Aurde Lorde’s Contribution to Theories of Freedom and Social Justice
by Sayed Yusuf Almuhafdha
“I am not free while any woman is unfree,
even when her shackles are very different from my own.”
– Aurde Lorde.
I am beginning my essay with this famous quote by Aurde Lorde to clarify her vision and concept of freedom. Lorde described her self as a Black and Third World woman, mother, lesbian and feminist. Lorde was a writer and a civil right activist, she was not only influential among lesbians and women in the United States but outside the states as well. Lorde came to West Berlin in 198 to teach a poetry workshop at Free University Berlin, where she met with Afro-Germans whom she encouraged to produce a book with the title Farbe Bekennen: Afro-deutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte, later translated into English as Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out.
Lorde’s contribution to theories and practices of liberation is widely recognized academically and by women’s rights activists who see her as a champion of the struggle to challenge racism, sexism, and homophobia in her books, lectures and workshops. Lorde dedicated her life to the principles she believed in and to the injustices she wanted to change. She believed that a truly creative approach to freedom would have to be based on the inter-dependency between women. Towards this aim she wrote poetry as a way to confront racism and injustice since she was twelve years old. She repeatedly insisted that everyone had the obligation to speak speak out , and that this responsibility should not only fall on the oppressed themselves. In Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference, a paper she delivered at the Copeland Colloquium at Amherst Colleqe in April 1980, she for instance stated that:
“Whenever the need for some pretense of communication arises, those who profit from our oppression call upon us to share our knowledge with them. In other words, it is the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their mistakes. I am responsible for educating teachers who dismiss my children’s culture in school. Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.”
I highly appreciate Lorde’s contribution to freedom and social justice because she did not only speak out and protested against injustices but she used her academic skills and position as a poet and activist as a way to change specific oppressions. As an activist and poet she had many tools to deliver her voice at her disposal, but by combining them with her work as a university lecturer the effect of her work was incredible. Lorde’s contribution to theories of social justice in the realm of pedagogy can also be seen in essays such as The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, and through quotes such as the following one, where she spoke about what she considered to be her duty as a writer:
“I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.”
Lorde challanged the marginalization of minorites in the societies she lived in and visited, particularly with regards to LGBT rights. Her poems however also address address matters of social and racial justicemore broadly. Personally I feel attached to Lorde’s struggle for equality because I come from a Muslim country that also discriminates against LGBT minorities, where they are isolated, ostracized and criminalized by both society and the law. Day by day, I became convinced that changing this situation can only come through protests in the streets, public speeches and online initiatives. But it is also the duty of society as whole to create a culture of tolerance through education. Campaigning for legislation to grant minorities equal rights is not enough. I am touched by Lorde’s struggle, because I think that change comes from greater awareness and education, and that changing the mindset of the people and the government requires more than slogans and protest but a wider array of initiatives, which is what distinguishes Lorde from other feminists and women activists.
Discrimination and racist oppression of minorities is not a thing of the past. We are facing it in the Global South, where I come from, but also in Germany, where I live today, and – judging from the news – in many others parts of the word including liberal democratic countries. Lorde’s lesson and struggle for social justice is important and inspiring for me because it shows that it pays off to stand up against injustice, as long as you are speaking out publicly and strongly. Knowing your rights and promoting them through education is the role that I see Lorde to have played in her life and through her poetry.
Campaigning for minority rights might be difficult in an authoritarian state but even in these conditions it might be possible the dissemination of poetry and books that could be published outside the country. That Lorde’s work in Germany inspired Afro-Germans to writea book on the history of Afro- Germans, although she was not German but US-American, is impressive. To me it means that her strategy could be implemented in in any country that discriminates against minorities and marginalized groups. I would like to end my essay with another quote by Lourde in which she describes her understanding of her role in society: