Women’s Equality Day: Magnifying Intersectionality
This is the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified on August 26, 1920 stating: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by an State on account of sex.” This amendment expanded the right to vote that began as a privilege only for land-owning white men, then extended to poor white men, black men and finally to women. The impact was the empowerment of 27 million women to vote-a hard won right that took decades to come to fruition.
But not ALL women in the U.S. were empowered to vote. Although many women of color fueled the suffrage movement, they were excluded from its ultimate benefits. Since the discussion of suffrage happened in the context of the Civil War ending, the challenge of extending civic participation via voting — to both women and former slaves — created a zero sum game: the activists splintered over prioritizing either white women or black men getting the right to vote.
This false choice left women of color out in the cold and became a cautionary tale foreshadowing the ongoing challenges that all Women of Color would endure to be included in our democracy. After the 19th Amendment passed, for women of color there remained multiple barriers to political empowerment codified in the right to vote. Tactics to suppress the vote such as poll taxes, lynching and literacy tests disenfranchised Black and Native American women (and men). In response, black suffragists like writer/lecturer Frances E.W. Harper, investigative journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett and social justice activist Sojourner Truth spoke directly to the “double burden” of operating at the crossroads of racism and sexism. Native American women suffered the unjust irony of not being counted as citizens until 1924 - a testimony to the power of othering to make indigenous people foreigners on their own land. Further, Native Americans continued to be at the mercy of individual state legislators to win the right to vote. For example, activist tribal women like Zitkála-Šá advocated for the indigenous vote but the state by state strategy meant a long haul, ending with the last state not honoring their vote till 1962. Likewise, while suffragists like Mabel Ping-Hua Lee and Sofia Reyes de Veyra were demanding the right to vote, definitions of “citizen” kept Asian American women from voting till 1943. Latinas were excluded too. Early advocates like Adelina Otero-Warren of New Mexico and Puerto Rican suffragists like Milagros Benet de Newton pushed for the educated Latina vote passing in 1929, and then for the universal vote in 1932. Regardless of when different communities of color secured legal voting rights, none of these rights were protected until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required monitoring of the voting process at the state and local levels (notably gutted in 2013 by a split Supreme Court resulting in new voter suppression tactics that we are witnessing today).
This challenge is ongoing; women of color experience what Patricia Hill Collins called the matrix of domination and Kimberlé Crenshaw called intersectionality, to describe the overlapping systems of discrimination and disadvantage like racism, classism and sexism that simultaneously impact women of color. These lived realities have always created a rift in both the women’s movements and civil rights movements of the 1800’s, 1920’s, 1960’s and 70's.
So as we celebrate the centennial of the 19th Amendment, let us do so with the knowledge of the history that has divided us. And as we face a global pandemic, let’s not forget that black, brown and indigenous communities have been some of the hardest hit and suffered the most deaths. As we speak about the uneven impact that shelter-in-place regulations have had on female workers who are parents, let’s not forget about the women of color who have lost their jobs in caregiving and must manage their own families. As we point out how many women are leaving the workforce during the pandemic, let’s not forget to point out that unemployment has fallen disproportionately on Latinas in the service industry. As we talk about George Floyd and police brutality, let’s not forget that we have often forgotten to #SayHerName for the black women who have brutally died at the hands of police. As we continue to push our nation to live up to its promise of equal rights, let’s not fall for the false choice of “either/ or” that lets women of color fall in the chasm of being “both, and.” To fully seize the moment to drive sustainable systemic change, we are going to need to be inclusive in ALL respects, so that we leave no sister behind and live the reality that Francis E.W. Harper realized back in 1866-that we are indeed, “All bound up together.”
~Dr. T
Originally published at https://eskalera.com on August 26, 2020.
