Colour blind

Colour blind
RAMA LAKSHMI

In 1993, a young, non-white immigrant woman from Tanzania took over aspresident of Canada's largest national umbrella organisation for women, theNational Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC). The women's movementin Canada has never been the same since. All you hear from the women todayis race, race and more race.

The organisation elected its first non-white racial minority president,Sunera Thobani. She was followed by Joan Grant-Cummins, a Jamaicanimmigrant. Both the women, in their 30s, represent the younger generation ofnon-white Canadian women who question white supremacy in the women'smovement. They have successfully changed the face of the organisation in the90s and the issues it takes up.

As NAC's leadership changed, so did its member base, the majority of the newmembers being organisations working among racial minority women. The processof change is now complete and irreversible. This year, for the first time,an aboriginal woman is likely to be elected as president.

For an movement seeking equality, to recognise the inequalities among itsown members was a revolutionary admission. But in the process, theorganisation has become marginalised and fragile. As a member of TorontoWomen's Network said, ``The women's movement in Canada lies tatteredtoday.'' This is because, she added, many privileged and white women areunable to deal with the change, and accuse NAC of having fallen into the`skin trap'.

Racial analysis of women's issues was never seriously taken up by earlierleaders of NAC. But Thobani and Grant-Cummins have highlighted issues aroundeconomic inequalities, immigration laws, migrant women workers's rights andviolence. ``But the old guard just doesn't see these as feminist issues,''Grant-Cummins said. ``They accuse us of not being mainstream anymore. Butwhen I talk about child care and violence all day, they don't hear what Isay, they just see my black face and turn away saying, she does notrepresent us.''

That all women have not advanced equally is an issue the NationalOrganisation for Women (NOW) in the United States has been coming to termswith in the 90s. NOW's president Patricia Ireland has declared that feminismis not just about women's rights anymore, it is also about what it means tobe a woman in the context of racial discrimination.

Formed in 1972, the NAC was the voice for Canada's women's movement. At itsheight it was called a `parliament of women'. But for long, it chose to lookthe other way when native and immigrant women mobilised independently acrossCanada. The 80s, which saw increased immigration into Canada fromnon-European countries, saw many ethnic women's groups mobilising in variouscities. In cities like Toronto, non-white immigrants make up almost half ofits total population. NAC rippled, though its white core remained intact.

Things changed for NAC in the early 90s. When former president Judy Rebickintroduced an affirmative action programme for its top positions, it wasaccepted without debate. But the biggest change was yet to come. By 1993,Rebick felt that the group was ready for its first woman-of-colourpresident, Sunera Thobani. She declared, ``For feminism to mean anything ithad to be about equality for all women.''

That's when the facade of unity fell off. And one of the first thingsThobani said upon election was: ``It's time women of colour startedrepresenting themselves''. She then went about making the issues ofaboriginal and immigrant women her focus. NAC's constitution was amended sothat at least one of every committee's co-chair was a racial minority. Butthe backlash began very soon. An Ontario politician stood up in parliamentand called her an illegal immigrant in 1993 (which she was not). Newspaperswere flooded with letters claiming white was a colour too, that NAC hadfallen into a skin trap and that it did not represent mainstream Canadianwomen anymore.

When Grant Cummins took over in 1996, a cartoon in a leading nationalnewspaper featured a coffee cup with the headline `Black And No Sugar'.Donations started to dry up. Internally there was no opposition to herleadership. But there were almost daily fights in the NAC board along raciallines. According to an Asian member, ``White women were willing to sharepower only as much as they allowed it. When you grab it, when you do itwithout their blessing, it's a real fight.''

The race divisions in the women's movement have come at a time when Canadianpolitics has shifted rightward and governments have begun to pursue fiscallyconservative economic policies. Coupled with that, the sudden growth of theright wing Reform Party as the country's main opposition party inparliament, with an agenda of utter disdain for special interest identitypolitics, didn't help.

Many of the white women politicians accused NAC of not representing women'sissues anymore, of being `obsessed with the race agenda' and `poisoned inits attitude'. ``In picking up something new, you should not drop what youwere holding,'' said a leader of a national party. ``It is not an anti-racegroup, it is a feminist group. They were more concerned about Englishlanguage training for immigrant women than for women's child-care rights.''Another Liberal Party MP claimed that racial concerns were weakening themovement's ability to speak with one voice.

``Whose voice do they mean when they say `one' voice?'' retorted SamsamAhmad, a Canadian woman of Somali origin, working for Woman's Place, anOttawa-based organisation. Two years ago, the organisation's non-whitemembers tried to challenge the `whiteness' of its board. They were concernedthat the organisation's white face made coloured women hesitate to accessits services. In one woman's words, ``a war broke out''. For five months,women of colour systematically moved to `take over' the board. And theydid.

But not before the old board members sent letters to donors to stop donatingto the organisation. They even changed the locks of the office. After yearsof defining themselves as victims in relation to male power, privilegedwomen ended up monopolising power within their own organisations.

Women are not a homogenous block. But the only differences they havehistorically recognised are those that exist between women and men. Thereare divisions that run deeper than gender. In India, it is caste, manifestin the resistance to the women's Reservation Bill in Parliament. Backwardcaste politicians felt the Bill would bring in upper caste, urban,privileged women and asked for a further sub-quota for themselves. And allthe while, women's groups dismissed the issue, saying, ``We are aboutgender, we are not about caste. Women cannot be divided along caste lineslike men''. Their refusal to see the inequalities among women was absurd andpitiful.

It is difficult to talk about feminist issues without talking about ananti-discrimination agenda. It's neither the real, nor the complete picture.Many white middle class Canadian women have distanced themselves from thepresent concerns of NAC, saying it does not speak for them. But it isbeginning to speak for new groups of women. As it goes through the painfulprocess of changing, the movement's biggest achievement is that now, thepoorer and the most marginalised women identify with the `idea' offeminism.

Rama Lakshmi, special correspondent with The Washington Post, was inCanada recently on a Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute fellowship.