Theorizing Difference from Multiracial Feminism

Women of color have long challenged the hegemony of feminisms constructed primarily around the lives of white middleclass women. Since the late 1960s, U.S. women of color have taken issue with unitary theories of gender. Our critiques grew out of the widespread concern about the exclusion of women of color from feminist scholarship and the misinterpretation of our experiences,1 and ultimately "out of the very discourses, denying, permitting, and producing difference."2 Speaking simultaneously from "within and against" both women's liberation and antiracist movements, we have insisted on the need to challenge systems of domination,3 not merely as gendered subjects but as women whose lives are affected by our location in multiple hierarchies. Recently, and largely in response to these challenges, work that links gender to other forms of domination is increasing. In this article, we examine this connection further as well as the ways in which difference and diversity infuse contemporary feminist studies. Our analysis draws on a conceptual framework that we refer to as "multiracial feminism."4 This perspective is an attempt to go beyond a mere recognition of diversity and difference among women to examine structures of domination, specifically the importance of race in understanding the social construction of gender. Despite the varied concerns and multiple intellectual stances which characterize the feminisms of women of color, they share an emphasis on race as a primary force situating genders differently. It is the centrality of race, of institutionalized racism, and of struggles against racial oppression that link the various feminist perspectives within this framework. Together, they demonstrate that racial meanings offer new theoretical directions for feminist thought. Feminist Studies 22, no. 2 (summer 1996). ? 1996 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 321