Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-14T10:08:20.653Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

eight - ‘All the women are white, all the blacks are men – but some of us are brave’: mapping the consequences of invisibility for black and minority ethnic women in Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2022

Get access

Summary

Slipping through the ‘racial equality’ cracks

The uncompromising recommendations of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry with regard to institutional racism generated widespread political and public response and commitment to racial equality. However, in their efforts to avoid being labelled as institutionally racist, few organisations reflected on the gendered nature of their racial equality policies and practices. Few have stopped to consider that the Lawrence Inquiry was an all-male committee and may therefore have had a male-centred view of racism. In terms of racial equality, it is still a man's world. Thirty years on, the African-American women's saying of the 1970s – “all the women are white and all the blacks are men, but some of us are brave” – still holds true (Hull et al, 1982). Gender is still seen as a white woman's issue, while it is taken for granted that ‘race’ is a black male issue. Black and minority ethnic women appear to fall into the cracks between the two. They are often invisible, occupying a ‘blind spot’ in mainstream policy and research studies that talk about women on the one hand or ethnic minorities on the other.

Black and minority ethnic women still do not seem to be part of the race equality picture of the new millennium. The ‘new language’ of racial equality and inclusion, in the context of the liberal democratic discourse on equality and anti-discrimination, has been constructed around the dominant masculine agenda of objectives and targets, enforcement and evaluation, recruitment and audit (CRE, 2001). The pervasive discourse on social inclusion through ‘respecting diversity and achieving equality’ has at its core the concept of the ‘recognition of difference’. However, the social construction of ‘difference’ does not include the invisible or messy contradictions black women pose by their presence. Diversity is now about good public relations and inclusivity as good business sense (Fredman, 2002): it is more about ‘getting the right people for the job on merit’ and the ‘business benefits of a more diverse workforce’ (Cabinet Office, 2001). It is not, then, about removing exclusionary barriers to participation and equal access. However, when we read of the commitment of public sector organisations to ‘meeting needs’, ‘facilitating access’, ‘flexibility’, ‘embracing difference’, and ‘working in partnership’ with black and minority ethnic people (Cabinet Office 2002), it is assumed that racial equality and social exclusion are gender-neutral experiences.

Type
Chapter
Information
Explaining Ethnic Differences
Changing Patterns of Disadvantage in Britain
, pp. 121 - 138
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×