Speaking from the Margins

Speaking from the Margins

The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectatorsbell hooks Power in looking: Gaze as a mechanism of Control In this article hooks talks about the power of “gaze” or a particular way of looking by tracing the history of black portrayal in Hollywood movies. hooks starts with two types of gaze both symbolizing power, domination and control: • White master’s gaze • Grown up’s gaze

Oppositional gaze “there is a critical gaze, one that is oppositional”- one learns to look a certain way in order to resist. This is described as politicizing looking relations (116)

Responding to Stereotypes of Black People in Hollywood Cinema • A total negation of black representation and reproduction of white supremacy • “Critical gaze” was concerned about issues of race and racism and the racial domination of blacks • Gender was not as important an issue as race

Black Women’s Movie going experiences • Deal with racial domination • White phallocentric spectatorship • Black female bodies representative of servitude, Mammies Cinematic racism was characterized by complete erasure of black womanhood (119)

Drawbacks of Mainstream Feminist Film Criticism • Critical of sexism • Completely ignored issues of racism and race • Did not acknowledge the critical gaze that black women were talking about Feminist film theory was built around contesting a “totalizing narrative of woman as object whose image functions solely to reaffirm and reinscribe patriarchy” (123)

Response of Black Women • Identification: Assumed subordination and submitted themselves to these movie’s charm and seduction. To enjoy the movie they chose to forget racism or sexism. They tried to identify themselves with the white women portrayed on screen. • Rejection: Accorded these cinemas no importance and chose to ignore, to turn away from the movies as a sign of resistance. They instead developed an oppositional gaze, by interrogating critically what they saw on screen.

Resistance By Black Women Viewers • Ignoring both male gaze and white women’s sensual supremacy • Not to turn women and her body into object of desire as has been done to white womanhood in movies • Raising Critical Consciousness • Talking critical A critical vision is needed so that black women are capable of actively resisting the imposition of dominant ways of “knowing” and “looking” (128)

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The Ultimate Betrayal: Claiming and Re-Claiming Cultural Identity T. Kulusic “Sixties scoop” • the practice of removing large numbers of aboriginal children from their families and giving them over to white middle-class parents • was discontinued in the mid-'80s, after Ontario chiefs passed resolutions against it and a Manitoba judicial inquiry harshly condemned it

The term "Sixties Scoop" was first used by Patrick Johnston in his 1983 publication Native Children and the Child Welfare System. Johnston was director of the Canadian Council on Social Development when he produced this report.This phenomenon clearly coincided with the closing of residential schools, which were the very places that children from broken homes, orphans, those with "behavioral problems", and those who were very poor, ended up - prior to the dismantling of the system in Canada, which began in the late Fifties and through the Sixties. In 1982, in Manitoba, a family court judge, Edwin Kimmelman, reviewed 93 cases of native children who had been "adopted out" of their own communities in 1981. He stated after his review that "cultural genocide has been taking place in systematic, routine manner.http://www.tandanya.com.au/touring_exhib/4circles/reflections.html

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Assimilation of the “other” through Education and Welfare Systems • Establishment of church run Residential schools from 1800 onwards • ------- Reached its peak from 1930s onwards with more than 80 schools operating in Canada • ------- Half of Canadian aboriginal children staying in Residential schools • ------- Extreme alienation, sexual, physical mental abuse, cruelty, disease • ------- Closure in 1960s

Rita Joe, a Mi'kmaq poet, about attending the residential school in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia I Lost My Talk I lost my talk The talk you took away. When I was a little girl At Shubenacadie school. You snatched it away: I speak like you I think like you I create like you The scrambled ballad, about my world. Two ways I talk Both ways I say, Your way is more powerful. So gently I offer my hand and ask, Let me find my talk So I can teach you about me.

Establishment of Welfare Agencies from 1960s------ Thirty to Forty percent of Native children in care------ sixties scoop----- Described as cultural genocide eg. In 1981 50-55% Native babies were adopted outside province compared to 7 Caucasian babies

Reasons for Adoption and foster care • Lack of understanding of Aboriginal culture and child rearing practices on the part of the social workers “ provincial social workers would literally scoop children from reserves on the slightest pretext in order to save them from what the social workers thought to be poor living conditions” (25).

Payment for Child RearingPovertyState impacts on Private and domestic institutions such as family life as well as how racial and classist some of these policies can be.

Cross Cultural Adoption • Setting up a family • Transracial Adoptions are problematic leading to the creation of a fictive kin • Losing cultural identity • Adoption is about power, privilege and poverty (26)

Impact of Cross racial Adoption on Aboriginal Children • Social isolation • Limbo between two cultures • Experiences of love from “fictive kin” created sense of belonging and reinvention of family Develop and Implement meaningful cultural plans and broaden access to Information about the real history of Aboriginal people in Canada.

Is trans racial adoption a form of rescue for many of these children? How state and colonial policies intervened in the transmission of language culture and connections between generations?

Speaking from the Margins