Activist. Writer. Revolutionary. Barbara Smith: A political life as a Black radical, lesbian feminist.

Off Our Backs, Oct 1998 by Klorman, Renee

Activist. Writer. Revolutionary. Barbara Smith: A Political Life as a Black Radical, Lesbian Feminist

off our backs interviewed Barbara Smith in late April about her participation as one of five editors in The Reader's Companion To US Women's History; her new book coming out in September: The Truth That Never Hurts: Writing on Race, Gender, and Freedom. The controversy over the proposed Millenium March. Her attendance at the Black Radical Congress held in June; and a general look at what feminism is now. Smith's work has been ground breaking in defining a Black woman's literary tradition; examining the sexual politics of the lives of Black and other women of color; in representing the lives of Black lesbians and gay men; and in making connections between race, class, sexuality, and gender.

oob: Do you define yourself as radical?

BS: I'm definitely radical. I'm not a radical feminist. I'm a feminist who is a radical. When I say radical I mean leftist, socialist. Someone who believes in revolution as opposed to reform. I'm proud to be one too. My politics come to many other...feminist lesbian Black women who are known because of their writing. I'm known for both my writing and my activism. When you read The Truth That Never Hurts you'll see that my radical leftist revolutionary politics directly affect how I see Black women issues and Black women's literature.

I was reading this article in OUT magazine about Elizabeth Birch who is the Executive Director of the HRC. One of the things that really came across in the article, and these are statements that she herself made, was how much she sees herself as a mainstream person: average, normal. I was just saying to a friend today that it doesn't make any difference what clothes I put on, how I dress, how I put myself together, I'm a Black person. I will always be seen as so convex, I will never be seen as mainstream. Conservative dress is my favor, and you know what I'm saying? It's not about that. It's about what are my objective material conditions? What is my history, and my status in relationship to the power structure of this country?

oob: I was looking at your earlier essays in This Bridge Called My Back and I wanted to know how much your politics have changed since then? They don't seemed to have changed much.

BS: (Laughing) No they haven't changed. That is what it means to have a political analysis that is tied to a practice, and to also know that my circumstances are never going to change significantly unless I'm involved in struggle, because of the fact that it's never been sufficient for me to succeed on my own. I went to Mount Holyoke college; I entered in 1965, graduated in '69. I was in the group of Black students in this country that began to desegregate elite white institutions. I got a superb education at a very early stage. Now it's not as unusual for a Black student to have the opportunity to go to those private institutions. But the thing is I was not swayed by anything that I experienced there because I went there for the education. I didn't go there to be turned against class and my race. I'm also very aware that the only reason why I got to go there was because of the people's struggle regarding whose names I don't even know. It's a very different perspective. There were less than thirty Black students on campus at the time I went. The attitude was that we were taking up spaces. I'm not saying that every single person did, but we certainly got the message loud and clear. The general attitude was that we taking the places of qualified students. The Black students at Mount Holyoke were generally better qualified than the white students.

oob: You had to be twice as good.

BS: Oh yeah. When I found out what the median SAT scores were, mine were well above. There wasn't supposed to be a Black person on earth that did well on the SAT's and if they did it's because they grew up with money, which is not true for me either. There have always been large groups of people who don't go along with what ever program they have planned for us. And who don't fulfill their stereotypes, but because we had a high attrition rate at Mount Holyoke they did indeed see us as high risk students, albeit presidential scholars, national merit scholars, national achievement scholars...I got an incredibly wonderful education of the kind that I dreamed about getting at the college level. I have friends who visit and say "I don't know how you did it, Barbara." And not only how I did it, but how did I get out of there with my sanity seemingly intact, and you're still a radical? I went to school when that was the culture and the spirit across the country, and as I was saying the people I most admired were Black activists who were working and making sacrifices under very horrendous circumstances. Those are the people I admired as a whole. Who understood that things were absolutely unjust in this society.

oob: How did you try to talk about this? When you graduated from Mount Holyoke who did you talk to? Who did you have as a movement?