Reading bell hooks’ Aint I A Woman reminded me of the slave Tituba in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Tituba is a minor character in the play — yet it was she who essentially started a wildfire in the quiet town of Salem. Tituba personifies what bell hooks noted as American society's concept of the black female body in general: spurious and dangerous. Therefore, there is a prevalent notion that the black female body must be expelled or contained and corrected.
The Crucible's opening scene features a group of young women from Salem frolicking in the woods with Tituba administering potions and rituals for the lovelorn posse. When a girl falls into a catatonic state, the residents of Salem are convinced that someone among them is into Devil worship. One of the girls supposedly affected by demonic harassment, Abigail Williams, points to Tituba: “Sometimes I wake and find myself standing in the open doorway and not a stitch on my body! I always hear her laughing in my sleep. I hear her singing her Barbados songs and tempting me with – (Miller, 44)." This line dramatizes what bell hooks referred to in Ain't I A Woman — that there is a deep-seated distrust and utter disregard for the black woman, not just between women, but in American society in general. The "possessions" in The Crucible are attributed to the Devil’s presence and the alleged "gateway" that was slave woman from Barbados. It was the black woman who instigated all of this; she is the source of corruption in a town that needed to reestablish itself close to God – never mind that the historical Salem Witch Trials are seen to be a way of land-grabbing within among the white inhabitants, yet it was a black woman who enabled this evil. This implicates what hooks wrote as the black female body’s proximity to barbarity, base sexuality, an instrument of moral and physical discord. Even in The Crucible itself, though an indictment against McCarthyism, the play has given what patriarchy thinks of women in general as wily, shrill, easily trammeled, with significantly weaker constitutions ergo easily manipulated by the devil (incidentally, many portrayals of the devil are of a goat’s head in a black male body). There is general fear as a rash of screams and convulsions wrought from the women of Salem as men look on bewildered and adamant that this situation can be fixed if only people can be controlled and return to the folds of goodness. This control and goodness (ie. decency) has been a power structure set in place as “In American patriarchy, all women are believed to embody sexual evil. Sexual Racism has caused black women to bear the burnt of society’s need to degrade and devalue women. (hooks, 110)” It is the precise devaluation of the black woman’s body that has been revealed as a protracted form of oppression in numerous manners: be it within slavery as a means of erasures of the femininity of the black women and their allocation as property and sexual assault objects, or via portrayal of the black female bodies in media to the 20th century women’s liberation movement where black women feel alienated because their struggles are different.
Even after slavery, black women have to work more in terms of recognition and respect and yet, fell short. “They reminded her that in the eyes of the white public she would never be seen as worthy of consideration or respect. (hooks, 55)” What hooks deftly demonstrated are the strands of power at work that are clumped together to form a noose to be hung into a black woman’s neck. This is a very difficult book to read, but a revelatory one, particularly from somebody outside the American nation such as myself. Yet, I find many connections to the problems hooks cited to the issues of patriarchy, misogyny, colorism, in the Philippines. Even in the Philippines, dark skin is akin to “filth,” wildness (as if an African savage), monstrosity, and something to be corrected with skin whiteners, that is a billion-dollar industry in Asia. In the Philippines, the media landscape reflects what hooks wrote on how female black bodies — mostly in the roles of the maids — are typecast: harridans, sexually lascivious, angry, uneducated, bitchy and must be violently suppressed (ie. I grew up watching TV shows of Filipino men slapping black women in the Philippines as the literal punchline).
This book, though written in the late 20th century, still resonates with the present-day racial problems and misogyny. In light of the #MeToo movement, I recall what the black Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyongo wrote of her allegations of sexual harassment from the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. It is interesting to note that Weinstein has been accused by numerous women of bullying, sexual assault, and yet he only, through his publicist, addressed Nyongo's allegation as false. He cries foul when a black woman accuses him. Add to that fracas, is the founder of #MeToo movement, Tarana Burke, who was attacked by many social media comments as “too ugly” to be sexually assaulted. This underscores the many layers on how femininity, beauty are implicating blackness to ugliness among many other disturbing accusations (ie. black women’s bodies as carriers of diseases) that have constructed the American culture. Blackness, being a woman should not be easy categories that should be studied separately. After all, hooks has been reiterating the intersectionality and thus exposing the power structures overlapping mechanisms of oppression: “[…]we must first be willing to examine woman’s relationship to society, to race, and to American culture as it is and not as would ideally have it to be. (hooks, 124)” This why hooks has bemoaned the women’s movement as selecting issues regarding oppression. It is within these lattices of issues where one can locate the moments of power, question them, and perhaps instigate a real change that is needed. That is the crux of hooks’ brilliant and justifiably angry book: the notion of a “real” change. Is it a real change when all you seek is a place at the table, when the table itself is built on the mounds of victims of oppression? What resounded in me in hooks words are her aligning colonialism to patriarchy, connecting it to rapacious capitalist system. This system has truncated many people’s sense of self as equating worth with market value. This is why hooks derided the educated white feminists who just wanted to be CEOs and ignoring the plights of the women of color mired in cyclical poverty. This is the very image of the white slave owner’s white wife trying to accumulate power herself at the expense of the black female slaves thrown even lower in the social ladder. “Real” change is confronting the oppressive mechanisms of the status quo and not merely wanting to be elevated in the status quo. “A feminist ideology that mouths radical rhetoric about resistance and revolution while actively seeking to establish itself within the capitalist system is essentially corrupt. (hooks, 191)” A different kind of alchemy is needed from us. If we vie for a world that is progressive, hinged on human rights then we better question our very privileges that have enacted us to be in whatever power positions that we are in this life. This is why I feel hooks is a difficult, but necessary read, because she is confrontational and elucidates the structure of violence and oppression as plainly, openly as it is. History and culture are a series of ruptures in the quest for improvements. Many among us seek to help find the disease, and not just treat the symptoms. In this book, hooks asks the readers to have a more multilayered approach in assessing and treating the festering situations that have been in operation for generations. This book shows us the pustules, the afflictions; asks how do we heal ourselves? How to heal the culture? Interesting metaphor that women, who were healers and who dabbled in chemistry to seek for cures or salves against ailments, are seen as witches.
hooks, bell. Ain't I A Woman? Black Women and Feminism. NY: Routledge, 2015.
Miller, Arthur. The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts. NY: Viking Press, 1952.