Feminists Don’t Bake Bread

My history knowledge has not improved if the only people in it are all white.

When I originally set out to write about women in history this month, not only did I foolishly think I would be able to pull off a post every weekday (I had goals, dreams, plans….), I also thought I would write something balanced. I have a whole list of important women in history that cross time periods and social barriers and continents and colours, and so many of them that weren’t European, American, or Canadian were completely off my radar.

But what’s been even sadder, to me, has been that so few of the women that make up the history I know are Black. Or Native. Or Asian. These women seem to have disappeared for me entirely.

And what’s sadder than that - until this past year, I never noticed.

The first time I learned about someone in history as specifically a Black Woman was through a rant over on, of all places, Fandom Wank. There, I learned about Harriet Tubman, a black woman during the time of slavery. I learned she was part of the Underground Railway, and that when she was helping slaves to escape to Canada, she carried a gun with her. If they faltered, if they said they wanted to stop, were too tired, too scared, whatever, she would pull out the gun, point it at them, and say “You will live free or die here.”

That’s it. She’s the only non-White woman who enters into my knowledge of history with a name, with some bit of information, with an anecdote, that isn’t from China.

And I didn’t even notice.

I have a history degree. I have deliberately spent most of my adult life learning about dead people, and my blind spots were such that I noticed the lack of women’s voices, but not the lack of black voices, and even less the lack of native voices, because I’ve never had to notice. I’ve never had to be aware of their absence. When I look into history to see someone like me, I can look at Eleanor, at Artemisia, at Anastasia Romanov, at Laura Secord, at so many white women, and for all that their voices are few and rare and often overlooked, they’re there. They exist.

I don’t know the name of one Native Canadian woman in history. I took Canadian history for two years. How is that possible?

It’s the silences, I think, that define what we feel is important, and what we feel is not. If you think that the history of women is important, you’ll notice the silences. If you think the history of Black women, of Native women, of Asian women, of Mexican and Jewish and South American women are important, you’ll notice the silences.

I’ve noticed the silences.

I want to learn.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 23rd, 2007 at 19:56 and is filed under History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.