Caribbean Feminism

          Black Feminism has always been my feminist departure point. I've in fact, yet to read almost any white feminists, and from what i have read about white Feminism via Black feminist writings, it doesn't seem as if i am missing anything that is pertinent to my life (politically, socially, spiritually, etc.). I thought these two writings on Caribbean feminism broadened my scope of Black feminism outside the borders of the United States. A great deal of my studies deals with studying African cultures, - contemporary and pre-colonial - and i have read and have begun to incorporate African feminist ideas and beliefs into my personal brand of Black feminism. However, the Black Caribbean Feminist theories and experiences, have largely gone ignored. I'm concerned with the fact that Black Caribbean and Black African Feminism seems to be lacking within the dominant Black Feminism of the U.S. Toni Cade Bambara is one of the few Black American Feminists i have read that went into detail about contemporary Black African women's experiences and issues and incorporated it into her political struggles. I hope more papers such as the article by Barrieteau  begin to bridge the gaps that exist within Black feminism and lead to a Pan-African feminism. As Ulysse stated in Downtown Ladies as a Gloria Anzaldua quote, i hope that as Black American feminists, we are not creating other silences by our speech.

          I found Downtown Ladies to be enlightening and a necessary read for someone as myself, who is also a Black anthropologist whose work deals largely with what is termed by some as "native anthropology". I have experienced and understood all too well her issues within anthropology, especially that of the missing Black anthropologists from my anthropology courses. The "native anthropologist", while having shown some of the most insightful findings and analyses, seem to hold little weight within the academic canon. Zora Neal Hurston, Kirin Narayan, W.E.B. DuBois, Katherine Dunham, and Pearl Primus, for example, are all anthropologists who studied their people or spiritualities that they practices and were a part of. In a very fascinating and enlightening book entitled Black Feminist Anthropology edited by Irma McLaurin, Johnetta B. Cole stated that Herskovitz, whom she studied anthropology under, refused to let his Black students study Africa and African cultures (within the diaspora as well) because he saw Black American culture as too similar to those of the Caribbean and Africa. Here, we can see how native anthropology is disgarded and degraded - it is believed that not much analysis has to be involved for one to study their own people. However, more and more in contemporary anthropology, we see academics studying the West, Western Capitalism, corporate culture, and other cultural aspects of the west.

          I found it interesting, though, that Barrieteau states that Caribbean Black people have not experienced race and racism in the same way that African Americans have - as being minorities in a white majority country. And thus, this has lead to a different experience as Black Caribbean women from that of African American women. Yet, Downtown Ladies shows various types of legal and governmental discrimination that Jamaican women endure in trying to make a living. I suppose that is where Caribbean feminism differs from that of Black American feminism, in that Patriarchy has a much more impactful existence in the lives of Black Caribbean women than does racism. Stacey-Ann Chin, one of the few Caribbean (Jamaican) poets/authors who identify as a feminist, shows an equal level of concern for the manifestations of patriarchy as she does the issues of homophobia and transphobia in the Caribbean. I wonder if experiencing the oppression of patriarchy more so than racism has much sway in the building of bridges beyond borders for Black feminists. I hope it does not.