Feminism GRADED FOR A LEVEL
Race -✔✔✔A social construction
- Imposing social meanings onto real and/or imagined physiological characteristic
(superiority/inferiority)
- A way to legitimize the colonial subjugation/subordination of European colonized and continue to deny
them access to resources
- Racism in engrained in nation building
- Seen as static/fixed, inherent and unchangeable
- Socially grounded in politics, capitalism, and unequal social relations among different groups of people
- Maintained by dominant elites
- Only exists in social meaning
- Organizing feature of society
Race and the Construction of the Canadian State -✔✔✔Constructed around a master race
- Immigrants: Cheap workers that are easy to take advantage of, will do work that no one else will
- Suffragettes and first wave feminists even ignored the plight of anyone who wasn't a white privileged
woman
- Hatred of aboriginals, residential schools to discipline first nations children and make them assimilate
- Aboriginal women seen as dirty, promiscuous, not worthy of having children.
Black Feminism -✔✔✔Precursor to anti-racist feminist approaches
- 1980s: Critique of white second wave feminist movement, and being silenced in these movements
- bell hooks: Ain't I a woman? Critique of feminism, as well as mainstream black movements
- Triple Jeopardy: Race/Gender/Class. Multiplying and shaping factors to produce a particular experience
(Interlocking systems of oppression that distance them from black men/white women)
- Standpoint theory
,Anti-Racist Feminism -✔✔✔1990s transformation of Black Feminist thought
- Black lesbians argue that black feminist thought was not about them. Other black women followed suit
- Also wanted to highlight and include other minority women's experiences
- Explored issues such as shadism
- Third wave racialized feminism, acknowledges multiple subjectivities
Anti-Racist Feminist Approach -✔✔✔Looks at different minority women and their particular
experiences
- There are different ways to be oppressed, the state oppresses women of color in different ways
- Women of color are oppressed by capitalism, exploited for cheap labor through their marginalized
status
Takes intersectionality into account
- Studies things such as immigration policies, power structures, exploitation of labor
Democratic Racism -✔✔✔Erasure of privilege and lack of using discourse such as "colorblind," making
racism difficult to pinpoint, especially systemic racism
Justification of inherent conflict between liberal values of justice and fairness, and racist attitudes of
system/individuals
- Most Canadians are racist to some degree, but also champion democratic values by justifying these
contrary ideologies
Environmental Racism -✔✔✔Part of democratic racism
- Examines spaces dangerous to live in, because they are turned into waste dumps, harming things such
as drinkable water
- Who lives in these places and how did that happen?
- Example: Native reserves, where natives got the worst land
- Denial of access to resources
, - Africville
Africville -✔✔✔Where black loyalists would receive their free land that was promised after the War of
1812
- Soon was surrounded by a prison, dumps, disposal pits, industrial factories, and an infectious disease
hospital
- Halifax refused to install proper sewage and sanitation here, or maintain roads
- Destroyed because it was too hazardous to people's health, Africville residents forcibly removed
- Environmental Racism
- City was turned into a slum. Nonresidents blamed the inhabitants
Violence against Women of Color -✔✔✔Civilizing" colonial peoples in forced conversion, rape, public
beatings and humiliation, denial of rights
- Violence as perpetrated by the state, police are not there to protect them
Women in Prison -✔✔✔- Black and aboriginal women seen as inherently criminal and pathological.
Majority of female prison population, usually for sex work and drugs. Receive harsher sentences
- Hampers family (children get taken away), employment and changes for future employment
- Many crimes women of color get sentenced for are a reflection of their poverty
Whiteness -✔✔✔Study of white women and how whiteness shaped their subjectivity
- Whiteness has no distinct identity, invisible, just seen as normal
- Only sees itself in the reflection of the other
- White women can oppress and exploit women of color through domestic labor
- "White" as norm, default, colorless, without subjectivity
- Other races judged against default "norm" of whiteness
Race -✔✔✔A social construction
- Imposing social meanings onto real and/or imagined physiological characteristic
(superiority/inferiority)
- A way to legitimize the colonial subjugation/subordination of European colonized and continue to deny
them access to resources
- Racism in engrained in nation building
- Seen as static/fixed, inherent and unchangeable
- Socially grounded in politics, capitalism, and unequal social relations among different groups of people
- Maintained by dominant elites
- Only exists in social meaning
- Organizing feature of society
Race and the Construction of the Canadian State -✔✔✔Constructed around a master race
- Immigrants: Cheap workers that are easy to take advantage of, will do work that no one else will
- Suffragettes and first wave feminists even ignored the plight of anyone who wasn't a white privileged
woman
- Hatred of aboriginals, residential schools to discipline first nations children and make them assimilate
- Aboriginal women seen as dirty, promiscuous, not worthy of having children.
Black Feminism -✔✔✔Precursor to anti-racist feminist approaches
- 1980s: Critique of white second wave feminist movement, and being silenced in these movements
- bell hooks: Ain't I a woman? Critique of feminism, as well as mainstream black movements
- Triple Jeopardy: Race/Gender/Class. Multiplying and shaping factors to produce a particular experience
(Interlocking systems of oppression that distance them from black men/white women)
- Standpoint theory
,Anti-Racist Feminism -✔✔✔1990s transformation of Black Feminist thought
- Black lesbians argue that black feminist thought was not about them. Other black women followed suit
- Also wanted to highlight and include other minority women's experiences
- Explored issues such as shadism
- Third wave racialized feminism, acknowledges multiple subjectivities
Anti-Racist Feminist Approach -✔✔✔Looks at different minority women and their particular
experiences
- There are different ways to be oppressed, the state oppresses women of color in different ways
- Women of color are oppressed by capitalism, exploited for cheap labor through their marginalized
status
Takes intersectionality into account
- Studies things such as immigration policies, power structures, exploitation of labor
Democratic Racism -✔✔✔Erasure of privilege and lack of using discourse such as "colorblind," making
racism difficult to pinpoint, especially systemic racism
Justification of inherent conflict between liberal values of justice and fairness, and racist attitudes of
system/individuals
- Most Canadians are racist to some degree, but also champion democratic values by justifying these
contrary ideologies
Environmental Racism -✔✔✔Part of democratic racism
- Examines spaces dangerous to live in, because they are turned into waste dumps, harming things such
as drinkable water
- Who lives in these places and how did that happen?
- Example: Native reserves, where natives got the worst land
- Denial of access to resources
, - Africville
Africville -✔✔✔Where black loyalists would receive their free land that was promised after the War of
1812
- Soon was surrounded by a prison, dumps, disposal pits, industrial factories, and an infectious disease
hospital
- Halifax refused to install proper sewage and sanitation here, or maintain roads
- Destroyed because it was too hazardous to people's health, Africville residents forcibly removed
- Environmental Racism
- City was turned into a slum. Nonresidents blamed the inhabitants
Violence against Women of Color -✔✔✔Civilizing" colonial peoples in forced conversion, rape, public
beatings and humiliation, denial of rights
- Violence as perpetrated by the state, police are not there to protect them
Women in Prison -✔✔✔- Black and aboriginal women seen as inherently criminal and pathological.
Majority of female prison population, usually for sex work and drugs. Receive harsher sentences
- Hampers family (children get taken away), employment and changes for future employment
- Many crimes women of color get sentenced for are a reflection of their poverty
Whiteness -✔✔✔Study of white women and how whiteness shaped their subjectivity
- Whiteness has no distinct identity, invisible, just seen as normal
- Only sees itself in the reflection of the other
- White women can oppress and exploit women of color through domestic labor
- "White" as norm, default, colorless, without subjectivity
- Other races judged against default "norm" of whiteness
