WOC vs. Black Women

Thoughts on the fallacy of solidarity & the erasure of black women

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An observed pattern about the reception of the film Girlhood when it was released in the U.S a few months ago: three think pieces on the film, which focuses on the lives of four dark-skinned black French girls living in a housing project in the Parisian banlieue, written by non-black women of color for three prominent websites: The Hairpin, BuzzFeed, and Jezebel.

The director of Girlhood, Céline Sciamma, has admitted in interviews that the film isn’t really about being a black girl in France.  My review of the film argued that it failed to be about black girlhood for a very simple reason: Sciamma didn’t have the experience, the imagination, the vision and empathy necessary to represent this girlhood in its complexity. If the film were a radical exploration of black French girlhood in the banlieue, watching it would have been a novel, disturbing and alienating experience.  Consequently, it wouldn't have been so easy for non-black women to seize the narrative of the film to talk about themselves.

Why did these writers herald the film as a site of progressive representation of blackness despite Céline Sciamma's illuminating statements, despite the film itself and above all despite the criticisms of the film made by black French girls? Why did they keep praising the film after Céline Sciamma said that it was a traditional coming-of-age story, using alarming words like “universality,” confirming black French girls contextualized suspicion that this was just another white interpretation of the black suburban experience in France? Why was the spectatorship of non-black women of color centered instead of that of black women?  What lead to this  usurpation?

The truth is that the film, being uncurious and vague about the black bodies and the suburban space it is looking at, was the fertile ground for the kind of appropriative, corny and self-indulgent pieces that were written about it by non-black women of color. The film used and decontextualized black, suburban French bodies to make a boring and botched statement on the universality of girlhood and these writers used and decontextualized a film that used and decontextualized black French bodies to make their own points about “brown girl exclusivity,” black female friendships or the importance of representation.

This specific lane swerving is not an isolated case but it was the first time that I seriously started asking myself questions about the meaning of solidarity between black women and non-black women of color.  How does solidarity serve black women? How does this solidarity manifest itself concretely in the world?

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I’ve been fascinated by the totalitarian way these writers say “brown” as an alternative for “POC” and “Black.” To me, the systematic use of this word is how their subconscious desire to erase blackness expresses itself within their language. What does this brown identity mean to a Black woman? I have personally no desire to be described or self-identify as brown. Brown is abstract, it doesn't feel inclusive and it is not. Brown is a euphemism. Why should I accept and bow down to an identity that doesn’t describe or acknowledge my reality? I am Black. Black is specific. Black centers me. All identities are performative but claiming “brown” would be like wearing a piece of cloth that was definitely not designed for me. And that piece of cloth would likely be a cloak of invisibility. It feels more like a trap than an identity to me but, I can see why Black people might find this identity desirable.  It temporarily relieves you from the burden of blackness.  

Indeed, why would Black women embrace WOC solidarity if that means being thrown under the bus and being violently erased in its name? What are the benefits? There are probably a select few black women who enable that appropriation (editors, friends etc.), and who are profiting off of this situation. What else? Universalism and colorblindness can be comforting ideas. They say: we are all the same, we all share the same struggles. I am you and you are me. I can therefore talk about you because I am also talking about me. And therefore Black women are not different. We can deny for a small moment that we are not the abject and deviant bodies society tells us we are. We are just like everyone else! That is not true. Not every woman of color has had their body exposed, hypersexualized and then dismembered after death to be shown in a museum for decades. Not every woman of color is subjected to police brutality the way black women are. Not every woman of color is being made fun of, caricatured, shamed and stigmatized the way black women are. No one experiences the trials and woes of black womanhood except black women. No one wants their body to experience that. So why would you be entitled to it if you’re not a black woman?

The black experience is not universal. Black girlhood is not universal. A specific kind of racism and misogyny inform our experience. While it is true that people of color share the experience of marginalization, black women are on the periphery of the margins. The singularity of our experiences makes it almost impossible to appropriate them without diluting them, narrowing them, erasing them. Something that I have been confronting is that being a black girl, in the West, is very lonely. Being a French black girl in the suburbs of a major city is painfully lonely. Loneliness characterizes the human condition but it seems that black women are made to be conscious of this truth sooner than everyone else.

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Two cathartic moments which made me decide to write this piece:

Azealia Banks’ tears when she talked about Iggy Azalea's “cultural smudging” on HOT 97 have been haunting me ever since I have watched that video. Here was a young black woman, who has been derided, ridiculed, labeled as crazy/angry, being vulnerable and voicing her feelings about an issue that obviously hurt her. She was saying out loud, in a way that felt uncensored and free, what a lot of black women have felt for a long time.

Then there was this series of tweets by Sara Bivigou. Sara stated succinctly how I and other black women had been feeling about the myth of WOC solidarity for quite some time. What struck me again, was the sudden and public expression of anger and disbelief by another black woman. Before these tweets, these conversations I and other black women from different parts of the world had on this subject were contained in group DMs, rage emails or subtweets. And I thought about the private aspect of these discussions, the fact that we couldn't state clearly and publicly how we felt about solidarity between black women and non-black women of color. I realized that we wouldn't speak out loud because we were scared. We've seen other black women being labeled as “toxic” for voicing their opinions on similar issues: the stealing of their work they deal with regularly and the hypocrisy of solidarity in activist and academic spaces.

By writing this piece I wanted our conversations to come out of their forced confinement. I am tired of whispering and self-censorship. I’m tired of being passive. I’m tired of containing words that should be released. I have nothing to lose.

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Appropriation of blackness has been documented. We’ve seen it in music (Iggy Azalea, Macklemore, Diplo, Miley Cyrus, Eminem). We see it in terrifying and metaphysical ways with the Kardashian & Jenner clan. We see it in film (Tarantino). We observe it it in academia and in the fashion industry. However, in cultural writing spaces, because it is more abstract and therefore more difficult to chart, because what’s happening in this realm is appropriation on an existential level, it is rarely discussed.  Anachronistic, contrived and manipulative concepts such as "POC solidarity” make it harder to denounce the appropriation of blackness happening in non-black POC communities. It is easier to point the finger at white appropriators like the ones cited above than to call out brown cultural writers like Durga Chew-Bose, Fariha Roisin or Ayesha Siddiqi because what they do is always wrapped in good intentions, always hidden behind faux-semblants of unity and solidarity.

It’s easier to denounce Iggy Azalea than, say, Heems for instance. But really, what’s the difference?

Heems is a revealing case, a cautionary tale. As my friend Alesia pointed out, Heems, in various interviews, consistently uses his brown working-class background to justify his presence in hip-hop. The same Heems who arrogantly defended his right to use the n-word and aggressively shut down black women who called him out on it.

It is not solidarity which drives brown writers and non black entertainers like Heems or M.I.A. to usurp black experiences, expressions, narratives arts, icons, identities or cultures. As Alesia said, it is antiblackness, as a structure, as an institution and a pervasive, global force which enables and naturalizes this entitlement, that make them believe it is right and natural to appropriate black identity and experience.

Social media has exacerbated the idea that blackness is common property, a public good that must be shared and consumed by everyone. A public good to be profited off of — unless you're actually black. Black people shouldn't own anything. Nothing belongs to us — not even what we produce and invent. Not even our experience, our existence. Everything ours is yours (is there even such as thing as “ours”?). Blackness is constantly flied over by vultures, under threat of being decomposed, consumed and annihilated. When we do claim ownership, we are told we are venal, greedy. When we refuse this looting of our identity, experience and culture we are selfish and capricious.

Well, I am refusing.  I am claiming my experience as mine. I am asking for black women to claim their experiences as their own. In an antiblack and misogynistic context there isn’t such a thing as being a capricious or territorial black woman. Our experience is the territory on which we should be sovereign. The loneliness that comes with being a black woman and the apathy the rest of the world has for our existence make us the only witnesses to our lives and it should afford us the right to be the only authorities on our experiences.

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If these writers and serial lane swervers limited their thoughts on Girlhood, Kanye West, Pam Grier,  Issa Rae or black beauty  to a few Tumblr text posts, this would (almost) be a non-issue. But they are most certainly paid (or trying to get paid) to write on these various black subjects. They accumulate capital off of the back of black people. Doesn't this sound boringly familiar? They get the money and the social recognition they are craving for as women of color writers by speaking over black women. Meanwhile, black women, from whom we expect so much labor, who are simultaneously ostracized and asked to exist for everyone but themselves, are rarely paid and recognized, even symbolically.

Being a black woman in the West is laborious. Existing as a black woman is laborious. If we are not being paid for it, can we at least be allowed to claim this particular labor as our own? Apparently not.

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Why wouldn’t black women talk about how “WOC solidarity” makes them feel uncomfortable? Fear. Inevitable backlash, but also: loneliness. If even non-black WOC are against us (whether this is intentional or not, is no longer the question), then we are alone. We only have ourselves. And then of course there is the stereotype threat, the backlash. What do they call us when we dare to speak and challenge the status quo? Toxic. Aggressive, angry, paranoid, hostile, bitter.

I am not afraid of sounding paranoid, hostile, angry, enraged or even cynical. Paranoia, anger, hostility — I’d actually use the word oppositionality — and cynicism have been good tools to analyze and notice patterns, to come to conclusions, to make sense of this extremely absurd world I live in.

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Are we supposed to feel grateful or flattered?

I only feel despair and disgust.

We are reduced to passive spectators whose voices are despoiled, asked to applaud and watch brown writers patting themselves on the back for pretending to care about black women’s humanity. Do they have any idea of what it looks like from where the rest of us stand? Maybe they believe that they are extending a hand. The intended results might be solidarity and inclusivity, and it might be within the small and self-absorbed writing bubbles these writers navigate in, but it produces quite the opposite: exclusion not exclusivity.  

There is a dearth of published and paid black writers. There aren't enough spaces given to black film, art, music critics for you to think that you can speak over us and center yourself on issues that specifically concern black people.

Black women should have been paid to write on Girlhood. In France, thanks to institutional and constitutional colorblind ideology, most of the reviews were written by white men. In the U.S., thanks to WOC colorblindness and solidarity, most of the acclaimed and shared reviews written for so-called inclusive spaces were written by non-black women of color.  

(Ironically, one of the only good and necessary reviews of the film written for a mainstream American publication was written by Richard Brody, a white man, for the New Yorker.)

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Writing as a black woman is hard. We feel like what we have to say, especially when it’s not wrapped in solidarity or brown girl colorblindness rhetoric i.e. when we radically center black women and write for black women, will not be heard. Our words, our voices are not valued. Like a lot of writers, we struggle with self-doubt, anxiety, mental illness. But don’t get us wrong, writing is hard, but it’s not impossible for us. We can write, we have the imagination, the sensitivity, the intellectual capacities to do so. We can write and we are writing despite erasure, despite the devaluation, despite being mischaracterized and threatened by stereotypes. We deal with censorship in so many ways. WOC colorblindness has subtly become one of them.

Personally, I don’t want anything to do with the system you’re proposing because it is based on and reproduces inequality.  I don’t want to be part of the select few fetishized black writers who are allowed in this system if that means ostracizing other black women writers and censoring them for a career. I do not want to invest energy and affects in “solidarity” if it is doomed to fail black women.

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I do not care about the pictures of black celebrities plastered all over your blog. I do not care about your Rihanna and Kanye West worshipping.   I don’t care about your black friends. More than anything, I do not care about your compulsive James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Claudia Rankine and bell hooks quoting. It doesn’t signify anything. It doesn’t demonstrate that you have challenged your antiblackness. Fetishization is not love, it’s not respect.  Turning black people into figurines and objects that you can use, and throw away as soon as you are done with them is not appreciation.

Here is what I want: instead of jumping on any opportunity to voice your “enthusiasm” for everything black, you should study the weird, neurotic, utilitarian relationship you have with blackness. You can take the Kardashians with you. Until then, until you do this introspective and analytical work, until you decolonize your idea and practice of solidarity, I’d very much like for you to stay away from us.

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Thanks to Derica, Alesia, Fatima and Sara for the feedback, editing and love.