Critical Race and Black Feminist
Theories as frameworks for equitable archival practice, by Claire Gordon
I am approaching
this topic as a middle-class, white, cis-gender, straight woman. I recognize this
means that my standpoint is inseparable from the benefits of white normativity
and privilege and the effect they have on my viewpoint and professional work. I
am grappling with these issues to identify tools that I can use to minimize the
effects of my position as oppressor within the white normativity and supremacy
that persists in the archival profession.
The definition of what constitutes records and archives continues
to change as perceptions of their nature and significance over time and space
expands. Whereas traditional ideas of archival records secure them as
authoritative, neutral, fixed, forms of evidence, more recent theories
recognize that records and archives are complex entities that can’t be
separated from the societal structures that create them.[1]
The work of the archivist, therefore, is shaped by their own, individual identity
and the dominant culture of white normativity and supremacy. The impact of these
structures is greater within archives that represent marginalized communities, particularly
as their lived experience may reflect intersectional racism, discrimination,
and oppression. In this essay, I explore how the theories of Black feminism and
Critical Race Theory can provide powerful insight into how to improve archival
practice to better identify discrimination and establish equality and equity
within the archive. True equality in the archive would prioritize
the collection and description of materials from marginalized communities not
as historicized narratives of dominance and oppression, but as dynamic and
empowering representations of communities. Equity in the archive openly
declares the bias and discrimination embedded within it and seeks to dismantle
white normativity and supremacy that prevent equality as “intersectionality
is not just about identities but about the institutions that use identity to
exclude and privilege.”[2]
Scholar Anthony Dunbar, in his foundational article
about the application of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in archival discourse,
suggests that the archive can serve as a “democratically negotiated space,”[3]
and implores archivists to seek out and recognize the persistent patterns of
oppression that are evidenced in the record. He discusses the growing
recognition within archival theory of the importance of records’ existence
within a continuum of subjective, multi-dimensional time/space that considers
how different perspectives exist within a single record. He outlines how a
multidimensional approach to process, particularly with respect to the
appraisal of records, aligns with the goals of CRT and the concept of multiple
truths and counternarratives. Appraising the inherent evidential value of a
record, guided by a CRT framework, “positions whiteness as the subject of
investigation,” and reveals the ways that white supremacy shapes the archive.[4]
Dunbar’s insistence on the importance of the archive is grounded in its
potential to enact “evidential rectifying” of racial discrimination by exposing
the “narrow framing of disenfranchised groups within institutional and
collective memories.”[5]
The legal and cultural effect of using the
archive in this way has even greater potential impact when uncovering
discrimination against Black women. Lawyer, university professor, civil rights
activist and CRT scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw created the term
“intersectionality” to describe the synergistic amplification of
marginalization and oppression that Black women experience as members of
multiple groups of discrimination (race and sex). In her article
“Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex,” Crenshaw outlines how Black
women are “theoretically erased” by anti-discrimination laws that were
nominally created to prevent racism and sexism but ultimately treated “subordination
as disadvantage occurring along …a single axis framework.”[6] Detailing
several single-axis court rulings against Black women, Crenshaw illustrates how
policies and politics designed to combat discrimination fail to account for the
multi-dimensional nature of Black women’s experience. The absurdity of
requiring Black women to choose a single axis of discrimination for it to be
recognized, Crenshaw believes, “reflects the uncritical and disturbing
acceptance of dominant ways of thinking about discrimination” as the “privileging
of whiteness or maleness is implicit.”[7]
Criticism against the flattening out of
narratives within marginalized communities is at the center of Dunbar’s
argument as well, as archives connect “the multiple dimensions of records to
the notion of multiple truths within CRT.”[8] Both Dunbar and Crenshaw question how flat
and narrow paradigms will ever deliver a “meaningful discussion” about racism,
sexism and the patriarchy.[9]
Dunbar is convinced that the application of CRT in the archive “has endless
possibilities to raise the collective social consciousness about social bias.”[10] CRT
and Black feminist frameworks are clearly important tools for grappling with
the effects of patriarchal, white normativity on appraisal and practice within
the archives and should be centered as foundational approaches to practice.
When discussing the intersectional effects of
race and sex I am referring to it within the time and space that Kimberlé
Crenshaw’s article, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex” was
written; in 1989, before the terms
transgender and non-binary gender were widely used. This blog is only a glimpse
at how CRT and intersectionality interact but I think that questions of how
gender identity fit into a conversation about discrimination would ideally be a
included; asking, where does the experience of a non-binary gender person fit
into this discussion, and how do the lived experiences of transgender people
become accounted for in discussions of intersectionality? Kimberlé Crenshaw has
since written
and spoken
about transgender women and intersectionality.
I think
it is vitally important for archival professionals, who are mostly white women,[11] to
reframe archival practice starting with CRT and Black feminist frameworks. A
central goal of the archival profession should be dissecting the ways that
oppressive structures work within the practice and the positionality of the
archivist, aiming to dismantle
the structure of white supremacy in archives.
[12] Archivists
should strive for equality in the archive, that prioritizes the collection
of materials that empower marginalized communities, and equity in the
archive, that recognizes the racist structures that exclude marginalized voices
from being heard.
[1] Terry Cook, “Evidence, Memory, Identity,
and Community: Four Shifting Archival Paradigms,” Archival Science 13,
no. 2–3 (June 2013): 95–120, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-012-9180-7.
[2] Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Why
Intersectionality Can't Wait.” Washington
Post, September 24,
2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/09/24/why-intersectionality-cant-wait/.
[3] Anthony W. Dunbar, “Introducing Critical
Race Theory to Archival Discourse: Getting the Conversation Started,” Archival
Science 6, no. 1 (October 31, 2006): 109–29,
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-006-9022-6. p119.
[6] Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and
Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory
and Antiracist Politics,” The University of Chicago Legal Forum 140 (1989):
139-167, p. 140.
[7]
Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex,” p.150-51.
[9]
Crenshaw, p152.
[11] Israel, Robin H. and Jodi Reeves Eyre (2017). "The 2017 WArS/SAA Salary Survey: Initial Results and
Analysis"
[12] Michelle Caswell, “Teaching to Dismantle
White Supremacy in Archives,” The Library Quarterly 87, no. 3 (July
2017): 222–35, https://doi.org/10.1086/692299.
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