Some women of color at San Jose State opened up about dealing with difficulties and discomforts as double minorities.
Psychology senior Alicia Naicker said she faces layers of oppression in the classroom as a South Asian woman.
“It’s difficult when you have a racial identity component [and are] a woman,” Naicker said. “Sometimes you won’t even be acknowledged within that community. It’s almost two layers of oppression.”
Naicker recalled moments at SJSU when she’d ask her white, female professors questions that ended in them dismissing her.
She said she noticed when other white, female students would ask similar questions, the professors would be far more willing to have a discussion and would even applaud their engagement.
Naicker said she feels expected to be strong because she’s a woman of color, but she doesn’t feel as though her professors are empowering her enough in the classroom.
Business management junior Deepthi Vasudevan said women of color experience microaggresions and discrimination in academic and corporate institutions.
“There’s a lot of discrimination. . . because [industries] are dominated by non people of color, there’s a lot of remarks pertaining to being a woman of color,” Vasudevan said.
Vasudevan said these remarks include the simple mispronunciation of names.
Naicker said the feelings of being ignored go beyond just the classroom because historically, women of color have faced “oppression” in every facet of their lives.
“Some white women in the [women’s suffrage] movement felt it was unfair for Black men to get the right to vote. [Women] of color were completely excluded from the narrative. There is Sojourner Truth. She was definitely somebody who spoke out against that,” Naicker said.
Naicker said Sojourner Truth, a former slave who became an advocate for abolition and women’s rights in the nineteenth century, is often omitted from history lessons.
Historical people and events akin to Truth have been removed from the U.S. curriculum because they aren’t digestible, specifically when they involve the intersection of identities and aren’t as clear-cut as some would like them to be, Naicker said.
This intersection is how our identities, such as gender and/or racial identities, intersect with one another to “shape our experiences of privilege or oppression,” said Tanya Bakhru, professor and program coordinator for the Women, Gender and Sexuality program.
“One of the ways that [people of color] remain oppressed is when they are cut off from their own history,” Bakhru said. “I certainly have experienced something that a lot of scholars of color experience, which is that your work can’t be easily understood by people because you’re doing intersectional and interdisciplinary work.”
Naicker said there’s been moments in the classroom when white people “take the mic” to discuss issues pertaining to being a person of color and that’s “fine” until they can’t address the bigger picture of racial tensions in the U.S.
She said she wishes white women would “pass the torch” to women of color who’re better equipped discussing that broad perspective.
“[Making space for the voices of women of color] requires a lot of humility, it requires a lot of tactful communication but most importantly I think it’s just a willingness to learn,” Naicker said.
Jenny Nguyen, educational programmer for the Gender Equity Center, said the only way academic institutions can change is through a “radical movement” to curate a more inclusive education for students.
Bakhru said critical race theory needs to be prioritized in U.S. curriculum because it’s crucial for students to be educated on history that hasn’t necessarily always been mentioned.
“Race and feminism go hand in hand. One can not exist without the other,” Bakhru said. “Removing critical race theory from classrooms will remove any sort of conversations [about] feminism.”
In Texas and across the country, critical race theory has become a “political lightning rod” as many Republican-led states are working to ban or have banned the school of thought from classrooms, even though teachers say they don’t even teach it, according to an Aug. 23 Kera news article.
Critical race theory is a framework to examine the way individuals are affected by systemic racism and how they can counter institutions that have perpetuated racism, according to a Purdue Online Writing Lab article.
“People are freaking out about critical race theory being taught in their schools and that is an attempt to strategically mold the narrative so that it aligns with white supremacy,” Bakhru said.
In May, Tennessee banned the teaching of critical race theory in public schools, according to a May 6 Tennessean article.
The Tennessean is a daily newspaper based in Nashville, Tennessee, according to its website.
Naicker said both women of color and LGBTQ+ women are frequently overlooked, despite their contributions to feminist discourse, when their voices should take precedence.
“There cannot be such a thing as white women [feminism] because that is not addressing oppressive systems that need to be dismantled in order to have liberation for all women,” Bakhru said. “One of the first ways to do that is just to prioritize and highlight the voices of women of color and [transgender] folks of color, queer folks of color.”
In a 2016 report by the Williams Institute, a UCLA based research center dedicated to educating people about gender and sexual orientation, 1.4 million adults said they identify as transgender in the U.S.
Nguyen said transgender women must be included in any feminist conversations.
“[Intersectional feminism] wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t being driven by transgender folks and by nonbinary folks,” Nguyen said.
Naicker said conversations of racial and sexual identity, and feminism should be started early in U.S. classrooms even if children can’t necessarily understand concepts.
U.S. students need to be taught to look beyond just their perspective, she said.
“The burden shouldn’t fall on [students], it needs to be the school system that changes,” Naicker said.
