{"id":20328,"date":"2020-12-09T22:49:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-10T02:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=20328"},"modified":"2020-12-15T15:30:41","modified_gmt":"2020-12-15T19:30:41","slug":"gendered-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/gendered-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"Gendered Racism: Discriminating by Race and Gender"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is gendered racism? How does it use gender to create a more nuanced hierarchy for discrimination?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gendered racism is the idea that a person’s combined identity of race and gender determines their status in society<\/a>. But How to Be an Antiracist <\/em>by Ibram X. Kendi emphasizes that there is no support for such biased beliefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep reading to understand gendered racism, how it started, and Ibram X. Kendi’s experiences with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Gendered Racism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Race-genders are combinations of race and gender. For example, Black women and White men are two race-genders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gender racism <\/strong>is a combination of racist policies and ideas that causes and maintains racial inequities between race-genders. Gendered racism links race and gender and arrange these race-genders into a hierarchy.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Example #1: Black men are 50 times more likely than White women to go to prison. This statistic is a result of two sets of policies and ideas: 1) those related to race (the stereotype that Black people are more dangerous than White people) and 2) those related to gender (the stereotype that men are more dangerous than women). This is one of the effects of policies related to gendered racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Example #2: The average wealth of a single Black woman is $100, while for a White woman, it\u2019s $42,000. Even though all women are affected by sexist ideas and policies, Black women are additionally affected by racist ideas<\/a> and policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inequalities from gendered racism are the results of policies, not the actions of individual members of races.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

History and Invention of Gender Racism<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In 1991, Philomena Essed, a scholar, came up with the term gendered racism. She noticed Black women had to deal with both sexism and racism and that it was impossible to consider them in isolation. Kimberl\u00e9 Williams Crenshaw, a critical race theorist, expanded on this idea and came up with the term \u201cintersectionality.\u201d She wrote that while sexism and racism are linked in real life, they\u2019re rarely addressed in policy.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though gender racism wasn\u2019t named until 1991, it had been affecting people for far longer. For example, in 1965, a government report stated that nearly 25% of Black families were matriarchal (and therefore \u201cbroken,\u201d in the words of the media). The author of the report said these matriarchies resulted in a host of negative consequences, including the emasculation of Black men. Following the author\u2019s lead, others suggested Black women should mend their broken families and help empower Black men by being submissive toward their husbands, returning them to their rightful place at the head of the family. The government report also promoted the idea that Black men had been more affected by racism than Black women. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1970s, Black feminist groups formed. Black women had to create their own spaces because in Black spaces, they had to contend with sexism, and in feminist spaces, they had to contend with racism.<\/strong> The most antiracist queer space of the time was the Combahee River Collective, which formed in 1974. The organization\u2019s goal was for Black women to be seen as equals to any other group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black Single Mothers<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Gender racism particularly affected Black mothers. In the 1970s and 1980s, the public became worried about the growing percentage of Black single mothers. Some said that having a father around, even if he\u2019s abusive, is better for children than being fatherless. Others suggested that a child can\u2019t thrive without the income of two parents. Assumptions such as these didn\u2019t take into account the various reasons single mothers are single\u2014the fathers are dead, in prison, or dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1994, Charles Murray, a political scientist, got the word out that 68% of Black children were born into single-parent households. Murray attributed this to the \u201cwelfare system,\u201d and liberals such as Ibram\u2019s parents attributed it to sexual irresponsibility, poverty, disengagement from Christianity\u2019s pre-marriage abstinence, or disregard of opportunities. None of this was accurate\u2014the higher percentage was due to married Black women having fewer children, not single Black women having more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Negativity for Everyone<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Gender racism results in negative consequences for everyone, not only certain race-genders such as Black women. For example, here are the effects on White women:<\/p>\n\n\n\n