with black men. And with white women. It's never been a feminism that's been isolated in that way. The the Center for Women's Development at Medgar Evers will be finished with it. It uses this model of community based organizing within the CUNY institution because the other side of what's the attacks are by white men. And I would suggest that to pull out the analysis you have to put in what is the role of black men and black women in that process because black professional men and women were weakened men and women, Asian men and women are also in increasingly in coalition or collaboration with those same white men. And both redefining and containing and all of the good and bad things that are going on. But the main thing is that not as support necessarily, of the students. They've received very little in terms of supporting the students. But the Women's Center, isn't it how black women respond to that. And it was interesting how it was founded because it was a room that women said we're going to make this the Women's Center. Now what are you gonna do? This is what we have claimed as our space We first and we organize money outside of the of the university to keep it going, because presidents who said, well, we don't have enough money for, we only have money for a telephone and students, and staff person. And then you have to keep on raising money. And then they tried to claim the money that we raised. And we have to have meetings about this is our money, we raised $10,000, we wanted to go into women's going to work, or else, whatever the or else was continuing to fund. But anyhow, that is the mode of how I think you do organize within an institutional action. And it certainly is how black women have begun to claim that space for resistance, in a very direct and concrete way. The other organization, which is sort of the parent organization of the system, is a system that a black single mother, which for those that don't know, was founded in 1973, as a pro women is a problem in feminist organization, really trying to redefine the whole question of single motherhood, and also giving all of this kind of direct service and creating a system and network. And interestingly

Unknown Speaker  56:06
create, first create, redefine the issue for that. And thirdly, in 1988, created out of your funds to state funds, a institution called kianga house, which is a residence for T black teenage mothers. It's not a residence or shelter the way in, in anybody else with images that black women. And we thought we this is what the kind of sheltering help that we think like teenage mothers need, took the resources and try and try to fit it into solution space with all the problems inherent to a second tier shelter. That's part of the city new actors. These two models to me, I would suggest are the ways in which black women are trying to redefine feminism and act on that. And I think provide a model that perhaps white women and other feminists might want to look at them, and especially to black women, and not in central black feminists, but it does help. It really does. Because there's lots of black feminists doing lots of things that and the last thing too about it is that they have lots of respect from lots of different sectors. Black men who tradition nationalists really respect a lot of that work. And so I'm suggesting that I think perhaps we were too cowardly, in me in our responses to Tijuana visa visits, because we didn't directly challenge. I'm suggesting that a feminist practice has to be linked to a community, maybe geographic, but certainly some grouping of people that has to meet the real needs of real women, not just a kind of intellectual thirsting for a redefined self with a physical, a vision of transforming and rocking the state at least walking while while trying to change consciousness, as well as I think the very important work of cultural and intellectual feminist, so I'm going to stop there, and maybe we can, you know, share questions and comments.

Unknown Speaker  58:24
We want to hear from you, we talked to natural. Anybody have any comments against

Unknown Speaker  58:33
many of my feminist academic friends, when we talk about activism or lack of activism, say, Well, my activism is by practice in universities in the classroom. And that sort of ended I mean, you can say, well, it shouldn't be, but that doesn't get you very far. And I'm just wondering how you go about thinking about this problem, given the fact that academic life like all aspects of American life terenzi People are stretched beyond capacity, they're tired. So how do we, what do you think is the best deployment of resources, they're not going to go out and spend hours and weeks and days organizing? What is your answer to that?

Unknown Speaker  59:14
I don't know what students that working with because I'm saying that if I use someone like to see a Mandela and Andre who also are in the academy who teach, part of the teaching was first of all to find out as much as possible about where the students were at. There are many people teaching the academy don't know that they have a battered woman in her class. They don't even know that the woman is homeless. They don't know where the how that woman got to their classroom. They don't know if she had anything to eat or fall asleep, but she came late. A lot of times we have problems with people coming late. Mr. But my lecture started as you know, and you don't know what the trains were like you don't know where they came from. You don't know what they come out of. It leads to No. And then maybe even to plug people into systems that you can say, well, he has a number of have a shelf history. that information on hand like I always have information on hand, for women who come into my office when I said, why'd you drop that class? And they said, Well, I had a personal problem, and I probed a little. And it turns out, they will abuse. But we are the lawyers that can go to where the battered women's shelter, where can you recommend, it's sort of like you have to treat the classroom students, as your women's group constituent. And as a community organizer, you're going to find out what is going on with these students. And I don't care for students, that can be white middle class students, which doesn't exempt them from some of these problems. You can do that at Barneys and do a Columbia anywhere else. Because that alienation often is

Unknown Speaker  1:00:38
the same, I just want to say I hadn't experienced teaching in a very different kind of institution for the one I spoke about. And I found a women's college, I won't name it a women's college, not this one. That's considered at a very elite institution. And it was remarkable to me, the degree to which students were treated as individuals, that is they were fragmented, they had a lot of problems. And I'm talking about, some of them had a lot of mental problems, you know, had emotional stress, felt very alienated, especially, you know, foreign students felt alienated sown in the system for dealing that with a one on one counseling system that was supposed to Mother them, and help them but there was no community to which they could refer that to which they felt a part. And whereby they could change their lives. So I think it applies to all institutions.

Unknown Speaker  1:01:32
I want to address them because I'm not an academic. I'm a writer. I've been living under some stress, but I

Unknown Speaker  1:01:49
was a lot of

Unknown Speaker  1:01:51
left wing women, out of the women's academic jobs and those kind of investments in those jobs are going to take more and more critical time. And it was like, Well, I just have to do this to like, get tenure. And then I'll do what I want to

Unknown Speaker  1:02:14
do. And their work became structured by being to get tenure, which meant a it worked into the brokedown paper, rather than you were engaging in some collective thing. Most of the projects that I'm not trashing at all. Everybody who came out of the movement in the 60s suddenly suddenly realized that they weren't making a living, and things got very. So that was part of it, that there was the need to get tenure by writing on paper, and then writing them down in a particular way that when you stepped on the mail from a tenure decision meant that you use certain kinds of scientific or cultural language inaccessible to people who had not been through a particular discipline and therefore useless, like everybody else. That was the first thing to get. And then you had an awful lot of movies to get tenure and fit also. And I think that looking back, I would have gotten to see it as a process that was changing the academy and creating those possible potential protests and mechanical students who would protest in the future and holding operation in the Caribbean reaction that was one assets that the other asset was collapsing. And has changed. And we had a movement in the beginning of the early 70s. And now we have clusters. And that's not our fault. We put the best we could and I think what happened to have what we could do that I think what Barbara is saying about how remarkable and wonderful they're also huge white feminist organizations into that kind of Javert are fewer and more dispersed and with linked to each other and don't know how to find each other and we haven't created the structures that would enable those kind of grassroots connect with the women who are intellectual or intellectual and forgotten how

Unknown Speaker  1:04:28
to talk to them. And

Unknown Speaker  1:04:32
we are never going to get lost

Unknown Speaker  1:04:51
structure that basically this

Unknown Speaker  1:04:57
is a hierarchical structure.

Unknown Speaker  1:05:00
And then resources, actually, which is the smoking community that be described as the real life somehow see that is an isolated situation, which is doing the planning structure that doesn't believe

Unknown Speaker  1:05:35
that new hospital system, people want to try to get

Unknown Speaker  1:05:44
it, it seems to me that

Unknown Speaker  1:05:47
democracy in this country is now being exploited. Maintaining a hierarchical structure for the real things don't change. You're not getting you're not having the things the way we actually most of our jobs work from nine, zero doesn't fit in

Unknown Speaker  1:06:15
with anybody

Unknown Speaker  1:06:20
that healthcare

Unknown Speaker  1:06:23
needs to generate the community not when you're sick, but not. Somehow all the resources are really education and academic stuff, fitting into organization and making a masterpiece and

Unknown Speaker  1:06:49
perpetuating the scripture that actually locks you would have money, one of the things that

Unknown Speaker  1:07:05
I am equally differently, but I teach a hunter, but I don't usually identify as academic. We're just sort of interesting to me, as I think about that. And I'm also a graduate student. And I don't often as a City University Graduate Center, I don't often identify students. And I think that's because I feel so different from the other people who teach at Hunter's Graduate Center.

Unknown Speaker  1:07:40
But until that time, I felt completely like I was walking in the other world, which I am, and can't figure out how to get through it. But part of what I'm realizing and listening to what both of you said, is, at least is Hunter, and at least barbarous in that one. So that there is some sense of finding myself a little bit, but almost by lots of places that I am. But the real place I feel most at home in my community. So that sets up for someone trying to figure out about tenure and about dissertation and about, you know, identity, having an identity, that's part of the work and the rest of my life is that I feel most supported and protected and powered by my connection to my community, which means that I will not have the energy or time to put into all the things that are really going to make me have the kind of academic career that will change the statistic that we heard about earlier this morning. But what I think it really requires a white feminist is to support me in my community, and maybe find community work on your own. So that we aren't necessarily depleting feminist organizations, black or white by participating in the hierarchical structure of sound. To me what's like what has happened is white women have gone full force into the academy and trying to create a segments community and scholarship. And black women have maintained and probably other women of color, that maintain ties to community for free, no, you can only get support from hierarchical institutions. And so maybe the lesson is for white feminists to do what black feminists have done, and continue to do. And

Unknown Speaker  1:09:46
I want to say something about how women in the university and tenure they don't get tenure because of simple collaboration and putting aside their feminist it's a political context. And the way you get tenure is based on the way the politics are defined and your participation and your reading of it and political. If we had a feminist agenda that was activist in the university, you redefine how people get tenure, you redefine how people come in, and you struggle for it. There have been women who have come in, because I don't want to try. I'm not trashing academic work either, because that's my work, too. But like Andre McLaughlin, is a very good example for me. And also, I want to say, before I go to address that, for black women, or for white women to have a job for me having a job where I can counsel, advise and teach black women predominantly, where I have financial security. Health care, you know, taking care of my family, which in these days is large, is really important for me. And I want to have as much institutional power within that arrangement, albeit hierarchical as I can. I really do. And I think that's something that's one of my political agendas, it definitely is. And it because I think one of the struggles within that, of course, is also simultaneously which is very, very hard in the West to get a hold us is trying to make change. And Andre represents that for me, and she was my mentor for a long time, she was the first black woman to be a dean of administration in human history. She was she's a full professor at Medgar Evers college, she would be president, maybe of a scholar, she would be championing the Chancellor of the University. If she wasn't a radical woman. And she had a doctorate and she had politics, and she has feminist politics, I learned a lot about how you can be both how you can combine and she was one of the leaders of the Senate. She, I mean, she took on, she risked a lot for that fitting, because that's it in made her known as a troublemaker. I mean, she's still got a patient, so don't think you don't have clients. But it made her known as a troublemaker made her kind of, you know, on the on the list of where you don't get the special assignments and stuff. And the good thing, but it also, she took on a leadership that the students just admire so much, because they couldn't imagine how this woman had, every all the other instructors went home. Here she is saying I'm gonna sit in, she stayed in the room. And that says something to me, and she talks about being a professional doesn't mean you give that up. You can, there's certain points that you get out there, and you have to make a choice. And she made a political feminist choice, that a very important point of a career. She's paid for, but not paid for by being destitute. And that's one of the concerns that I have as a black feminist, I'm real concerned that black feminist activists don't wind up, I'll pull it back, I think I saw her on the street with five shopping lists. And not it's not a joke. Given everything else, she's been out there struggling in her community, I want her to get this done. I want her to get some grounding, and financial support, I want her to get the given. So I'm always concerned when there's a critique of the given that most of us are not even in hierarchical structures to do anything about. I'm concerned when we we, you know, you can't tend to kind of jump a step. First, we've got to get away to pay a rent and get food and clothing and shelter and some space, we have to get some given into the hands of black. And I think that's where my commitment in the universities. That's where

Unknown Speaker  1:13:43
I think this also links back to the question that Barbara raise called, when you said, what things are not feminist anyway. struggles in universities and systems of power, our feminist struggle, and you better believe it. It's the place where a lot of people are spending a lot of time you might not feel good being there. And it might not feel like your home or your community. But you're there. And we need to in some ways, work out real, you know, relationships of confronting the power and the culture that is so alienating in those places. And we do that, to a limited extent, we have to do it more. We can't simply say, you know, well, that's just not where I am. I mean, I may be there 10 hours a day, you know, 900 hours a week, but really, I'm not there. So I was struck, you know, to when you were talking about who is there we're talking about Andre McLachlan. And I didn't mention this when I talked about the strike at CUNY Hunter last spring, but I have to say, I looked around and I said, Where's women's study? Where the hell is the Women's Studies faculty? In other words to strike over resources in the city universe. or city, where my colleagues and Women's Studies work was not for them. Not only not a feminist issue, I guess it wasn't an issue because they weren't there. So we really have to think. Well,

Unknown Speaker  1:15:16
I think that person back there, yes, you, as a Latino students actively involved in the lockup at Brooklyn College, I had to challenge what I call myself as a Latino feminist with having a woman say, Professor given exam. So I asked myself, so I label myself included, my ties to the community, and the kind of response I get from my community. And that whole global vision of what I want to do for Latinos in central Brooklyn, is where my main focus is, and that encompasses myself. All throughout my life. I mean, the idea of a feminist and I think my grandmother was a feminist, my grandmother, she never would say she's a feminist because she said, she didn't hate miss. Feminine. So when I say I'm a feminist, this is such a view that the racial agenda is number one, the positive agenda that's all inclusive, and to have what's known as scholarly flattening, the thing I say that I felt was important. Make me bring it out in the class the following week, if you don't care about my conscious, you should care. Because you are willing to support me. And I challenge you believe they are much more coherent. The use of women of color is definitely on the syllabus. But it's definitely a constant thing that open doors woman, because we challenge the idea of as a Latina woman, with the issue of language, I can separate I couldn't say you got to do with messenger talking about the census is not gonna count me, you don't want to count my family? I don't matter. So Right. Feminism, for me, is a lifelong challenge for people who are asking them here. And he lays himself a scholarship to see that set in the classroom, and not to make other women of color isolated.

Unknown Speaker  1:17:40
I was interested in Barb's pointing point about how we're stuck here in what you call the middle institutions. This whole question of, what do we call feminism? Where are our levels of struggle? Do we, you know, stay in our neighborhoods and deal with day to day issues in individual women's lives? Do we insert ourselves into institutions? Do we try to get ourselves into positions of power within those institutions? And then the real question of how do we relate to the state, which, after all, is making the decision about everything that happens down to the very bottom level? I don't even know whether it's relevant that we call it feminism or we don't call it feminism. This is an issue or relationship with the state, which feminism first of all, has almost no theory about the size from Katie MacKinnon. I can't think of anybody who even talks about a feminist theory of the state, or what the hell can we do about and I mean, I like to hear people like messenger talking about electoral politics for this very reason. He's, you know, that's what she's engaged in. And to me, I think it's just sort of a sidestepping issue to cares about this feminist or is it not feminist we must return as activists and as progressives and as whatever the fuck we want to call herself to turning over this power of the state which is affecting us in the most personal and in the biggest way.

Unknown Speaker  1:19:23
presentation this morning I think that was very good.

Unknown Speaker  1:19:34
However, economy progression and attainment within girls

Unknown Speaker  1:19:48
and women really

Unknown Speaker  1:19:53
need what's the central focus is my parents,

Unknown Speaker  1:19:57
and many times women are afraid to say because

Unknown Speaker  1:20:01
we should not possess the ability to really connect take on responsibilities. Because many times in my assumption of my assessment, I'm wondering whether

Unknown Speaker  1:20:17
or not women will cause themselves feminists, we take nature of God by

Unknown Speaker  1:20:25
being seduced, and then by seduction will be manipulated. And by that I mean by this class which we want to be separate, not in totality in terms of societal needs in terms of power, yes.

Unknown Speaker  1:20:51
So, I think we have to look at the difference, the common denominator all these different fitting into the house, and therefore, I would like to stick into this pair

Unknown Speaker  1:21:21
must really be concerned Are we really that you're listening to these very

Unknown Speaker  1:21:33
all of the other things that we have talked about the bread and butter, and these kinds of things I think you're gonna

Unknown Speaker  1:22:07
like everything real we all want to eat. But I have real questions about where we are clear that lawyers and corporations don't pay employees to undermine.

Unknown Speaker  1:22:30
And one of the reasons the union

Unknown Speaker  1:22:32
originally started as

Unknown Speaker  1:22:36
an academic, white.

Unknown Speaker  1:22:40
I'm very troubled. Because as I look around,

Unknown Speaker  1:22:46
I see that it's very difficult to get papers published about the kinds of things talking about about the kinds of things Barbara was just talking about. It seems to me that the real problem

Unknown Speaker  1:23:04
was Do people get paid for?

Unknown Speaker  1:23:08
We get tenure

Unknown Speaker  1:23:09
for not writing, or writing about them with enough footnotes and citations, that we're the only ones who can read what we write. So we're caught in this contradiction. This drive, where there's an action sometimes do an action. We don't even have the language in our own writing, and in our own curriculum to talk about what happens if a medical sociologist departs from theory and starts to talk about the sterilization of black women. What happens to shows have 50 footnotes what happens if you've died rent from the curriculum? And you start to talk about the fact that it's a planned closing or a layoff in the community? What happens? What happens if you're waiting for your change your route committee went up? What happens is, you're told by the department chair, you got a non public, non mainstream journal. You better stop writing about what you're writing about. What about that? Does that have anything to do with what we're talking about? In other words, what about ideology of racism and classism? Sexism being represented? And academic voices? What about fat babies get by into our consciousness in such a way as we reproduce? Up to this young woman's academic,

Unknown Speaker  1:25:08
listen, I just want to tell a story in response to that, you know, because I understand, that's a serious problem. And I've, I've been to myself personally, I think I've been too Cavalier it because I've always I've been in certain non traditional little pockets in the academy that have allowed me to kind of get through writing about the things that you're talking about. But we just had a situation at Hunter, where a black woman who very strongly considers herself a black feminist untenured person was denied. Promotion when leading to tenure, on the very grounds, you're talking about the same, you know, sexual harassment of black women, that's not scholarship, that's not an issue for us in our, in our field, you must write about this. And she was unanimously turned down. Well, we mobilized and we we work in a coalition with the black faculty, students, staff, alumni, resources, change, women's studies. You know, we just got the critical sectors together, and we fought, and I think we're gonna win. I'm not saying you will always win those struggles. But we fought for her to be recognized as a serious scholar, working on precisely the issues that the university most says it values retention of minority faculty. That's her dissertation. Why do you want counseling mentoring women of color in the institution? That's what she writes about in scholarly journals. Scholarly journals are feminist. They're refereed that's what it means to be a scholarly journal. And those people who refereed them have PhD so what do you want we went to the post it and we went and we're we're gonna win so you know I'm I'm over

Unknown Speaker  1:27:23
here I'm in a very lower action so I made a choice to go you brought a

Unknown Speaker  1:27:47
very important point I don't know how many people know what's really going on

Unknown Speaker  1:27:56
and work for groups

Unknown Speaker  1:27:57
originally. We are now

Unknown Speaker  1:28:02
supported pause don't wait around for the most part, they already like most of the women who want to work

Unknown Speaker  1:28:33
they got their communities out.

Unknown Speaker  1:28:38
We are women's

Unknown Speaker  1:28:39
work

Unknown Speaker  1:28:42
or they were gone they are how we accomplish all of the different areas

Unknown Speaker  1:29:12
with a lot of support from

Unknown Speaker  1:29:15
women. They not only have not been or they have not been recognized recognize

Unknown Speaker  1:29:37
these are women and some of them

Unknown Speaker  1:29:45
some of the time knock on effect In a lot of speeches about how important just starting

Unknown Speaker  1:30:29
just always trying to radicalize save