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The Construction, Deconstruction, and Reconstruction of Difference

Author(syf 3 D X O D 5 R W K H Q E H U J

Source: Hypatia, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring, 1990yf S S 7

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This content downloaded from 199.17.25.195 on Wed, 27 Aug 2014 15:35:36 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Construction, Deconstruction,

and Reconstruction of Difference

PAULA ROTHENBERG

The construction of difference is central to racism, sexism and other forms of

oppression. This paper examines the similar and dissimilar ways in which race and

gender have been constructed in the United States and analyzes the consequences of these differences in construction for the development of social policy and the growth and nature of movements for social change.

The construction of difference is central to racism, sexism and other forms

of oppressive ideologies. Few theorists have better understood the importance of constructing difference and the centrality of that construction to racism

(and by extension, other forms of oppression) than Albert Memmi (1971,

186-195). At a time when liberal theoreticians still grounded their political

philosophy on a metaphysic that accepted "natural" differences between

women and men and then set out to win certain rights for women by arguing over which differences provided a legitimate basis for limiting women's rights and which did not, Memmi had already recognized that difference was created

not discovered. "Making use of the difference is an essential step in the racist

process," he wrote, "but it is not the difference which always entails racism; it

is racism which makes use of the difference" (1971, 187). This insight

prompted Memmi to define racism as

... the generalized and final assigning of value to real or imagi-

nary difference, to the accusers benefit and at his victim's

expense, in order to justify the former's privileges or aggression.

(1971, 185).

Note that it is the process of assigning value to difference, not whether the

difference is real or imagined, that is the key to the process by which "the racist

aims to intensify or cause the exclusion, the separation by which the victim is placed outside the community or even outside humanity" (Memmi 1971, 187). Placing the victim outside humanity is of course essential if one is to justify the in-

Hypatia vol. 5, no. 1 (Spring 1990) ? by Paula Rothenberg

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humanity of slavery and colonialism. Placing the victim outside the community

(of equals, or adults, or decent women) is essential if one is to rationalize the

violence and the denial of personhood that lies at the heart of sexism.

What Memmi failed to notice, however, is the two-sided or dialectical

nature of the process wherein difference is defined. For it is not only the racist

or sexist who constructs difference but the victim of each or both who seeks

to create difference as well. At times the "victim" has done so in response to

the racism and/or sexism of the society in order to survive, but at other times

movements made up of these "victims" have sought to redefine difference as

part of a struggle for power and personhood.1 At least in part this is because

the particular paradigm for expressing race or gender difference that holds sway in society at any given moment carries with it both implicit and explicit

prescriptions for social policy. At certain moments in history, oppressed people have been able to exert control over the process of defining difference with a

view to reconstructing difference in what they perceive to be their own

interest. Social, political and intellectual disagreements or struggles over both

the appropriate social construction of race and gender and disagreements about

the appropriateness of particular paradigms of race and gender can best be

understood as disputes over the nature of difference that the society is prepared to establish and by implication the nature of the social policies it is prepared to entertain.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF DIFFERENCE

If we undertake a historical survey of the construction of difference in the

United States, we find that difference claims have been expressed in the

vocabulary of numerous different ideologies. In spite of the historical

specificity which determines the form and content of each particular claim,

we can distinguish three fundamental categories according to which race and

gender difference has been alleged: difference in nature, difference in moral

sensibilities, and difference in culture and/or values (Whitbeck 1975). Claims

about difference in nature have been the most numerous and have assumed

the most diverse forms. At times they have been attributed to biology, to

physiognomy, to genetic makeup and so forth. Difference in moral sensibilities

has alternately been treated as either innate or acquired, and the cultural/value differences have received similar treatment. It is not uncommon for one or

more of these categories of difference to be used in combination.

Claims about difference are often difficult to deal with precisely because

they are offered under the guise of value-free descriptions yet smuggle in

normative considerations that carry with them the stigma of inferiority. Where

white, male, middle-class, European, heterosexuality provides the standard of

and the criteria for rationality and morality, difference is always perceived as

deviant and deficient.2 In addition, though difference claims are usually

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couched in the language of the academy, most often bearing the trappings of

the natural or social sciences, difference claims are essentially metaphysical.

Even though they often point to or allege some readily observable difference,

such as skull size, brain weight, or family structure, a reasoned refutation of the

empirical claim rarely results in a change in attitude on the part of those who

allege difference. They merely seek some other vocabulary or conceptual

framework in which to reformulate their charge. This has led some thinkers to

suggest that racism (and, by extension, sexism) have the belief status of

delusions which by definition are impervious to contrary evidence (Pierce

1974, 513).

THE NATURE/BIOLOGY PARADIGM

Underlying all racism and sexism is the notion of a natural or biological

difference alleged to separate the groups in question in a fundamental, in-

evitable and irreversible way. This natural difference is then called upon to

explain any and all observable differences in opportunity or achievement

between white people and people of color or men and all women. Science,

medicine, religion, and the law have all made important contributions to the

force and longevity of this theory providing "evidence" to ground this basic

claim of natural inferiority. The strength of the paradigm lies in its ability to

translate readily observable physical differences in appearance into qualitative

and even "moral" differences.

While the idea of natural difference is central to both racism and sexism, it

functions somewhat differently in each. In the case of race, the nature/biology

paradigm is used to portray a difference in nature between whites and blacks

so fundamental and so enormous as to exclude black people from the human

community and thus make it possible for otherwise kind and decent people to

carry out the unspeakable acts of inhumanity and violation that constitute the

history of slavery and its aftermath.

Sexism works differently. Since men have mothers and often have wives,

daughters, and sisters as well, the nature/biology paradigm expresses a weaker

form of difference with respect to gender. Women are not portrayed as excluded

from humanity but as separated from the relevant community, be it the

community of men or adults. While racist ideology has entertained the

question as to whether or not black people were part of the human species and

has, at times, answered in the negative; sexist ideology has simply sought to

exclude women by virtue of their nature from membership in the community that enjoyed or had a proper claim to certain privileges or rights.

The weak version of this same paradigm, which evolves after the Civil War

and is bound up with the Industrial Revolution, offers white women a "separate

sphere." Here difference is seen as endowing white women with certain noble

or positive attributes which fit them for certain important roles that men are

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unable to fulfill. This complementary paradigm of gender difference replaces

natural inferiority with "different and better if not equal." In doing so, it

manages to preserve the sense of difference which excludes all women from

certain areas and functions (and rights and privileges) but sugarcoats this

exclusion with the assurance that that sphere isn't worthy of women anyway.

No comparable weak version of the paradigm exists for race nor does the

weak version itself apply to black women. Beginning with slavery, black

women are excluded from the community of women who need and deserve

"special protection" and who inhabit a "separate sphere." Historically, white

people have denied the existence of gender difference within the black

community at the very same time that "separate sphere" sex roles functioned

as part of male identity and privilege in the white world. This denial of gender

difference became part of the construction of difference that is racism. To put

it another way, the difference in appropriate social roles for women and men

that was the mark of "civilized" society was denied to black community whose

members, not coincidentally, were consistently portrayed as having a bestial

or animal nature. This difference in the social construction of gender within

each race must be understood as part of the construction of difference that is

central to racism.

In the case of both race and gender, the way difference is defined by the

nature/biology paradigm performs certain critical functions. First, it implicitly and explicitly defines or establishes hierarchy as natural, that is present in the

natural order of things. Second, it absolves those in power from any respon-

sibility for the condition of the inferior group and thus blames the victim for

its victimization. Third, it undercuts all efforts to alter relations between the

races or the sexes since it portrays the difference as one of kind not degree. Social policy and practice must be predicated on difference and ought not seek

to mitigate suffering caused by it.

While the nature/biology paradigm is often portrayed (and even dismissed)

as crude and unsophisticated it has never been entirely replaced or supplanted. In fact, additional paradigms have been generated at different historical

moments to meet the changing economic, social and political conditions and

their attendant needs, but these new paradigms always function within the

context of the nature/biology paradigm; they never replace it. The relation

between old and new paradigms is very much like that among the contents of

"Grandmother's trunk" in the children's memory game where though new

items are added with each turn the old items persist and remain an integral

part of each recitation.

CHALLENGES TO THE NATURE/BIOLOGY PARADIGM

Challenges to the nature/biology paradigm take many forms but all have in

common the desire to portray difference as a matter of degree, not kind. While

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they need not be committed to the idea that there are no differences between

people, and even entertain the idea that there can be differences of race and/or

gender, they emphasize the social nature of the categories "race" and "gender"

and try to move from a normative to a descriptive use of the concept of

difference.

The "separate but equal" approach to race relations and the "different but

equal" or liberal model for gender roles are early examples of attempts to modify

the nature/biology model by beginning to incorporate the idea of difference as

degree while still retaining a strong hold on the difference in kind paradigm.

For example, the Justices in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which effectively

establishes "separate but equal" as the nation's policy of race relations for

almost sixty years, go to great pains to maintain that separating the races in

public education, transportation and other areas is simply a way of recognizing

difference but involves no normative judgment. In fact, they specifically assert

that such segregation does not "necessarily imply the inferiority of either race

to the other... ." Portraying the other as "equal" though different paves the

way for future accommodation. After all, negotiations or accommodations are

only possible between equals.

THE ETHNICITY PARADIGM

During the latter portion of the nineteenth century and the first half of the

twentieth, the biologistic/Social Darwinist paradigm of race still predominates

but the legal doctrine of separate but equal helps undermine its force, and

gradually race difference comes to be redefined using the ethnicity paradigm.

This paradigm functions both descriptively and prescriptively bringing with it

its celebration of cultural pluralism (Wolff 1965). Now race difference is no

longer irrevocably "other" and no longer places people of color, in Memmi's

words, "outside of humanity." The ethnicity paradigm goes beyond "separate

but equal" to offer a picture of society where race is simply one more difference

on the all-American continuum of ethnic diversity.3

The implications and consequences of this portrayal of difference are

enormous. Because the adoption of ethnicity as the dominant paradigm for

race transforms race from a biological to a social category, it presents a

progressive alternative to the crude and unyielding nature/biology paradigm it

attempts to replace or supplement. At the same time, by denying both the

centrality and uniqueness of race as a principle of socio-economic organization,

it redefines difference in a way that denies the history of racism in the United

States and thus denies white responsibility for the present and past oppression

and exploitation of people of color. Further, while one version of the paradigm

celebrates diversity in the form of cultural pluralism, another version regards

difference as a problem and offers as its solution "assimilation." The emergence

of black nationalism during the sixties, as well as Garvey's Pan Africanism of

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the 1920s, can be understood as a direct response to the inadequacies of this

paradigm and an attempt on the part of Black Americans to redefine difference

in what they perceived to be their interests.

By focusing on the dynamics of colonialism, the nation-based paradigm for

race reasserts the unique history of people of color in the United States and

points to the inadequacy of the ethnicity paradigm. The popular movement

to replace "Negro" and "colored" with "black" and "Afro-American" repre-

sented a dramatic attempt on the part of Black Americans to reassert race as

the primary social-political-economic category and principle of social or-

ganization and to reject outright all solutions to "the negro problem" that

proselytized assimilation.4 The cultural nationalism of the period which was

perhaps most visible to white Americans in the form of dashikis and afros was

part of the group's attempt to assert its own power to define and create

difference. Looked at in this way, the nation-based paradigm and its attendant

linguistic and life-style recommendations represented an attempt on the part of Black Americans to assert their right to define difference specifically by

rearticulating the meaning of "separate but equal."

EMBRACING GENDER DIFFERENCE

During the latter portion of the nineteenth century, the "separate sphere"

gender paradigm is modified and ultimately replaced by a picture of gender which portrays women as "different but equal".5 Predicated on the notion of

difference, the liberal paradigm for gender raises the possibility that at least

some gender difference may be social rather than natural or biological. Part of

the justification, offered by Mill and others, for introducing a principle of

"perfect equality" between the sexes is that such a principle will not suppress whatever natural differences exist. The "different but equal" model for gender relations prevails for a considerable period of time. Its essential ambiguity about

the nature and origins of difference between the sexes guarantees that the

"nature/biology" paradigm it seeks to replace will continue to exert consider-

able control at both the psychological and social level. In a context where

wealthy, white, males set the standard, race and gender paradigms that assert

either "separate" or "different" but "equal" will always perform the dual

function of implicitly evaluating as "inferior" what they purport to be describ-

ing as "different."

During the sixties and seventies we find attempts by significant sectors of

the white women's movement to redefine difference in ways which parallel

struggles carried out by the Black community. Just as the nation-based

paradigm challenges ethnicity by heightening race difference instead of trying to deny or de-emphasize it, the radical feminism typified and precipitated by Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectics of Sex (1971) and the more recent feminist

essentialism which portrays feminine nature as different than and preferable

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to "maleness" represent attempts by women to identify and embrace sex

difference rather than apologize for it. At certain points, Firestone's argument

bears remarkable similarity to Mill's insofar as both argue that traditional ways of formulating social policy about gender converts a physical fact to a legal

right, subsuming the history of gender relations under the principle of "might

makes right." Early radical feminism quite dramatically embraces the na-

ture/biology paradigm for gender only to stand it on its head. The thrust of the

paradigm as it expresses and perpetuates male-domination is that nature/biol-

ogy can't be changed; it is immutable. Firestone and others (following Rous-

seau of The Social Contract and John Stuart Mill) suggest that the proper way

to deal with natural inequality is to overcome it, not institutionalize it. What

we have here is an attempt on the part of the women's movement to assert its

right to redefine difference.

Other segments of the women's movement entered the political struggle

over definition by offering androgyny as the proper paradigm for gender.6 The

androgyny paradigm, now very much out of favor, shares many similarities with

the ethnicity paradigm for race. Now gender difference is clearly portrayed as

a matter of degree not kind. In place of a model which assumes two sexes, the

androgyny paradigm portrays gender difference as points on the continuum of

gender. Difference now reflects, not two separate and different sexes, but a

whole range of human possibilities.

The androgyny paradigm has been criticized in much the same way as the

ethnicity/cultural pluralism model for race. Both have been charged with

building in an essentially conservative picture of the (static) components (i.e.

"qualities" and "groups") that constitute the reality they seek to describe.

Further, by prematurely seeking to replace male and female with "human," the

androgyny paradigm is guilty of rendering both race and gender difference

invisible at a time when differences based on gender as they impact on people's

lives need to be uncovered and dismantled, not covered over. This parallels

the charge that the ethnicity paradigm denies race its unique history of slavery

and colonization, rendering the very factors that create its virulence invisible.

Finally, at those times when racial oppression has been regarded as the most

serious kind of injustice in the society, white women have attempted to employ

race as the paradigm for gender in order to appeal to those male social reformers

who failed to acknowledge the extent and severity of women's oppression as

women. During the 1850s and 1860s feminists drew parallels between the

situation of white women and the situation of Blacks, arguing that in the eyes

of custom and the law, white women's status was equivalent to that of negro

slaves. In her famous speech before the New York State Legislature in 1854,

Elizabeth Cady Stanton spends considerable time drawing this parallel. And

again, more than a hundred years later, during the 1960s and 1970s, feminists

once again attempted to draw this analogy as part of their effort to redefine

gender difference in a way that would capture the attention of white, male

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activists who considered racism a serious evil but tended to trivialize charges

of sexism.7 Such attempts have often rightfully angered Black Americans who

have argued that they improperly equated the situation of middle class white

women with the brutalization suffered by black people under slavery. It must

also be noted that the very same white women who drew this analogy

participated in fostering the invisibility of Black women both by drawing the

analogy in the first place and by failing to speak out about the double burden

of black women's exploitation in the second.

CONTEMPORARY PARADIGMS AND THEIR CRITICS

In the contemporary period we find considerable confusion over what

explicit paradigms are to be adopted for race and gender. Literature in

philosophy as well as the social sciences reflects a concern on the part of some

to identify "the new racism," alternately referred to as "symbolic racism,"

"moder racism" or even (with a touch of irony) "civilized racism."8 While

analysts disagree over some of the specific features and implications of these

"new" racisms, all are concerned with distinguishing their more subtle con-

temporary manifestation from so-called "old-fashioned" racism which is seen

as crude and explicit. The new racism expresses itself by using "code words"

in place of explicitly racist language and arguments. In Racial Formations in the US, Omi and Winant define code words as

"phrases and symbols which refer indirectly to racial themes but do not directly

challenge popular democratic or egalitarian ideals . . ." (1986, 120). As an

example of this approach, they point to the way in which the earlier explicit attack on school integration has been replaced by an attack on busing which

is rejected on the grounds that it interferes with "the family's" or "the parent's"

right to decide where their children will attend school or with "the

community's" right to decide upon appropriate housing patterns and school

districts. Having made similar observations, Donald Kinder, who has written

extensively on "symbolic racism," sets out to explain why so many White

Americans express a commitment to "equality of opportunity" while opposing concrete efforts to bring about racial equality (Kinder & Sears 1981; Kinder

1986). Rejecting both the earlier prejudice model and the later self-interest

account, Kinder formulates the concept of symbolic racism to account for the

new phenomenon he observes. He points to

... a blend of anti-black affect and the kind of traditional

American values embodied in the Protestant Ethic. Symbolic racism represents a form of resistance to change in the racial

status quo based on moral feelings that blacks violate such

traditional American Values as individualism and self-reliance, the work ethic and discipline. (Kinder & Sears 1981, 416).

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Kinder and others who offer this account of the new racism have been taken

to task by others who argue that it underestimates the continued virulence of

old fashioned racism with its explicit assumption of black inferiority and its

straightforward commitment to segregationist sentiments (Weigel and Howes

1985; Sniderman & Tetlock 1986). And Kinder himself has recently responded to his critics by acknowledging that he and others "claimed too much when

we declared that white America had become, even in principle, racially

egalitarian and that traditional forms of racial prejudice had been replaced by

symbolic racism. Old fashioned racism remains alive and all too well" (1986,

161).

What are we to make of the current debate about the nature and extent of

racism in contemporary American society? Returning to the perspective of this

paper, we can understanding competing theories as reflecting a struggle over

how difference is to be constructed in the present period and over who is to

have the power to define difference.

Politicians and intellectuals have joined forces, intentionally or uninten-

tionally, to make race invisible. It is this invisibility which is both highlighted

and reinforced by accounts of the New Racism, accounts which on the one

hand seem appealing to many of us because they capture something of what

we sense to be the flavor of "a new racism" and disturbing on the other because

we fear they contribute to the mythology that "real racism" is a thing of the

past.

Understanding contemporary racist ideology requires that we recognize that

the "old fashioned" notion of racial difference as natural and fundamental

persists along side contemporary formulations of that doctrine which now

point to difference as moral deficiency. By correlating physical and moral

deficiencies with observable differences in physical appearance, the na-

ture/biology paradigm obtains a virtual stranglehold on thought processes that

continues to this day, making it very difficult to persuade the uninitiated that

this paradigm is really already part of the social construction of race and gender

and not a reflection of natural difference at all. The nature/biology paradigm

has not been replaced, it has simply been supplemented by additional and more

sophisticated expressions of racism and sexism that have the effect of continu-

ing to reinforce the so-called "crude" paradigm while at the same time allowing

people to avoid confronting that crude model or taking responsibility for it.

According to the new racism, the problem with people of color in general

and blacks in particular is that they are not willing to work hard and defer

gratification.9 Their failure to attain economic self-sufficiency and social

recognition lies in an essential difference in their nature. This difference

legitimately excludes them from the community of citizens who deserve either

or both support and sympathy from the government or "the American People."

Note here that people of color, according to this ideology, are already excluded

from the community that is intended by the phrase "The American People,"

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which is then understood to be circumscribed by a certain set of values "we"

(as opposed to "they") all share.10

What we are witnessing in the contemporary period is the resurrection of

the nature/biology paradigm now in a more dangerous and more ideologically

loaded form." The political ideology of the day is Conservative with a capital

"C" and Conservatism always relies upon some theory of natural and fun-

damental difference to explain and justify the inequality of opportunity and

conditions which it fails to find problematic. In its older, crude version, the

nature/biology paradigm is quite straightforward about the fundamental dif-

ference between the races that separates them irrevocably. In its new sophis-

ticated version, the blatant racism is muted and its assertion of fundamental

difference between the races appears to be its unavoidable (perhaps even

regrettable) conclusion not its premise.

According to the new ideology, we are enjoined from ever seeing race

difference. The differences we notice are differences in moral character. Since

race has been obliterated as a category, the only way to explain differences in

achievement is by pointing to individual difference. If blacks as a group fail to

achieve, the implication is that there is something in their nature that prevents them from achieving. To say that they lack a commitment to the Protestant

work ethic and a willingness to delay gratification is simply a polite way of

restating the old litany that "Blacks are shiftless and lazy," but in this more

sophisticated form we are left with pointing out a moral deficiency or a

deficiency of character which can claim to be colorblind.

The work of two contemporary black social scientists, Thomas Sowell

(1981) and William J. Wilson (1978) have helped to gain credibility for the

neo-conservative approach by de-emphasizing the significance of race as a

factor in contemporary American society. In particular, Sowell's discussion of

the relative economic success or lack of success enjoyed by members of various

ethic and racial groups in the country, can easily be interpreted as supporting the implicit ascription of moral deficiency. The current refusal to acknowledge the existence of race difference leads to

a redefinition of race as once again a biological or natural category and actually

brings us much closer to a return to the biologistic/Social Darwinist paradigm. Now there are no races, just human beings. Some of those human beings are

morally deficient (or, grow up in deviant families, which amounts to short hand

for the same claim) and hence don't/won't/can't achieve. Many of these

morally deficient human beings are blacks, so there must be something in the

nature of black people that explains this failure. Success proves that you have

worked hard and delayed gratification and deserve to succeed. "Failure" simply indicates that you were deficient in those moral qualities or character attributes

that guarantee success. At the heart of the "new racism" is a reconstruction of

difference which returns to a paradigm which both explains and justifies why certain individuals are excluded from the community of those whose efforts

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government is there to support. Government is to create and enforce condi-

tions which guarantee equality of opportunity so that all those who work hard

can succeed. Addicts and criminals (and, by implicit equation, "lazy blacks"),

have excluded themselves from that community. Their failure to achieve is

simply proof that they were never members of it and didn't deserve to be. We

return to the earliest formulation of classical liberal ideology with its emphasis

on individualism, and its insistence that hierarchy is part of nature, now fused

with a revitalized Social Darwinism.

The only alternative paradigm that has been proposed for race in the most

recent period comes from Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. Jackson's rainbow

is of course awash with the color that was left out of the ethnicity paradigm,

color that is totally absent from the new right's return to a modified Social

Darwinism, but it is an analogy that thus far has had limited usefulness for

formulating social policy. The thing about rainbows is that as soon as you begin

to get close to them, they fade and ultimately disappear, an account that some

would argue provides a disturbingly accurate account of the Rainbow

Coalition's role in both the 1988 Democratic campaign and its aftermath.

While Omi and Winant and others like the Rainbow analogy because it moves

beyond a purely racially based agenda (1986, 142-143), in the current climate

its not clear whether this will prove to be a viable political strategy for coalition

building or a (perhaps unavoidable) move in the direction of a paradigm that

plays right into the contemporary preoccupation with denying the existence

of race. Viewed in this light, Jackson's announcement in December of 1988

that henceforth Black Americans were to be called "African Americans"

suggests an attempt on his part to revitalize the ethnicity paradigm as a way to

reassert the existence of Black Americans as a group. If we are, in fact,

experiencing a resurrection of the biology/nature paradigm combined with

emphasis on a rabid individualism, redefining difference by adopting the term

"African American" may be the best chance black people have to reassert their

common history at a time when the New Right seeks to focus on individual

opportunity and merit.

If we turn our attention to the construction of gender during the contem-

porary period we find a similar return to a nostalgic past where gender

difference and female biology or sexuality lies at the heart of social organiza-

tion. Far from wishing to obliterate gender as it has done with race, the new

right sees gender difference everywhere and is prepared to use it to justify

differences in opportunity or achievement where appropriate. Where the ideal

woman of the late 1970s was portrayed as a kind of a superwoman who could

and should be able to combine successfully her multiple roles of corporate

attorney, girl scout leader, femme fatale, super mom, loving wife, PTA volun-

teer, gourmet cook, little league coach, bonsai gardener, and fashion model,

the ideal woman a decade or so later is encouraged to self-define as a wife and

mother with an emphasis on the latter. Unable to actually turn back the clock

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on some of the concrete gains that white, middle class women have made in

the labor force, the new right is prepared to close its eyes to that participation

as long as women with careers embrace the ideology that defines their primary role is as wife and mother. The media is filled with stories about high power

professional women who put their careers on hold or find a way to convert

full-time careers to part-time, home-based work, in order to stay home and

raise their kids. Politicians and media portrayals made it clear that these

women are allowed to build a work life into their homelife as long as they assure

us that their primary source of satisfaction and fulfillment lies in motherhood

not work (sic). Highly visible women in society from Supreme Court Justices to Law School Deans to Best Selling authors are presented to us as women who

stayed home and took their motherhood role seriously thus earning the right to pursue their careers later.

While social pressure to return to the home during childrearing years has

increased on middle and upper class, white women, cuts in food stamps and

medicaid along with a new emphasis on "workfare" seems determined to insure

that poor women and women of color are out of the home and in the labor

force filling the jobs that no one else wants at wages no one else will accept. This continues the phenomenon we noticed earlier of using the construction

of gender difference between women of different races as another way of

constructing race (and, one might add, class) difference.

Where early stages in the contemporary women's movement focused on

analyzing "sex-role socialization," the later stages have been concerned with

understanding the construction of gender. This move reflects a new and more

profound understanding of the way the constitution of difference lies at the

heart of sexism, an understanding which parallel's Memmi's insights about

racism. In the mid-seventies Gayle Rubin (1975) wondered about the claim

that men and women are polar opposites, different as night and day. Stepping back to reflect on what many took to be obvious, Rubin pointed out a very different reality

... In fact, from the standpoint of nature, men and women are

closer to each other than either is to anything else - forests,

mountains, kangaroos or coconut palms. The idea that men and

women are more different from one another than either is from

anything else must come from somewhere other than na-

ture .... The idea that men and women are two mutually exclusive categories must arise out of something other than a

non-existent 'natural' opposition. (1975, 179)

More recently, Catherine MacKinnon has argued that "gender is not dif-

ference, gender is hierarchy ... the idea of gender difference helps keep male

dominance in place" (1987, 3). Writing from a similar perspective, Zillah Eisenstein has suggested that "equality of opportunity is simply a form of male

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privilege" (1984, 67) and Carol Gilligan has urged us to listen to "a different

voice" (1982).

In both its theory and its practice, the contemporary women's movement

has demonstrated a determination to deconstruct gender combined with a

strong commitment to redefining difference. In an important essay Andre

Lorde has asked us to recognize that "It is not our differences which separate

women, but our reluctance to recognize those differences and to deal effectively

with the distortions which have resulted from ignoring and misnaming those

differences" (1984, 115). She concludes, "Now we must recognize differences

among women who are equals, neither inferior nor superior, and devise ways

to use each others' difference to enrich our visions and our joint struggles"

(1984, 122).

Responding to Lorde's challenge, the Women's Movement has begun to

search for a metaphor that will facilitate the project Lorde envisions. A popular

poster celebrating international women's solidarity adopts the slogan "One

Ocean, Many Waves," while the 1987 National Women's Studies Association

Conference used the theme of "Weaving Women's Colors," and the 1989 New

Jersey Research Conference on Women, Celebration of Our Work at Douglass

College bears the title "Mosaics of Inclusion." Each of these represents an

attempt to find a metaphor for difference that reflects both diversity and unity.

Each is an attempt to move beyond a portrayal of women which is narrowly

white, professional and Western in nature to one which recognizes and

celebrates difference.

THE CHALLENGE OF THE 1990s

The challenge that faces progressive movements as we move into the 1990s

is enormous. In the face of a return to an implicit dependence on the

nature/biology paradigm for expressing both race and gender difference, how

can we reinstate the "deconstruction" projects of the seventies and create the

basis for forging broad based political coalitions that can transform the politi-

cal-social-economic agenda and priorities of the nation? While attempts to

recognize and analyze the social construction of gender and race were impor-

tant intellectual projects a decade or two ago, this relatively sophisticated

conceptual project has been made even more difficult by the conservative

ideological bias that permeates much of popular culture and communication

during the current period. At a "common sense" level, the natural difference

paradigm is reinforced constantly in the most casual interaction between

people: dark skin is not light skin; women's bodies are not male bodies. In the

presence of such obvious physical differences, most people find it difficult even

to entertain the notion of race and gender as social and political categories.

What can it mean to claim that difference is created by racism and sexism not

simply and (appropriately) reflected by them?

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Those of us committed to social change must look for the answer by focusing

on the essential contradictions that lie at the heart of the new Conservatism-

Conservatism that is committed simultaneously to asserting fundamental

natural differences between races while seeking to make race invisible-a

Conservatism that, in addition, is committed to asserting fundamental natural

differences based upon gender, yet is unable to institutionalize this difference

as the basis for social policy with the force and comprehensiveness it once

could. Once again, our project is to turn the natural difference paradigm on its

head. We must simultaneously deconstruct the social construction of dif-

ference that constitutes racism and sexism while we reconstruct difference as

unlimited human and humane possibilities. This means that we must use every

opportunity to show the way in which race and gender difference has been

constructed in order to justify racism and sexism at the same time that we teach

ourselves and others to name and value the differences that help to define each

of us but which are the very strengths of the community we seek to create. We

must do this at every opportunity by focusing on the contradictions between

Conservative rhetoric and the reality of the lives of women and men who live

and work in a multiracial, multicultural, class society. Local, regional, and

national organizing around issues that expose the contradictions inherent in

the prevailing paradigms provide the best long term hope for redirecting economic and social policy toward human interests.

NOTES

1. The former occurs when oppressed people participate in the creation of difference in order to protect themselves from violating or seeming to violate the norms of behavior established by those in power. 2. Audre Lorde has described what she calls this "mythical norm" as "white, thin,

young, heterosexual, christian and financially secure" (1984, 116). 3. My discussion of the ethnicity paradigm and challenges to it is based upon the

analysis offered by Michael Omi and Howard Winant in their important book Racial Formations in the United States (1986). Even at those points where I disagree with their

analysis, I am indebted to it.

4. Commenting on the impetus for replacing "colored" and "Negro" with "black", Robert Baker writes: "All of these movements and their partisans wished to stress that Afro-Americans were different from other Americans and could not be merged with them because the difference between the two was as great as that between black and white" (1981, 163).

5. In their fascinating account of a hundred and fifty years of the experts advice to

women, For Her Own Good, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English refer to these views

respectively as "sexual romanticism" and "sexual rationalism" (1979, 21). 6. For some accounts of the androgyny paradigm and its critics, see, for example, Caroline Bird (1968), Ann Ferguson's "Androgyny As an Ideal for Human Development" (1977) and Betty Roszak's "The Human Continuum" (1971, 297ff) as well as Mary Daly's

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(1975) "The Qualitative Leap Beyond Patriarchal Religion," and Janice Raymond's "The

Illusion of Androgyny" (1975). 7. See Gail Rubin's "Woman as Nigger" (1971, 230ff). 8. Omi and Winant quote political scientist Merle Blacks as pointing out that

"Reagan's kind of civilized the racial issue" (1986, 135). 9. This stereotypical portrayal is not applied to Asian Americans or to Cuban

Americans at the present time.

10. This trick of exclusion has a long history. Portraying civil rights for blacks and

women as a special interest, for example, sets things up so that extending civil rights to

these groups appears to take something away from everybody else instead of enhancing

democracy for all.

11. This in contrast to Omi and Winant who argue that "we are witnessing the

resurrection of the ethnicity paradigm in a new form" (1986, 141).

12. See, for example, Jeffrey Prager's discussion of Ronald Reagan's portrayal of black

Americans during his 1985 State of the Union Address. Prager points out that Reagan

subtly attempted to divide black Americans into two groups, those who were "virtuous

black workers" and those who were "menacing addicts, criminals, etc. (1987, 70).

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