Gendered dimensions of racial Hyper-Visibility
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One theme that struck me while reading this week's texts is the intersection of race and gender, and how these dynamics are often under explored in conversations about visibility and racial identity. Both Yancy's "look, a white!" and Baldwin's "My Dungeon Shook" focus on the racial hyper-visibility imposed on Black and radicalized bodies, but they don't delve deeply into how their hyper-visibility plays out differently for women and men. Baldwin's letter to his nephew is powerful in it's portrayal of the specific pressures Black men face-being viewed as threats, as inferior, as disposable but it made me wonder how different this experience might be for Black women. How does this hyper-visibility display for women, whose bodies are often simultaneously sexualized and dehumanized?
Yancy's examination of how witness objectifies and controls Blackness through the gaze reminded me of the gender gaze, particularly how women of colour are often seen as hyper sexual or as occupying deviant spaces. Yancy writes, "The white boy's utterance is not merely a statement of fact but an assertion of control, a demand that the Black body conform to its stereotype" (Yancy, p. 2). This same kind of control is often imposed on women of colour, who face a dual burden of being radicalized and sexualized. For instance, Black women and South Asian women are often exoticized as we learned in our last reading. Their bodies objectified not just as racial "others" but as hyper sexual beings whose values is tied to their physical appearance. This form of visibility operates differently from that of Black men, who are more often seen as dangerous or threatening, but it is no less oppressive.
Sarah Ahmed's Phenomenology of whiteness touches on how whiteness becomes invisible to those who benefit from it , but this can also be expanded to how gender interacts with race in these dynamics. She talks about how whiteness functions as the unseen norm (Ahmed, p. 157 ), but the same could be said for gender in these discussions, whiteness and masculinity often go unmarked, while women of colour bear the weight of both racial and gendered expectation. In the context of race, we focus on how people of colour are made hyper-visible, but gender add another layer to that scrutiny. I wonder if the texts had explored more about how this experience of visibility changes depending on gender, would it add depth to the discussions of race? For instance, what are the differences in how Black men and Black women are seen, objectified, and controlled by the white gaze?
In thinking about Baldwin's letter to his nephew, I kept wondering how his message would have changed if it were written to a niece. His advice centres on resisting the narratives imposed by white society, but it's largely about surviving as a Black man in a world that views Black male bodies as threats. For Black women, or women of colour more broadly, there is a different kind of danger, a constant negotiation between being seen as hyper sexual and being erased or disregarded. Would his advice have changed to account for the ways Black women navigate racial and gendered violence?
In this way, these readings made me reflect on the ways gender and race intersect in shaping how we are seen, and how the pressures placed on women of colour are different from those on men of colour. I'd be curious to know what others think about this.