Alison Kopit—Andrea Smith “Heteropatriarchy and the three Pillars of White Supremacy”

Alison Kopit—Andrea Smith “Heteropatriarchy and the three Pillars of White Supremacy”

Whereas women of color organizing has often been based around uniting under shared experiences of oppression, despite differences in the experiences of women of color, Andrea Smith (2006) proposes a more complex way of conceptualizing various axes of white supremacy and the way that we might employ this within a feminist framework in “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy.” She constructs a framework that uses three pillars of white supremacy: Slavery/Capitalism, Genocide/Capitalism, and Orientalism/War. She acknowledges that although these are separate pillars that recognize the differences in the way that white supremacy acts on women of different backgrounds, she maintains that these pillars are co-constitutive and depend on one another to keep the mechanism of white supremacy at work, and are all reinforced by heteropatriarchy. In this blog post, I take up the issue of white supremacy in Disability activism and culture and consider the way that heteropatriarchy may be less present.

In using the three pillars as a framework, it is impossible to construct any issue as an isolated that can be solved by a homogenous group of people. Therefore, there is no such thing as effectively fighting for a singular cause. I am motivated by the way that the three pillars set up the foundation to “keep us accountable” to create more robust conceptions of privilege and oppression and to, “check our aspirations against the aspirations of other communities to ensure that our model of liberation does not become the model of oppression for others” (69). Within this, I consider the history of white-washing disability organizing and the way that it may be currently or historically, “…appropriat[ing] the cultural work and organizing strategies without corresponding assumptions that we should also be in solidarity with Black communities” (70). I teach a piece to my undergrads called “Disability Culture Rap” that uses images from the Disability Rights Movement and draws many visual and rhetorical parallels to the Civil Rights Movement. I love the footage from the early activist days and the recognizable figures who are no longer with us, but I also am aware that although there were black disabled activists as a part of the movement, the movement was mostly based around a single-identity focus. Although the movement took up many organizing tactics from the Civil Rights Movement, it did not effectively credit or build coalition with black activists, and was complicit in white supremacy.

Disability rights activist scholars such as Corbett O’Toole (2016) have explored the racism inherent in those early days of the Disability Rights Movement, and writes about how she and others were complicit in the oppression of others. Reading this essay makes me ask the following question: what—and who—would take for disability culture to start openly discussing the way that white supremacy is hugely detrimental to our own liberation?

I see disability/crip culture as inherently non-heteropatriarchal and wonder if this might uniquely position us to work within Smith’s framework. Similar to the queer community, the value and necessity of INTER-dependence, the importance of chosen family, the necessary pooling of resources to survive, and experience with defying sexual expectations aligns us with queer and feminist values. Within organizing, I see structures such as Bodies of Work (our network of disabled art makers) or Sins Invalid (a queer-disabled-poc performance art collective) as invoking these values through diffusing power (often by necessity, and to accommodate for certain impairments), negotiating expectations, and collaborating in the production of work. In my research, I have written about this as inherently feminist and resistant to mainstream values of prestige and productivity.

I see the early disability rights activism as intertwined with white feminism and second wave feminism, and the same kind of “unity” rhetoric that Smith argues against. I similarly believe that painting “inclusiveness” and “sameness” with a broad stroke across the movement is counterproductive and false. That said, I associate much of this with a generation of elders who have been invaluable to the movement. How do we work with older generations of elders in the movement who come from this tradition to start infusing more coalitional consciousness into our work? Is this different than the way we might approach organizers of the younger generations? Also, is crip culture inherently non-heteropatriarchal, or is this just a dream in my queercrip heart?

Works Cited

O’Toole, Corbett. Fading Scars: My Queer Disability History. Fort Worth: Autonomous Press, 2015.

Smith, Andrea. “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy: Rethinking Women of Color Organizing.” Color of Violence: The Incite! Anthology, edited by Incite!. Boston: South End Press, 2006, 66-73.