Survival, Self-Fulfillment, and Privilege

To possess privilege of any kind—racial, gender, class, or otherwise—means, among other things, never really having to acknowledge the fact that one is privileged in the first place. To be marginalized, on the other hand, is to be so perpetually aware of one’s race, gender, class, etc.—in some circumstances as a matter of survival—that one’s identity markers perpetually inform one’s actions, gestures, words, expressions, and many other aspects of daily life, big and small. As Katie Cannon writes, black women have long been oppressed on multiple levels—as people of color, as women, and often as people enduring poverty. As such, Cannon argues that “Black women are the most vulnerable and the most exploited members of the American society” (Katie Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, 4), which means that black women’s existence has historically been characterized primarily by struggle (6-7), as evidenced most particularly during slavery, but also continually into reconstruction, the post-war period, and into today. Out of such a context, Cannon argues, despite the weight of oppression, women of color have not merely suffered; rather, black women have “used their creativity to carve out ‘living space’ within the intricate web of multilayered oppression” (76). Cannon thereby argues that the moral agency of black women, in both historical figures and in the black female literary tradition exemplified in figures like Zora Neale Hurston, both represents and functions as a primary source for a constructive ethic that enables both survival and self-fulfillment in the midst of endured suffering (75-98).

Angela Davis interviewed in prison

What does it look like to “carve out ‘living space’” in situations of oppression? I am reminded of the women I have been blessed to interact with at the Tennessee Prison for Women, many of whom are women of color, who, through the classes they have taken for years now through Lipscomb University that will soon culminate in Associate’s Degrees, have carved out spaces for self-betterment and a more flourishing form of survival in an oppressive context—a survival that, itself, signals that they are more than the worst moment of their life. The women have also published multiple collected journals of their poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and artwork, and have even performed their work before live audiences at the prison. I am also reminded of multiple scenes in Angela Davis’s autobiography in which she describes the sense of familial solidarity and collectivity between her and the other women incarcerated in the same New York City jail after the FBI captured her. From the secret karate sessions with other inmates (Angela Davis, An Autobiography, 64), to the conversations on racism and imperialism shouted between cells (61-62), to the moment when protesters on the street outside her cell window shouted over and over again, “Free Angela!” until Angela, “concerned that an overabundance of such chants might set me apart from the rest of my sisters,” began shouting “one by one the names of all the sisters on the floor participating in the demonstration. ‘Free Vernell! Free Helen! Free Amy! Free Joann! Free Laura! Free Minnie!’” (65). I am also reminded of groups like INCITE! that organize and strategize—as women of color—against the multiple forms of violence they endure in their communities. For instance, aware that calling the police—the very people who criminalize them and their families on a regular basis—during violent situations with spouses or partners or friends or family is a non-option, members of INCITE! have developed alternative means of preventing violence and holding the perpetrators of violence accountable in public and provocative ways, without depending on the patriarchal and often white supremacist authorities that “police” their existence.

By carving out “living space,” many women of color in prison—whether imprisoned for revolutionary action or the worst moment/mistake of their life—and many women of color imprisoned in carceral-like communities of poverty, much like the sisters and mothers who endured slavery and other injustices before them, are more than just victims and they do more than just survive: they discern and demand and create for themselves ways of living with dignity even in the midst of suffering.

The lesson that Katie Cannon lays out thoroughly through the lives of both historical and literary figures, that women of color, under multiple layers of oppression, discern means of asserting their dignity and carving out “living space” in a multitude of ways, is an important lesson for white men and women to learn, for two reasons. First, well-meaning white people are vulnerable to the temptations of what’s been called a white-savior complex, which starts with an awareness of black suffering, and ends in some kind of attempt to bring rescue. Cannon’s thesis is important because it demonstrates that women of color are capable of bringing about their own survival and flourishing apart from white norms and ethics (Black Womanist Ethics, 4). Second, white people need to learn to become attentive to the lived experiences of survival and self-fulfillment of black women because white men in particular, and white women as well (though sexism against white women is quite clearly an enormous problem), need to learn what it means that certain people suffer multiple layers of oppression, in order to learn how they (white people) might be complicit in that oppression, even without intending to be.

I write these reflections not as an “expert” on these matters—as a white male, being an “expert” on these matters simply is not possible, and being an “expert” is really a white male category anyways, so it’s completely beside the point. But I do write this on my own journey seeking to learn about my own privilege through learning about the lived experiences of survival, resistance, and self-assertion embodied by black women and other people of color throughout history and today. I am grateful for Katie Cannon’s Black Womanist Ethics for the way it systematizes the ethics by which black women have carved out “living space” in a world that would otherwise erase them. I am confident it will prove a valuable resource in my own teaching in the years to come. Indeed, I would be interested to "take it to prison," both literally and theoretically, in search of how her text might illumine the lives of incarcerated women, and vice versa.

Episteme #4