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REFERENCES
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African-American
Women'sHistory
and theMetalanguageof Race
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham
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THE METALANGUAGE OF RACE Higginbotham
Definingrace
When the U.S. SupremeCourt had beforeit the task of definingob-
scenity,JusticePotterStewartclaimedthat,whilehe could notintelligibly
defineit, "I know it when I see it."6When we talk about theconceptof
race,mostpeople believethattheyknow it whentheysee it but arriveat
nothingshortof confusionwhen pressedto defineit. Chromosomere-
searchrevealsthefallacyof race as an accuratemeasureof genotypicor
phenotypicdifference betweenhumanbeings.Cross-culturaland histor-
ical studiesof miscegenationlaw reveal shifting, arbitrary,and contra-
dictorydefinitions of race. Literarycritics,as in the collectionof essays
"Race," Writing, and Difference, editedby HenryLouis Gates, compel-
linglypresentrace as the "ultimatetrope of difference"-as artificially
and arbitrarilycontrivedto produceand maintainrelationsofpowerand
subordination.Likewise,historianBarbaraFieldsarguesthatrace is nei-
thernaturalnor transhistorical, but mustratherbe analyzedwithan eye
to its functioningand maintenancewithinspecificcontexts.7
Like genderand class,then,race mustbe seen as a social construction
predicatedupon the recognitionof difference and signifying the simul-
taneous distinguishing and positioningof groupsvis-a-visone another.
More than this,race is a highlycontestedrepresentation of relationsof
power betweensocial categoriesby whichindividualsare identified and
identify themselves.The recognitionof racial distinctions emanatesfrom
and adapts to multipleuses of power in society.Perceivedas "natural"
and "appropriate,"such racial categoriesare strategically necessaryfor
thefunctioning ofpowerin countlessinstitutional and ideologicalforms,
the UnitedStatesfromthe 1960s to the 1980s (New York: Routledge& Kegan Paul,
1986), 68.
Jacobellisv. Stateof Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964).
7
AlthoughFields does not use the term"trope,"her discussionof race parallelsthat
of Gates. HenryLouis Gates,Jr.,ed., "Race," Writing,and Difference(Chicago: Univer-
sityof Chicago Press,1986), esp. articlesby Gates,Jr.,"Introduction:Writing'Race'
and the DifferenceIt Makes," 1-20; AnthonyAppiah,"The UncompletedArgument:
Du Bois and the Illusionof Race," 21-37; and TzvetanTodorov," 'Race,' Writing,and
Culture,"370-80. See also BarbaraJ. Fields,"Ideology and Race in AmericanHistory,"
in Region,Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward,ed.
J.Morgan Kousserand JamesM. McPherson(New York: OxfordUniversity Press,
1982), 143-47.
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13
M. M. Bakhtin,The Dialogic Imagination:Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist,
trans.Caryl Emersonand Michael Holquist (Austin:University of Texas Press,1981),
352.
14 Bakhtin
argues: "Language is not an abstractsystemof normativeformsbut
rathera concreteheteroglotconceptionof the world." For mypurposesof discussion,
would conveymultiple,even conflicting
"race," therefore, meanings(heteroglossia)when
expressedby different groups-the multiplicity of meaningsand intentionsnot simply
renderedbetweenblacks and whites,but withineach of thesetwo groups.See Bakhtin
on "heteroglossia"(293, 352).
s1 Fields,"Race and Ideologyin AmericanHistory,"148-49.
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THE METALANGUAGE OF RACE Higginbotham
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21
Fields,"Ideology and Race in AmericanHistory"(n. 7 above), 156.
22
AbramHarrisand SterlingSpero, The Black Worker:A Studyof theNegro in the
Labor Movement(1931; reprint,New York: Atheneum,1968), 158-61, 167-81; Joe
WilliamTrotter,Black Milwaukee: The Making of an IndustrialProletariat,1915-45
(Urbana: University of IllinoisPress,1985), 13-14, 18, 39-79; Dolores Janiewski,Sis-
terhoodDenied: Race, Gender,and Class in a New South Community(Philadelphia:
TempleUniversity Press,1985), 152-78; JacquelineJones,Labor of Love: Labor of
Sorrow (New York: Basic, 1985), 148, 168, 177-79.
23 See SharonHarley,"For the Good of Familyand Race," Signs:Journal Women
of
in Cultureand Society15, no. 2 (Winter1990): 340-41.
24 PatriciaHill
Collins arguespersuasivelyforthe continuedrole of race in explain-
ing social class positionin her analysisof studiesof contemporaryblack low-income,
female-headedfamilies.In her critiqueof the Moynihanreportand the televisedBill
Moyersdocumentaryon the "vanishingblack family,"Collins arguesthatsocial class is
conceptualizedin both thesestudiesas "an outcomevariable" of race and genderrather
thanthe productof such structuralfactorsas industrialflight,mechanization,inade-
quate schools,etc. ("A Comparisonof Two Workson Black FamilyLife,"Signs 14, no.
4 [Summer1989]: 876-77, 882-84).
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Higginbotham THE METALANGUAGE OF RACE
yearsimmediatelyfollowingEmancipation.JacquelineJonesvividlyex-
poses the ridiculeand hostilitymeted out to black familieswho at-
temptedto removetheirwivesand mothersfromtheworkforceto attend
to theirown households. In contrastto the domesticideal for white
womenof all classes,thelargersocietydeemedit "unnatural,"in factan
"evil," forblack marriedwomen"to play thelady" whiletheirhusbands
supportedthem. In the immediatepostwar South, the role of menial
workeroutsidetheirhomeswas demandedof black women,even at the
cost of physicalcoercion.25
Dolores Janiewskicalls attentionto theracializedmeaningof class in
her studyof women's employmentin a North Carolina tobacco factory
duringthe twentiethcentury.She shows thatrace fracturedthe division
of labor by gender.Southernetiquettedemanded protectionof white
women's "racial honor" and requiredthattheywork underconditions
to thedrudgery
describedas "suitableforladies" in contradistinction and
dirtyworking conditions considered acceptable for black women. Jan-
iewskinotesthatat leastone employerfeltno inhibitionagainstpublicly
admittinghis "brutetreatment"of black femaleemployees.26
The most effectivetool in the discursiveweldingof race and class
proved to be segregationin its myriad institutionaland customary
forms.JimCrow railroad cars, for instance,became strategicsites of
contestationover the conflatedmeaningof class and race: blacks who
could afford"firstclass" accommodationsvehementlyprotestedthe
racial basis forbeingdeniedaccess to them.This is dramaticallyevident
in the case of ArthurMitchell,Democratic congressmanto the U.S.
House of Representatives fromIllinoisduringthe 1930s. Mitchellwas
evicted from first-classrailroad accommodations while traveling
throughHot Springs, Arkansas. Despite his protests,he was forcedto
join his social "inferiors" in a Jim Crow coach with no flushtoilet,
washbasin,runningwater, soap. The transcript
or of thetrialrevealsthe
followingtestimony:
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THE METALANGUAGE OF RACE Higginbotham
ofdifference
whoI was,thatas longas I was a nigger
I couldn'tride
in thatcar.27
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THE METALANGUAGE OF RACE Higginbotham
45 Bakhtin
(n. 13 above), 293, 324.
46 On slave surnames,see HerbertG.
Gutman,The Black Familyin Slaveryand Free-
dom, 1750-1925 (New York: Pantheon,1976), 230-56; also GeorgeP. Cunningham,
"'Called into Existence':Desire, Gender,and Voice in FrederickDouglass's Narrativeof
1845," Differences1, no. 3 (1989): 112-13, 117, 129-31.
47 MartinRobison
Delany wrotein the 1850s of blacks in the UnitedStates:"We are
a nationwithina nation;-as the Poles in Russia, the Hungariansin
Austria,the Welsh,
Irish,and Scotchin the BritishDominions" (see his The Condition,Elevation,Emigra-
tionand Destinyof the Colored People of the UnitedStates,
reprinted. [New York:
Arno, 1969], 209; also W. E. BurghardtDu Bois, The Souls of Black Folks [New York:
WashingtonSquare Press,1970], 3).
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52
See BenedictR. Anderson'sdiscussionofnationas "imagined" in thesenseofits
beinglimited (notinclusive
ofall mankind), sovereign,anda community, inhisImag-
inedCommunities: Reflectionson theOriginandSpreadofNationalism (NewYorkand
London:Verso,1983),14-16.
53 Arthur Penryhn TheLifeand Correspondence
Stanley, ofThomasArnold, D.D.,
12thed. (London1881),2:324,quotedandcitedin ReginaldHorsman, RaceandMani-
festDestiny:TheOriginsofAmerican RacialAnglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
vardUniversity Press,1981),66.
54 George Fredricksondiscusses"romantic racialism"withinthecontext of"benign"
viewsofblackdistinctiveness.Thisviewwas upheldbyromanticism, abolitionism, and
evangelical andshouldbe distinguished
religion from"scientific"explanationsor cul-
turalinterpretations
thatvilified
blacksas beastsandunworthy ofhumandignity (The
BlackImagein theWhiteMind[NewYork:Harper& Row,1972],97-99, 101-15,
125-26).
55W.E. B. Du Boisstated:"Butwhileracedifferences havefollowed mainly physical
racelines,yetno merephysical distinctions
wouldreallydefine or explainthedeeper
differences-thecohesivenessandcontinuity ofthesegroups.Thedeeperdifferences are
spiritual,
psychical,differences-undoubtedly basedon thephysical butinfinitely
tran-
scendingthem"("TheConservation ofRaces,"in W.E. B. Du BoisSpeaks:Speeches
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Higginbotham THE METALANGUAGE OF RACE
and Addresses,1890-1919, ed. PhilipS. Foner [New York: Pathfinder, 1970], 77-79,
84); see also Appiah's critiqueof Du Bois (n. 7 above), 23-29.
56
FrantzFanon offersthisdefinition of nationalculturein contradistinction to one
based on "an abstractpopulismthatbelievesit can discoverthe people's truenature"
(The Wretchedof the Earth [New York: Grove, 1968], 233).
57 RaymondWilliamsasserts:"Language has thento be seen as a persistentkind of
creationand re-creation:a dynamicpresenceand a constantregenerative process"
(Marxismand Literature[New York: OxfordUniversity Press,1977], 31).
58 See Bracey,Meier,and Rudwick,eds. (n. 48 above), xxvi-xxx; Winantand Omi
(n. 5 above), 38-51.
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tionablereputation;thesedegeneratesare responsibleforeverydiscrim-
inationwe suffer."61
On a host of levels,racial upliftstood at odds withthedailypractices
and aesthetictastes of many poor, uneducated,and "unassimilated"
black men and women dispersedthroughoutthe rural South or newly
huddledin urbancenters.62 The politicsof "respectability" disavowed,in
oftenrepressiveways, much of the expressivecultureof the "folk,"for
example,sexual behavior,dressstyle,leisureactivity, music,speechpat-
terns,and religiousworshippatterns.Similarclass and sexual tensions
betweenthediscourseof theintelligentsia (the"New Negro") and thatof
the "people" (the "folk" turnedproletariatin the northernurban con-
text)appear in Hazel Carby'sdiscussionof black womennovelistsof the
Harlem Renaissanceduringthe 1920s.63
Today,themetalanguage ofracecontinues to bequeathitsproblematic leg-
acy.While its discursiveconstruction of realityintotwo opposingcamps-
blacks versus whites or Afrocentricversus Eurocentricstandpoints-
providesthe basis forresistanceagainstexternalforcesof black subor-
dination,it tendsto forestallresolutionof problemsof gender,class, and
sexual orientationinternalto black communities. The resolutionof such
differencesis also requisiteto theliberationand well-beingof "the race."
Worse yet,problemsdeemed too far astrayof respectability are sub-
sumed within a cultureof dissemblance. The AIDS crisisserves as a case
in point,withAIDS usuallycontextualizedwithina Manichean opposi-
tionof good versusevilthattranslatesintoheterosexuality versushomo-
sexualityor wholesome living versus intravenous drug use. At a time
a
when AIDS is leading killer of black women and their children in
impoverishedinner-city neighborhoods, educational and support strate-
61 National
BaptistConvention,Journalof the Twenty-fourth Annual Session of the
National BaptistConventionand the FifthAnnual Session of the Woman's Convention,
Held in Austin,Texas, September14-19, 1904 (Nashville:National BaptistPublishing
as both subversiveand
Board, 1904), 324; also, I discussthe politicsof respectability
conservativein EvelynBrooks Higginbotham,RighteousDiscontent:The Women's
Movementin theBlack BaptistChurch,1880-1920 (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versityPress,1992), in press,chap. 7.
62 Houston A. Baker,Jr.,in his discussionof the black vernacular, characterizesthe
"quotidian sounds of black everyday life" as both a defiantand entrancingvoice (Afro-
AmericanPoetics: Revisionsof Harlem and the Black Aesthetic[Madison: University of
WisconsinPress,1988], 95-107); see also Houston A. Baker,Jr.,Blues, Ideologyand
Afro-American Literature:A VernacularTheory(Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1984), 11-13. Similarly, JohnLangstonGwaltneycalls the "folk" cultureof today's
citiesa "core black culture,"whichis "more than ad hoc synchronicadaptivesurvival."
Gwaltneylinksits values and epistemologyto a long peasant tradition.See Gwaltney,
ed. (n. 50 above), xv-xvii.
63
Carby,Reconstructing Womanhood(n. 49 above), 163-75; also HenryLouis
Gates,Jr.,"The Trope of a New Negro and the Reconstruction of the Image of the
Black," Representations 24 (Fall 1988): 129-55.
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THE METALANGUAGE OF RACE Higginbotham
Conclusion
64 See Bruce
Lambert,"AIDS in Black Women Seen as LeadingKiller,"New York
Times (July11, 1990); ErnestQuimbyand Samuel R. Friedman,"Dynamicsof Black
MobilizationagainstAIDS in New York City,"Social Problems36 (October 1989):
407-13; EvelynnHammonds,"Race, Sex, Aids: The Constructionof 'Other,'" Radical
America29 (November-December1987): 28-36; also Brandt(n. 42 above), 186-92.
65 Anna JuliaCooper stated: "When and whereI enterin the
quiet,undisputed
dignityof mywomanhood withoutviolenceand withoutsuingor special patronage,
thenand therethe whole Negro race enterswithme" (A Voice fromthe South,reprint
of the 1892 ed. [New York: Negro Universities Press,1969], 31).
66 Alice Walker,In Search of Our Mothers'Gardens: WomanistProse
(New York:
Harcourt,Brace,Jovanovich,1983), xi-xii; also see, e.g., Elsa BarkleyBrown'sintro-
ductorypages and historicaltreatment of Maggie Lena Walker,black Richmondbanker
in the earlytwentiethcentury, whichreflectthisperspective("WomanistConsciousness:
Maggie Lena Walkerand the IndependentOrder of Saint Luke," Signs 14, no. 3 [Spring
1989]: 610-15, 630-33).
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Departmentof History
of Pennsylvania
University
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