Andrea Smith challenges heteropatriarchy and women of color
organizing in the United States when she discusses the “Three Pillars of White
Supremacy” (Smith p 67). Andrea Smith
problematizes the “oppression olympics” in her discussion of white supremacy in
the United States, and discuses an alternative framework for women of color and
people of color organizing. The Three Pillars of White supremacy consist of:
Slavery/Capitalism, Genocide/Colonialism, and Orientalism and war.
The Three Pillars of White Supremacy are three separate and
distinct logics that work together to hold up white supremacy.
Slavery/capitalism renders Back people as inherent slaves; the logic of slavery
is obvious in today’s prison industrial complex. Genocide/capitalism holds that
“indigenous peoples must disappear” – Smith argues that this logic is what the
very foundation of the US is built upon. Indigenous people must disappear in order
for the land to “rightfully” belong to the non-indigenous. Orientalism/war
constructs the West – and the US – as a superior civilization and allows the US
to defend the logics of slavery and genocide in order to stay “strong enough”
to fight its constant wars. Smith defines the three pillars in order to discuss
how, while people of color are victims of white supremacy, they are victims as
well. She points out that, instead of focusing on the “native family,” or the
Black family,” which reinforces the heteropatriarchy as it stands, she pushes
to challenge the concept of family itself; “nuclear family structure…is a
result of colonialism, not the antidote to it” (Ibid p 73).
When attempting to understand midwifery and its current push
toward a radical, feminist healthcare model, I see aspects of Smith’s theory at
work. When it was all but eradicated in the United States in the 1960s, the
midwifery model of care turned toward the Western model of medicine in order to
regain legitimacy and build itself back up in practice. The people who practice
as midwives in many states – like Illinois – must do so with certain
credentials that require them to graduate from a Western medical school with a
masters in nursing.
While midwives in my work view themselves as women-centered,
and push for a radical feminist model in which women are at the very center of
their healthcare, they are restricted by the heteropatriarchal system that many
say the US health cares system is. In order to legitimize their practice, midwives
actively reject non-Western practices in favor of Western evidence-based
testing and interventions. While they gain some legitimacy and the freedom to
practice in the state of Illinois, they effectively “other” the traditions of
midwifery, as it was practiced prior to 1960s, and as it is practiced in many
other parts of the world where it was never eradicated. Midwives in my work
struggle to find a balance – or a form of hybridity – between the Western
medical practices and the traditional, patient-centered practice that they
build their philosophy on. While in many ways, the midwives in my study
accomplish their goal in providing choices for their clients, the choices the
midwives present to their patients are already so delimited that they (the
choices) reinforce the Western patriarchal health care system as it stands.
Additionally, midwifery has moved from being a practice of
people of color in the United States (e.g. Granny Midwives), to being a
practice of mostly upper-middle class white women. Because healthcare practices
do not exist in a vacuum, these midwives often embody some of the racial
prejudices and stereotypes they wish to push back against (e.g. Black women and
Latinx women have higher pain tolerance, or that they do not care to seek a medicine-free
birth) without realizing it. These midwives reinforce minority oppression while
seeking to omit it.
Discussion Question:
Andrea Smith discusses the concept of the family in her work
on logics and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy. I applied her theory to the
healthcare system and the rise of midwifery (briefly). What are other systems
in the United States that uphold this theory? What concepts – like the concept
of family – can we reconsider to move away from the heteropatriarchy and white supremecy
that currently exists?
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