Woman. A term that not all women of color have often, and arguably until this day, have been excluded from. Since the inception of this country, it was white women who were the quintessential “women.” They were its ideal standard of beauty, chastity, and purity. This was, of course, determined by white men and sexist Eurocentric Victorian standards. White women were not held to such a high regard until after Europeans enslaved Africans and committed genocide on the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Once Europeans came into contact with Indigenous peoples and Africans they judged them to be defunct of humanity and consequently able to be commodified, a hallmark nascent 16th century capitalism. With the colonization and enslavement of both of these populations, women were particularly affronted with the typical tools of imperialism: rape, breaking a part families, and myth propagation. From here on, I will refer to all non-white populations as “people of color” or “women of color” baring that yes, it is an umbrella term, however it is not to erase the many differences that exist within the group but to recognize our unique shared oppression at the hand of white-Euro-Anglo hands.

Women of color, who were typically the bearers of their society’s culture, had to to fight quite defiantly against their white male oppressors while striving to survive for their self and people. Throughout their oppression it was these women that maintained semblances of traditions from the oral to the spiritual. Out of consequence, slavery and other forms of oppression forced women of color into a unique position within the hierarchy that was being erected by the white-cismale-property holding class. Maythee Rojas eloquently states “surviving in a patriarchal society, women learn to respond to a set of social structures that excludes them even as it determines their social roles and expectations. Consequently, they regularly operate within, and therefore understand, two worlds: the conventional, male-centered one and their own world, to which men are not privy (Women of Color and Feminism, 9).”

The way that women of color’s modern experiences were shaped in this country when juxtaposed with that of their white counterparts, illustrates the intricacies and complexities of class, race, gender and sexuality. Each layer complicates the other, yet shines light on the experience of the other as well. With the peeling back of each layer, as if that were possible for peeling back one would mean all would have to be explored as they are not mutually exclusive, we learn of freedoms unimaginable. I say unimaginable because from my own perspective in this hierarchy, I have certain privileges that are ascribed to me because of my gender and therefore my outlook on reality and what can be imagined are limited. It is from the most oppressed that we learn to dream bigger and imagine freedom as all and ever encompassing. By this measure, it is from women of color that we gain these broadened perspectives.

The late W.E.B. DuBois’ concept of “double consciousness,” despite being particularly conceived out of the black male experience, can lend much credence to women of color’s plight and their conception of self in a white supremacist and patriarchal society. DuBois says of the double consciousness that it is “a peculiar sensation, this sense of double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a word that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” Women of color’s antithesis has been white males for the majority, if not all, of their modern history since contact with Europeans. By viewing the world from the one of the most marginal positions in modern society women of color have had to judge themselves against straight white capitalist males and it is from this relationship that they have learned how to survive and conduct themselves, or not, in this society. Regardless of survival though, women of color persisted with guts, guile, grace, beauty, intelligence, and just as much if not more strength than males as they had to give birth to children whose fathers were devils on earth.

With all of this said, in spite of their resistance women of color have been faced with the choice of assimilation, and in some cases to choose otherwise meant death. The dominant group, whites, set the standard of what it meant to be “normal” in society and those who strayed or were further from their ideals and conceptions were faced with physical, economic, and pyshco-social attacks. The hegemony of the dominant white group pigeonholed women of color into options that were all too dehumanizing despite whatever they chose. Some harken back to the pseudo-fictional narrative of Willie Lynch to explain the incipient forms of what we now know is internalized racism/white supremacy. Rojas explains succinctly the role of the dominant groups hegemony on the subordinate in society and the effect that may have on the subordinate group’s mind and conception of self. She states “Hegemony operates at both the macrostructural level and the everyday commonplace to support a dominant set of ideologies and practices. Moreover, those who are the most dis-empowered by hegemonic norms are often the same ones who unknowingly promote them in an attempt to belong.” White hegemony intrudes upon our lives daily. Through mainstream media and its ever pervasive image propagation. And, for some of us, through how we express and think of ourselves. What and who is beautiful? Who has good and bad hair? What is correct or proper English and what is not? Hegemony seeps into many areas of our daily lives without us knowing it unless we realize our subjectivity and our ability to control, or re-direct, our thinking at the very least. By becoming aware of how hegemony works on our lives we realize that we don’t have to be circumscribed to its parochial definition and we can dare to be radically ourselves. This is a hard thing to accept for most people of color, especially those who still have obstinate qualms about their own selves and their identity.

Choosing the norms as defined by the dominant culture some seek to assimilate to get by or go along with the get along. However, this is not without serious reprehension. It is not the fact that we are vastly different that racism or certain oppressions stem, but the social realities and real life implications of these differences that are the base of the problem. To bring this to more clarity Rojas states “Assimilation teaches that difference is bad. moreover it reinforces disparity by setting up barriers to those who do not or cannot conform. Not assimilating becomes a punishment. Thus, the reality that you cannot enjoy the promises of assimilation without supporting the oppression of others.” Women of color in this country have had to assimilate to a certain extent in order to survive, however this does not overshadow those who chose not to do so and to fight tooth and nail the racial, sexual, and class oppressions they faced.

Surprisingly, it has been men of color who have adopted the dominant culture’s particular ideology of patriarchy and by extension engaged in the suppression of women of color to a lesser degree than white men historically. In the 1960’s and 70’s waves of Nationalist organizations like the Black Panther Party, The Young Lords, and the Brown Berets all engaged in misogynist, male chauvinist, and sexist behavior. In Katherine Campbell’s Still Revolutionaries it was found that in the Black Panther Party, particularly in their survival programs which were aimed primarily at the community, “men avoided childcare responsibilities and other domestic duties, preferring to focus on security detail and physical work instead. More alarmingly, some men sexually harassed the female members, often coercing them into having ‘sex on demand’ on the argument that it was their duty to abide as revolutionary sisters.” So, sexism within people of color organizations, on part of the males, is not so foreign as men in power allowed practices that demeaned their sisters in ways similar to how the dominant power structure has demeaned both groups, male and female.

Despite the sexism that women of color faced in these nationalist organizations, they always put their race first. To debunk the myth that the Women’s Liberation Movement was a white women’s movement only, it was black women who played an integral role in initating the movement and providing much needed intersectional analysis and flexibility. Women of color are affected by more than one oppression and the ways that race, gender, and class overlap or intersect allow their perspectives on freedom to be drastically more expansive than that of their counterparts; both black men and white women.

Although I have not exactly delved into feminism so much, I have laid a rudimentary basis for the discussion of women of color and feminism. Some brief history, outlines of women of color’s unique position in this hierarchical society, and the way in which women stuck with their race despite the sexism that existed within their own communities and organizations. It is to be noted that although women of color did experience sexism within these parties, they were able to gain positions of power and relative to the outside world of the dominant culture they were able to move a little more freely. This doesn’t discount the sexism they experienced, it merely brings things back into perspective on the reality of their times and what options were afforded to them.

In light of where women of color have been post-European contact we must remember that these societal configurations are a mere blip on our collective history. As Rojas reminds us “before European contact many Indian women held political, economic, and religious power within their tribes. Their roles were usually considered equally important to those of men. However, the introduction of European patriarchy and female subservience into Native American cultures soon changed that. In addition, intermarriages with white men led to a series of detrimental losses for Native women, including their offspring losing clam membership, the loss of tribal property, and a shift in independence as many lost the opportunity to do physical labor or work outside the home because of the dominant white culture’ views on confiding women to the domestic sphere.” It is here that I conclude as it serves as the perfect segue into the next short section about the differences between women of color’s relationship to labor in juxtaposition with white women, particularly that of bourgeois white women.