Cotera and Smith

Cotera aims to “push against some of the methodological norms of comparativist practice, in particular the deeply ingrained assumption that comparison must necessarily involve a search for sameness.” She goes on to explain a tendency to ignore the differences among women of color, which she combats by “exploring the borderlands of difference” (7).

This is an intriguing idea for me because I hope to compare the experiences of girls and young women expecting to find distinct differences in the ways social workers and VISTA volunteers approached each group—African American, Latina, and Southern white. But how do I locate and honor the differences within each group? Because they are likely to only appear in the archive as they were perceived (by middle class whites), I will not be able to get to these variations without an oral history component.

Smith proposes “Three Pillars of White Supremacy,” a framework for women of color and people of color organizing, which recognizes that “white supremacy is constituted by separate and distinct, but still interrelated, logics.” The three pillars are Slavery/Capitalism, Genocide/Capitalism, and Orientalism/War (67).

While Smith produced this work for organizers, it can be applied to academics within or across disciplines. If “people of color organizing must be premised on making strategic alliances with each other, based on where we are situated within the larger political economy,” the same must be true of researchers, all producing knowledge within, and often about these pillars (in history this can include their formation, persistence, or social/cultural experiences within). This is why intersectional history is so important, but even if that is not the approach, historians should not produce knowledge about one group without making some attempt to understand the experiences of others, ESPECIALLY if your main subjects are white because their context will almost always include POC.