Friday Night Lights is an amazing TV show, and if you’re not watching it, you should be.

I’ve been in love with the show since about halfway through the first season. I, like many fans, grew a little concerned as the early part of second season brought in some elements that seemed out-of-place, but I chock that up to the network getting involved and since those few missteps the show has returned to being one of the most sweet, gut-wrenching, beautiful, raw, poignant and genuinely optimistic shows on television. While I can try to articulate its awesomeness, however, I know others have already said it so much better…

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If you haven’t seen mini-doc A Girl Like Me by Kiri Davis, now is the time.  What you need to know is that many years ago psychologists discovered that both African American and white children preferred fair skinned baby dolls rather than dark skinned baby dolls, and described them as “good” and “bad” dolls, respectively.  Regardless of whether the doll looked like them or not.  Kiri Davis interviewed young black women on their feelings about skin color, and the results are a fantastic D-I-Y social documentary.

In possibly related news, a recent study found that supporters of President Barack Obama see him as more light skinned, and nonsupporters see him as more dark skinned.

The more people thought lightened photographs reflected Obama, “the more likely they were to report voting for him in the actual election,” Balcetis adds, noting that being part of a group that has the same political values motivates people to see their fellow group members positively. (The study, which included men and women, did not “have enough minority participants to see how the issue played out among nonwhites,” says Balcetis.)

What do you make of this video and these findings?  What can be done to change the way we view skin color, without taking the “color blind” approach that denies valuable human diversity?

[This was one of the very first posts at feministhemes, debuting on April 26, 2009.  Memories...]

Feminism has become one of the dirtiest “f-words” in the English language.  Although its specific origin can be debated, American feminism’s big break came as a result of the womens suffrage movement in the early 1900s, wherein white American women fought for the right to vote.  Additional concerns, such as sexual, reproductive, and economic rights were also present at the time, and continue to be key issues in following feminist “waves.”  When most people today think of feminism, they tend to associate the movement with women’s rights activists of the sixties and seventies such as Gloria Steinem, Betty Freidan, and their emphasis on the sexual liberation and labor rights of white American women.  Current feminist movements are continuously challenged – many American’s today see feminism as dead (“You can vote, you can work, what else do you want?”), unnecessary (“Third-wave feminism is superficial and only concerned with pop-culture”), or at the very least divided (“Your cause is less important than xyz”).

One of the most justified criticisms of past feminist movements (as well as many modern feminists) is its exclusivity: what about women of color?  In the 1970s bell hooks, one of the most outspoken feminists of color took up this question.  Although it took years, in 1981 hooks published her first book, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism.  Inspired by her experiences as an African American student at Stanford University, hooks set upon the challenge of compiling a record of the true history of black women in America, unfiltered by white patriarchal historians.

The book begins with an examination of the slave life of black women.  hooks argues that black women were the greatest sufferers from the slave lifestyle, despite the historical understanding that black men were the most put upon as a result of slavery.  hooks explains that historians allege that black men were “emasculated” by slavers, that their inability to “protect” their women was a great loss.  However, she reports that the struggles that black women were forced to endure were much more widespread and painful.  On slave ships, black men were shackled together while black women roamed free on the boats, naked and vulnerable to the sailors.  On land, black men worked long, hard hours in the fields, while black women were expected to work in the fields, in the house, and often in the bed of her owner.  Black men refused to do “woman’s work,” while black women were expected to care for both their men and their owners.  In order to reduce affairs between black men and white women, any child born to a white mother was considered “free,” while children of black mothers and white fathers were born slaves.  In this way, the sexual lives of all women were controlled by the white supremacist patriarchal society, with the greatest sexual freedom allotted to the white man and the least to black woman.

Throughout the book, hooks describes the dual exclusion that black women face in America.  For example, black women were forced to choose to fight by the side of the black man for his vote or the white woman for hers, knowing that either way she would remain politically voiceless.  Later on, black women could choose between the Black Panthers fight for black equality within a patriarchal framework or the feminist movement, which emphasized the rights of upper- and middle-class white women without consideration for women of color. Black women are subjected to sexual discrimination within their racial group, and racial discrimination within their gender group.

Ain’t I a Woman is a difficult book to read.  As a young, white feminist I often felt the need to justify myself to hooks as I read her book.  For example, “I would never do that,” or “This was written almost thirty years ago, its not like that now,” or “But I’m from the north, we were never as bad as the south!”  I felt angry, defensive, and guilty.  I didn’t want to be responsible or accountable for the exclusion of others from a movement that has begun to mean so much to me.  I often wanted to put the book down and walk away, but…  I didn’t.  And as I continue to learn about diversity, race, gender, and politics I will keep bell’s lessons with me, facing the painful and hoping to come through it a better person.  Feminism is a complex and controversial movement, but many young feminists like myself do not see feminism’s primary concern as the rights of privileged White women – we believe that all human beings are created equal and that gender roles and judgments are harmful to men and women alike, across many cultures, and within diverse groups.  Modern feminism seeks to give a voice to the powerless and extend the rights of the privileged to everyone.

To learn more about bell hooks, visit these links, or to purchase Ain’t I a Woman from South End Press click here.

I hope that you were able to take a moment today to think about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and all the other civil rights and peace activists who have made our world so much better at the cost of their own pain, suffering, and sadly untimely deaths.  Feministing has a great list of links to posts about MLK and the importance of his memory, and F-Bomb has a great short bio posted as well.  In case you’d like a refresher, his “I have a dream” speech is below, in it’s entirety.

“As all advocates of feminist politics know most people do not understand sexism or if they do they think it is not a problem. Masses of people think that feminism is always and only about women seeking to be equal to men. And a huge majority of these folks think feminism is anti-male. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media.”

- bell hooks

bell hooks is a noted feminist author, scholar, and social activist.  Her works often target the intersection of sex and race, as in her first book, Ain’t I a Woman?

“Domestic violence is a big secret. No kid goes around and lets people know their parents fight.
Teenage girls can’t tell their parents that their boyfriend beat them up.You don’t dare let your neighbor know that you fight. It’s one of the things we [women] will hide, because it’s embarrassing.”

- Rihanna

Rihanna’s experience with domestic violence played out on the public stage in the past year as her relationship with Chris Brown shook the pop and r&b worlds.  She speaks publicly for the first time about the relationship and fallout here.

1. She values health for health’s sake, not for beauty’s sake.

“Women in particular need to keep an eye on their physical and mental health, because if we’re scurrying to and from appointments and errands, we don’t have a lot of time to take care of ourselves. We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list.”

2. She believes in the importance of identity.

“One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.”

3. She understands the difficulty inherent in being a working mother…

“The work-life balance is a harsh reality for so many women, who are forced every day to make impossible choices. Do they take their kids to the doctor…and risk getting fired? Do they work weekends so they can afford to send their kids to better childcare…even though it means even less time with their families? Do they take another shift at work, so they can pay for piano lessons for their kids…even though it means they have to stop volunteering for the PTA? It just shouldn’t be this difficult to raise healthy families.”

4. …and what that “personal is political” phrase is all about.

“Policies that support families aren’t political issues.  They’re personal.  They’re the causes I carry with me every single day.”

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“I always felt that I wanted to help women, period. As a child I [saw] women really, really suffer terrible, terrible situations, and I vowed as a child to want to do something — anything — that can help them have better self-esteem so that they don’t have to be subjected to men that wanted to kill them.”

- Mary J. Blige

Mary fulfills this vow through her development of and participation in the Mary J. Blige and Steve Stoute Foundation For the Advancement of Women Now, Inc.  FFAWN is dedicated to helping all women gain the confidence and skills they need to reach their full individual potential.

“Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.”

- Alice Walker

Alice Walker is the author of the powerful novel, The Color Purple, which was later turned into an Oscar nominated film.  She has also served as an editor of Ms. magazine, and coined the term “womanist” in contrast to “White” feminism to remember that black women (and all women of minority race/ethnicity and/or low socio-economic status) were ignored and silenced by “white” feminism through its second wave.

A production of To Kill A Mockingbird came to our small town this week, and having reread the book for the first time since 10th grade, I was thrilled to see it!  After finishing the book this summer, I poked my nose around the internet a bit to get a better idea about its critical reception.  I was surprised to learn that although it was originally heralded as a controversial and monumental statement about race relations in the south, the book has not been received favorably by many African Americans or feminists.

In reading the book for the first time in my adult life, I was able to truly comprehend the importance of the trial at hand – perhaps even in the 10th grade I was as naive as Scout, or maybe I just wasn’t that engaged in the reading since it was required.  Reading it after spending two years in a community that is even more homogeneously white than the community in which I grew up, the racial messages of the book were very prominent to me, and I came away feeling like I understood the hubub.  The fear, hatred, and judgment of the unknown, including (or maybe especially) racial differences, have become more visible to me in that time, and I felt the book did a good job of condemning such ignorance.

As excited as I was to see the play, suddenly the criticisms of the novel became clear and understandable to me.  As I sat in the theater, filled with college freshmen required to attend for their Creative Arts and English 1010s, I realized that the supposed triumph over one form of prejudice simply promoted various other forms.  And I feared that even if these homogeneous, pious young adults were paying attention to the most prominent message of the production, racial tolerance, the acceptance of sexism and classism were being reinforced.  What messages would these students really walk away with?

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