FEATURE:
Feminist Icons
PHOTO CREDIT: Elaine Chung
and I wanted to spend some time with a feminist icon I have recently discovered. Someone whose work I am compelled to explore in depth. The Chicago-born author and activist is someone who you need to read. Mikki Kendall’s work focuses on, among other things, current events, the politics of food, and the history of the feminist movement. I am currently reading her most recent book, 2020’s Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot. I want to highlight interviews with Kendall. An extraordinary voice and writer whose word have moved me. I want to start out with a fascinating 2020 interview from Esquire. An author who discussed “Breonna Taylor, coronavirus' disproportionate effect on women of color, and how feminism has to change”, one of the objectives of her work and Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot is that people stop getting more and making sure everyone has enough:
“In Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot, writer and feminist scholar Mikki Kendall writes, “We rarely talk about basic needs as a feminist issue. Food insecurity and access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. Instead of a framework that focuses on helping women get basic needs met, all too often the focus is not on survival but on increasing privilege. For a movement that is meant to represent all women, it often centers on those who already have most of their needs met.”
This is the thesis of Hood Feminism, an urgent and essential text about the failure of modern feminism to address the needs of all but a few privileged women. Hood Feminism is a searing indictment of whitewashed, Lean In feminism, with Kendall calling for the movement to embrace inclusivity, intersectionality, and anti-racism. In powerful, eloquent essays, Kendall highlights how the movement’s myopia has failed Black women, Indigenous women, and trans women, among others, and how feminism must shift its focus away from increasing privilege in favor of solving issues that shape the daily lives of women everywhere.
As a long-overdue reckoning about racism and police brutality grips a nation already plagued by a pandemic, the issues of access and equality that Kendall highlights in Hood Feminism have been drawn into sharper relief. Women of color have been disproportionately targeted by the cascading effects of the pandemic, at once more likely to be unemployed and more likely to work in the line of fire as essential workers. So too are women of color subjected to police violence, with Black women suffering an epidemic of sexual assault at the hands of police officers. From her home in Chicago, Kendall spoke with Esquire about the murder of Breonna Taylor, the hard choices facing low-income women during the pandemic, and the lasting changes feminism must make in order to move into a bold, inclusive future.
Esquire: You write about how the feminism we too often see represented in the media is very privileged and whitewashed. How do we steer away from white, Girl Boss feminism and re-educate the public about the real meaning of feminism that can work for everybody?
Mikki Kendall: There's nothing wrong with wanting the power to change your life. However, there is something wrong with wanting the power to oppress other people, so the important thing is to shift the focus from feminism as opportunity for advancement of the individual back to feminism as opportunity for everyone. At the beginning of feminism, we were talking about opportunities for women as a whole, even though racism has always been a problem for feminism. We have to pivot back to the idea that equality for all is not the same as equality to oppress. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a boss, but what kind of boss are you going to be? If you think, “I want to be in charge,” and your next thought isn't, “So I can pay my employees a living wage,” you need to ask yourself why you want to be in charge.
ESQ: You mention the beginning of feminism. What are some of the most common places that women's studies departments go wrong in how they teach feminist ideas and feminist history?
MK: One of the most common flaws is that the focus tends to be on the idea that white women invented feminism in the late 1800s. The Seneca Falls conference is often pegged as one of the first places where modern feminism happened, but the women they got those ideas from already had these rights. It's not that modern feminism was born when white women found out about it—it's that feminism was already happening in a lot of communities and was being oppressed.
The part that academic feminism erases is that low-income white women always had to work. Early big-name feminists like Susan B. Anthony came from a relatively privileged background; what they wanted was to be able to work in a way that allowed them to control their finances and their futures, because they were seeing other people with less have more power over their own lives. There’s a weird tendency in gender studies to situate the idea of equality in a place where upper middle-class white women discovered a concept as it was already happening for others, as opposed to situating it in a place where low-income women of color either already had it or were working toward it. Then well-off white women figured it out and took over what was already in the works.
ESQ: You write about how we have to unlearn the narratives of white supremacy, saying, “As feminists, we need to take critical, radical measures in listening to women in the poorest communities about what they want and need instead of projecting narratives of ignorance onto them.” What are those critical, radical measures of listening?
MK: Eve Ensler did a project where she was in the Congo going to see women who needed surgery to correct fistulas. She described in lurid detail what the rooms looked like and their lack of privacy, without considering that she was contributing to the lack of privacy. She was talking to the doctors, but she wasn't really listening to the women, because she wasn't really talking to the women. It was a really offensive piece, but it made me think: what might those women have to say about what was happening to their own bodies? We don't know. We barely even know their names. One of the radical things would be to consider that the world doesn't need you to speak for someone who was marginalized. The world needs you to give someone who was marginalized some money, and then to tell people to listen, and then to actually listen for yourself. Go from there in terms of what policies you vote for and what politicians you listen to, with the idea that the things that make life better for the folks with the least are more important than you having more of the excess you already have.
There was a woman in New York who was very upset because her kid had been studying for a test that was outlawed due to racial bias. She said it wasn’t about race, but it never seemed to click for her that she was upset because the playing field had been equaled. Her focus was on the fact that her kid wouldn’t get to be special, as opposed to the idea that maybe all the schools should be as good as this one or that all the kids should have access to opportunities. The radical pivot is to stop thinking about how to get more and to start thinking about how we can make sure everyone has enough. It sounds like a really simplistic idea, but as someone who's been parenting and dealing with public schools for a really long time, I’ve noticed how some of the things that come up at school board meetings make you realize: it's never occurred to people that maybe if every school was good, we wouldn't have to fight over space in these schools”.
There are a couple of other pieces I want to include before wrapping up. I am really looking forward to reading what Mikki Kendall writes next. There were some really interesting questions asked by Marie Clare in their 2020 interview. Kendall explained and discussed “how feminist movement has largely ignored women of color”. I would urge anyone who has not read Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women White Feminists Forgot to check it out. It is a book that, once picked up, you will not want to put down:
“MC: Was that a moment that helped shape your theory of feminism?
MK: Yes. But it's not like that was the only time—there have been various points in my life when I have felt like feminism was not for me or spoke to me. A lot of feminist texts, especially academically centered texts, engage with low income Black women who are single mothers like we're objects, like we're problems to solve.
I really wanted to talk about what I saw day to day, as opposed to what people think happens. There's this weird narrative that the hood is a terrible place, and that no one takes care of anyone and you're out there struggling by yourself. The reality for poverty, whether you're in the inner city or a rural area, is that you are with your community all the time. You're all working together, because otherwise you're not going to make it.
MD: You argue that feminism has largely ignored the problems that many Black women and women in poverty face: things like food security and education. Why is it crucial to view those problems through a feminist lens?
MK: When we say a feminist movement is for women, it's supposed to advance equality for all women. But then we say that these issues that only some women face [like food insecurity or education] are someone else's problem. Well, then we're not a movement for all women. We're a movement for women who want to be a CEO, we're a movement for women who want equality with white men. We're a movement for a lot of things, apparently, but we're not a movement for women who need support in their struggles. Then, mainstream feminism often turns to these women and says, Why aren't you showing up for us? Solidarity can't be a one way street.
We're a movement for a lot of things, apparently, but we're not a movement for women who need support in their struggles.
MC: Can you describe your relationship with the word solidarity?
MK: I think it's a great idea to have each other's backs, but it seems like often the actual having of the back is more likely to happen between communities of color and between feminists of color.
I feel like sometimes the concept of solidarity becomes a trap. It's not that it's take a penny, leave a penny in terms of support. I understand sometimes it's going to be 60–40. But when your idea is 99–1, that's not solidarity.
MC: Why is prioritizing intersectionality crucial?
MK: At this point, there's a weird sub narrative. We think somehow that all women are safer regardless of race, right? Really, women, especially women of color, aren't any safer [than men]. They're in more danger. And in some cases, like for indigenous women, there are higher levels of risk for certain crimes like sexual assault.
People are starting to realize that those women aren't safe. You can find any number of mainstream feminists who will be happy to tell you about the work they've done in the Congo or in India. Then when you start asking them about educational access in America, or about gun violence that particularly targets girls who are often of the same racial background as the ones that they feel like they can go save, [feminists] don't seem to recognize that [those American girls are] people. Some of that is definitely about being able to go and feed this white [savior] complex and feel good about yourself.
You might also have to face the fact that the people oppressing women of color are your neighbors. Are your relatives. Are you. There's a point where I think it's almost painful for feminism to look at the work it didn't do. It's easier in some ways to go clean up someone else's house than to clean your own”.
ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: QuickHoney
I am going to end with a feature from Chicago Mag from last month. I have not included everything from the feature, though I would encourage people to read it all. An author I am quite new to but am determined to explore in greater depth. Mikki Kendall’s background and upbringing was, at times, hugely challenging. The first point, where Kendall writes how spite is fuel is especially commendable and empassioned:
“■ Spite is fuel. People like to tell Black girls what they cannot and will never be able to do. And I’m like, Oh, OK, well, now I’m going to have to show you. There’s a saying, “Those who cannot hear will feel,” and I like to make sure people feel it.
■ When I wrote Hood Feminism, people said, “The hood’s not like this.” I don’t know what your experience was, but in my neighborhood, everybody knew everybody. The teachers knew our parents. My grandmother and my vice principal knew each other from school. There were these labyrinth interconnections where they went to the same churches. Not that it’s a good political practice, but a weird facet of segregation is that it binds people together.
■ When I was 8, an aunt’s ex-husband put a loaded gun to my head to make a point about money. He was going to shoot me. My other aunt was in her nightie with a bottle of barbecue sauce — Open Pit — and this man is going off because he’s decided her sister owes him money. He’s drunk. She tells him, essentially, “Motherfucker, if you crack it, I’m coming.” And she’s swinging this bottle of barbecue sauce. She’s five feet tall and a demon. I think he looked in her face and truly believed that even if he managed to kill me, he wasn’t leaving that house. I still don’t eat Open Pit.
■ I once told my grandmother, who was born in 1924, that I wanted to drop out of high school and take the GED. I was 15. She had just had a radical mastectomy, and I don’t know to this day how she did it, but that old lady raised up an arm that didn’t have no strength to choke the shit out of me. I got the full “Hope and the Dream of the Slave” speech. If I tell that to somebody Black of a certain generation, they’re going to be like, “Oh, you fucked up.”
■ Early on, I would get upset, and my husband would be like, “This is completely disproportionate to what is happening.” And I had to learn that everything doesn’t require the top of the pops, right? But then he met the rest of my family, and he was like, “Oh, you’re doing way better than I would expect”.
I will end things there. I want to give a bit of an introduction to Mikki Kendall. Go and read Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women White Feminists Forgot and also check out 2016’s Hidden Youth: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History and 2019’s Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists: A Graphic History of Women's Fight for Their Rights. A phenomenal writer who has dissected and discussed the history of the feminist movement, this is an essential voice that you…
NEED to know.