Azealia Banks On Alice Walker’s Womanism: ‘I Don’t Trust Any Woman Who Says She’s A Feminist’
Azealia Banks has emerged as something of a antagonist even from a genre of music filled with no-holds-barred opinions. Compared to the likes of Nicki Minaj, Azealia has been picked apart for fighting with just about everyone — with her newest target being feminists.
On Sunday, Banks took to Twitter to tear down feminism’s use of black women when it is convenient without truly getting behind the struggles that they face as women of color. Azealia’s rant began in response to editorials published by black feminist sites like XO Necole and Madame Noire that she sees as engaging in respectability politics in order to align themselves with the mainstream feminist movement.
Having your blackness judged or your worthiness determined by BLACK WOMEN based on how well you deal with respectability is annoying.
— azealiabanks (@AZEALIABANKS) November 22, 2015
Those same girls are sitting at their desks with their blonde kinky Afro weaves, struggling to not seem too black in front of their bosses — azealiabanks (@AZEALIABANKS) November 22, 2015
They sit and Google $1,000+ shoes they can’t afford, drink pumpkin spice lattes and judge girls like me who are actually living their lives.
— azealiabanks (@AZEALIABANKS) November 22, 2015
And living their lives in real time. — azealiabanks (@AZEALIABANKS) November 22, 2015
Banks used this criticism to launch into a greater examination of the feminist movement at large. Azealia’s main target were black women who eagerly joined arms with white feminists as far back as the female fight for suffrage in the early 20th century. Banks argued that, just like now, white women do not fully support the struggles of black women despite expecting them to fall in line with the feminist movement in order to secure women’s rights.
Feminism never supported black women. We fell for that s**t in the early 1920’s helping white women gain the right to vote….
— azealiabanks (@AZEALIABANKS) November 22, 2015
Black Women helped the “feminists” gain the right to vote and they turned around and s****ed on us. Leaving us in the dark. With nothing. — azealiabanks (@AZEALIABANKS) November 22, 2015
I don’t trust any woman who says she’s a feminist. No matter what color she is.
— azealiabanks (@AZEALIABANKS) November 22, 2015
I am a womanist. Please leave me out of your feminist articles and feminist discussions. Thanks. Xx-AB — azealiabanks (@AZEALIABANKS) November 22, 2015
In support of her comments, Azealia then invoked the names of two popular advocates of the idea that feminism was not inclusive of black women. One of the women Banks named, Alice Walker, is known universally for her novel The Color Purple, but is also a central figure in the black feminist movement; or as Walker herself re-defined it in the 1983 book In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,“womanism.”
“A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counterbalance of laughter), and women’s strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health… Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.”
Azealia also used Gloria Jean Watkins, better known as “bell hooks” as another example of the way feminism requires a sharper examination in order to ensure that it adequately includes black women. While still using the term feminism as opposed to womanism, bell hooks supplied a definition in 2000 that coincides well with the argument Banks proposed on Twitter.
“Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Its aim is not to benefit solely any specific group of women, any particular race or class of women. It does not privilege women over men. It has the power to transform in a meaningful way all of our lives.”
What do you think about Azealia Banks’ opinion on inclusion in feminism?
[Image via Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images]
