Christy Garrison-Harrison on Black Feminist Geographies
In today’s post, Ashley Everson, a managing editor of Global Black Thought, interviews Christy Garrison-Harrison, a scholar of Black Womanist Geographies, about her article in the first issue of Global Black Thought, “Interjecting a Black Feminist Geographies Framework into Social Science Research Paradigms.”
Christy Garrison-Harrison is an Assistant Professor of History and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Southern University and Agricultural & Mechanical College. She was recently a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Buffalo. Dr. Garrison-Harrison is completing several projects, including a monograph on Black women’s community activism in Georgia during the modern Civil Rights Movement era and a documentary short about southern Black women activists. At Southern University, she is co-coordinating the launch of new programming in the history department. Forthcoming publications include an abbreviated institutional biographical essay on the history of Southern University and Agricultural & Mechanical College for a project that centers the
historical relevance of Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs).
Ashley Everson: Your work powerfully critiques the colonial underpinnings of traditional geography. What prompted you to bring Black feminist theory into conversation with geographic method?
Christy Garrison-Harrison: As a historian, my body of work primarily centers the experiences, contributions, and cultural work of Black women by using research methodologies drawn from the disciplines of Black feminist theory, spatial discourse, and Black Geographies Studies. After completing several pieces, I realized I was inherently swathing Black feminist theory and the geographies—Black, human, cultural, and gendered—into the analyses and the historical narrative. I also realized that one of the reasons this research practice had become second nature was not necessarily due to taking a transdisciplinary approach. Rather, further developing Black Feminist Geographies as a methodological tool evolved in response to the “traditional” Eurocentric, patriarchal, and hegemonic paradigms that I encountered when conducting research. One cannot, and should not, ignore the designated “classic” literature. It demands an intellectual response. Much of it (even at the onset of the 21st century) was designed to endorse the evolution of empire within the academy and the canon; not to accurately describe, document, or define it. These pre-existing frameworks, at best, marginalized the roles that Black women, femmes, and girls played in contributing to the building of worlds and creating communities. At worst, they erase the importance from the historical canon.
Everson: You write about “invisible gatekeeping” by white women in social institutions. How do you see this legacy shaping contemporary educational or public health landscapes?
Garrison-Harrison: This legacy continues to loom large. Those who engage in intragender racism and intragender patriarchal practices continue to work at disempowering Black people. In the 21st century, the gatekeeping is no longer invisible. With those in elected offices creating intentional misdirection vis-à-vis having folks focus on the relevance of DEI laws passed (theoretically) to protect Black people, women, people of color, veterans, LGBTQ people, and the disabled communities, white women have once again become the ardent public defenders of white manhood and white families. One keen example is the rise of “trad wife” social media content promoting an idealized, picturesque, heteronormative, Christian, “nuclear,” and pro-life white family based on a non-existent 1950s prototype: the stay-at-home coiffed wife and mother, a hard-working (blue or white collar) husband that is the sole provider, and several “well-adjusted” children. This content typically romanticizes a bleak era in American history when segregation was legally and violently enforced.
Black people were prohibited from exercising their constitutional rights (including access to the franchise), and the financial and sexual exploitation of domestic workers was standard.
Trad wifers eschew continuing higher education, seeking career advancement outside of the home (just to be clear, these women do work hard at producing monetizable content or businesses they can sell from home in addition to their domestic duties, childrearing, housekeeping, and being perceived as loving wives), and includes a softcore version of hardcore proselytizing. Their cultural foremothers were the late 19th century white women who were members of the Cult of True Womanhood and those who picketed against integration in the 1950s and 1960s.
The rise of what’s being deemed a resurgence of “traditional values” also can be connected to the educational front: white women leading the calls to ban books and curriculum that they find offensive, white women backing the adding of “school choice” (voting to allow private schools to receive funding from tax dollars allocated to public schools with the caveat being that the private schools would accept a percentage of public school students). The women who support these ideologies also organize to reduce funding to libraries that refuse to ban books and threaten to recall school board members who do not publicly endorse their agendas. These acts are evidence of naked political power yet are underreported as such because it is documented as protective mothering. Thus, these women are impacting school boards and local elections. People elected to ensure that public schools are adequately equipped to provide a viable education to their respective communities are creating policies that acquiesce to the will of these groups.
This becomes a public health issue when these same groups combat educational tools and curriculum that they find problematic. When sexual health/education, pro-vaccination, or pro-choice programming is removed, everyone suffers. Immuno-compromised people are exposed to unvaccinated people, teens are not taught how their bodies work, and children are not taught about bodily autonomy. Funding is being stripped from public health facilities. Many who hold these eugenically inspired beliefs are currently employed in the health care and educational fields. “Reclamation-of-values” activists are working to readjust the landscape to restore hegemony.
Everson: How does your use of Black Feminist Geographies disrupt the dominant epistemologies in spatial analysis and data collection?
Garrison-Harrison: In my work, (and one of the ways in which I teach methodological best practices) I automatically theorize Black Feminist Geographies as part of the research template. This template “situates Black Women’s and Black Feminist Studies as foundational analyses in the collective studies on space, community, cultural practices, and liberatory responses to domination.” Incorporating a framework grounded in Black Feminist Geographies produces a research paradigm that positions data collection on Black women, femmes, and girls as essential is integral to disrupting pedagogies that enshrine “whiteness” and “manhood” as an inherent critical epistemological and philosophical origin point of data collection, analyses, or critique. Insisting upon the use of “Blackness” and “woman/girl/hood” as equally intellectual methodological components contests standardized research practices that begin with the white male voice as the intellectual basis of inquiry and male body as the basis of the historical narrative.
Everson: Can you elaborate on how the histories of Black women’s domestic labor shaped the very foundation of what is considered “respectable” space in U.S. society?
Garrison-Harrison: White women’s positions in the community and society have always been directly linked to having Black women in service. During the antebellum era, having bonded servants was an indicator of class, wealth, and status. Those who did not enslave Black Americans were also typically not landowners. This meant—until 1832 when universal white male suffrage is generally documented to have become enacted—all white men did not have the right to vote in every state. Acquiring a bonded servant equated to owning property, which led to acquiring a higher societal standing and becoming enfranchised. Post-Reconstruction Era, hiring Black women as domestic laborers provided the same sheen of respectability and status to lower- and middle-class white families. Wealthy white families often sought European domestic workers as markers of wealth and to differentiate themselves from working- and lower-middle class white families who predominantly employed Black domestic workers.
White women who believed in the “Cult of True Womanhood”—a set of societal standards that became popular during the 19th century, particularly among the white, middle and upper classes—needed an exploitable class of women to employ once the institution of slavery ended. Although it should be noted, many Black clubwomen emulated those principles and sought to teach them to poor Black women. True Womanhood defined “womanhood” as being based on four key virtues: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. The “domesticity” virtue included being able to afford Black female servants to do the actual cooking, marketing, cleaning, sewing, gardening, ironing, laundry, and child rearing. Poor white women, or Black women of any economic means, could not be considered “true women,” but they could acquire respectability if they had domestic help to do the jobs they were being lauded for doing.
Everson: What role do you see for geographic scholarship in reparative justice, particularly regarding mapping Black women’s community-building and resistance?
Garrison-Harrison: Moving forward, geographic scholarship that acknowledges and incorporates methodological tenets from Black Feminist Geographies, Black Women’s Studies, or Black Feminist Studies is poised to offer pedagogical bodies of work that are nuanced, holistic, ethical and regenerative to the canon.
Everson: How might undergraduate educators incorporate a Black Feminist Geographies framework in courses on race, gender, or social science methods?
Garrison-Harrison: That begins with reading the pioneering and pivotal scholars in these fields, a sampling of whom are listed in my essay. As undergraduate, graduate, and community scholar-educators become more familiar with these varied bodies of work, they will become versant in the pedagogies and methods. Ultimately, educators who teach courses on race, gender, social sciences, or the humanities should take the final step of embedding frameworks grounded in Black Feminist Studies, Black Geographies, Black Feminist Geographies, and Black Women’s Studies into the course syllabi. The Black Feminist Geographies framework(s) should be identified as: one of the course standards; as one of the critical learning objectives; and as one of the learning outcomes—which should also include the student being able to knowledgeably discuss and cite discourse from these disciplines. Educators should ensure that the texts do not function as an isolated alternative on the course syllabi, only important to those majoring in Black Studies, Gender Studies, etc. Weaving the expectations that these methods should be reflected in each of the students’ research assignments will cause the students to view these frameworks as a standard, not an exception. These are but a few best practices that support incorporating these methods and frameworks.
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