by H. Nanjala Nyabola, Pambazuka
‘The Object of racism is no longer the individual but a certain form of existing’ – Frantz Fanon
Where does oppression begin? The above quote is taken from the essay
‘Racism and Culture’ from the collection ‘Towards the African
Revolution’ by Frantz Fanon. Fanon was genius at spotting the many
smaller battles that prevent people from realising their full potential,
weaving together brilliant meta-narratives that demonstrated that
oppression began long before the individual situated himself in the
formal political arena. Fanon rightly argues that oppression is about
structures of power that influence or impact on individual and communal
self-worth, and in this breath I’d like to bring something up that is
decidedly beyond the realm of formal politics.
Over the last few weeks, the question of the woman of colour and her
body has been a recurring theme in my personal conversations. On one
hand, the question of sexuality reared its head as the global (read
North American and European) ‘Slut Walks’ ostensibly designed to insist
that the style of a women’s dress was no invitation for sexual assault.
The question levelled at this movement however is to what extent women
outside Europe and North America view this as an integral part of their
day-to-day life. Which is not to say that sexual assault doesn’t happen
in the global south – that would be a laughable assertion. However, the
vast scale of sexual assault in the DRC for instance emphasises that
rape in many similar communities is an act of political rather than
personal violence – not any more or less grave, just different. I wonder
what the women of Eastern Congo would say to the ‘Slut Walkers’ if they
had a chance?
On the other hand, the question of hair keeps recurring as well. For the
uninitiated, since the era of slavery, when African American women were
forced to cover their hair because it was ‘filthy, or disgusting’,
women in the African community have been debating the social and
political dimensions of relaxers, dreadlocks and natural hair. This is
no trivial matter – for many women the politics of hairstyle is
completely integrated to their self -perception and their status within
their communities. Whether we like it or not, our choice of hairstyle is
almost always interpreted as some kind of political statement, and
almost always intractably linked with the notion of race. Relaxers, it
is argued, are emblematic of the self-loathing internalised by women of
African descent over years of oppression, and indeed Malcolm X has a
wonderful speech available on You Tube on the question of ‘who taught you to hate yourself?’ dealing explicitly with this idea.
These two issues are linked firstly because you see the continuing
tension between race and gender in women of colour. During the
independence/civil rights era, women were often compelled to subjugate
their gender-based rights struggles for the greater good – it was almost
as if being black was harder than being a woman. When you get the
resurgence of the feminist movement in the late 1960s and 1970s, you
find many women stuck between rights issues that emerge from a rather
Western framework (the debate on the public-private divide) and rights
issues that pay no attention to the struggles which women of colour face
against their own men. Postcolonial feminism continues to argue for the
right of women of colour to have their struggles articulated in their
own terms, but modern women of colour are still sensing that they have
to wear different hats to fight each battle, or that they cannot be
fought concurrently.
Secondly, the issues are linked because they emphasise the continuing
struggle over the black woman’s body. The notion of rape as linked to
dressing sexy would seem alien to many women of the global south because
majority of women who are raped in the global south dress no
differently than any other women in their community. By labelling their
movement ‘global’, the Slut Walks – with all their good intentions –
inherently lay claim to the oppression of women’s body in a manner that
many black women may find ahistorical. In the same breath, the politics
of women’s hair is often defined by others – Ngugi wa Thiong’o has
written about women’s hair, Chris Rock has produced a hit movie about
the politics of ‘Good Hair’. A feminist may argue that a black woman has
the right to wear her hair however she wants, while those who stress
racial oppression more may argue that the political dimensions run far
too deep for the decision to be taken lightly.
Fanon talks about how the ‘social constellation, the cultural whole’ is
deeply intertwined with the nature of racism; that as overt racism even
then became less of an acceptable practice, it evolved into cultural
racism. ‘The daily affirmation of superiority’ becomes an implied act
through cultural forms – think of representations of people of colour as
criminals, sexually deviant or generally exotic in popular culture.
Racism is socialised and the process of teaching a people that they are
inherently lesser than a mainstream culture is therefore a process of
oppression. I would argue that the same analysis extends towards women’s
bodies; that as women’s rights issues have gained prominence, the
oppression of women has changed form and become a more cultural
oppression. The sexualisation of women in popular culture as
‘liberation’ should thus be taken with a generous dash of scepticism.
All of which leads to a question that I’m still searching for answers
to: Can African women or women of African descent ever be truly
liberated if they never learn to love their hair as it grows out of
their head?
