History 246 Reading Guide
Black Women in White America: Slavery and Freedom in the 19th century
- Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, “African-American Women’s History and the Metalanguage of Race,” Signs 17.2 (1992), 251-74. JSTOR
Further reading:
- Angela Davis, “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves,” Black Scholar (1971; reprinted 1981), 2-15.
- Suzanne Lebsock, “Free Black Women and the Question of Matriarchy,” Feminist Studies 8 (1983), 271-292.
Questions:
While Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham acknowledges the progress in feminist theory and the value of gender as a category of analysis, she argues that, ironically, current theorists “find little to say about race” (251).
- Why, according to Higginbotham, is that omission ironic? What opportunities are feminist theorists missing?
On page 251, Higginbotham recommends three strategies for making race more integral in feminist analyses of power: “defin[ing] the construction and technologies of race” (251-256); “expos[ing] the role of race as a metalanguage” (256-266); “recogniz[ing] race as providing sites of dialogic exchange and contestation” (266-273).
- How have scholars defined “the construction and ‘technologies’ of race”? What is significant for feminist theory about these definitions?
- What is a “metalanguage”? What is the role of race as a metalanguage? How does she describe racial constructions of gender, class, and sexuality?
- What does she mean when she describes race as a “double-voiced discourse”? What have been the consequences of that discourse for African American women?