Black Woman and self defense

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For women, part of the tension around this topic is that female gun owners are marginalized in a feminist culture that promotes unarmed resistance and “clean” fighting techniques. These send the message that as long as a woman does not have a lethal means of protecting herself, she is still feminine and worthy of “real” protection—either from a man, or from the police. I grew up with the notion that self-defense achieved via martial arts, pepper spray, and the biggest keys on the key ring are how women combat sexual assault. Movies, media, and college self-defense classes reinforced the emphasis on clean fighting as the feminist way. And as I got older, my reporting on public safety in Texas led me to stories about pink personal Tasers and women involved in restorative justice—but never to women (rape survivors or not) who had decided to use more assertive means to protect themselves. To be a gun-owning feminist, to prepare to protect oneself against two of the most frightening enemies of female-identified people—rape and/or domestic violence—still strikes at the heart of what could be described as a feminist identity crisis, wherein women oppress each other with our inability to make room for alternative models of self-protection."

In the mainstream of our society, Gun issues are generally portrayed as southern white gun totting conservatives (or even white crazy lone wolf maniacs) versus northern white liberals demanding restrictions and regulations on gun ownership. Most commonly, the conversation about gun ownership centers around the "right" to a gun granted by the constitution or the violence generated by guns. The later either comes down from conservative arguments that gun restrictions don't limit gun deaths, just keep people from being able to protect themselves from criminals while liberals argue that they do lessen violent gun crime. For both groups, the overriding desire for guns or gun control is the limitation of crime and especially the vulnerability of "law-abiding citizens". The class tension between those who do well in our current social structure and those who lose is just under the surface.

Violence between law, corporate security forces and workers attempting to unionize was rampant in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One of the most famous conflicts was dubbed " The Battle of Blair Mountain". where thousands of unionizing workers, cops and corporate private cops clashed. by the end of the conflict about one million round of bullets had been fired. Since the new deal , which was largely won by union (and communist) organizing, and the purging of radicals from the union movement clashes (and the need to arm oneself against your boss) has basically disappeared. In it's place, there is rashes of work place incidents that mainstream society interprets as random acts of crazy people (see Mark Ames's wonderful book "Going Postal"). The right to arm one's self was a very real need for workers in the past (and arguably is one people have neglected since the second half of the twentieth century)

There is yet another alternative history of gun issues. This one revolving around the history of race in america. One of the first post reconstruction laws banned the ownership of guns by minorities. Weapons have historically been used to terrorize black communities and people, but also to fight back. In places where the police may be the racists you need the most protection from, a right to a gun is of profound importance for self defense. For typical white liberals, police are an absolute protection. The idea that one may need to seek protection from someone that isn't the state is anathema. As a result the conflicts between minorities and the police become difficult to understand. The idea that cops may have an unambiguously negative effect on certain groups and unjustly harass them at an institutional level is uncomfortable or difficult to accept. Black woman have especially been left out of the limelight (historically exemplified by Sojourner Truth's speech "Ain't i a woman?") and their need of protection from men, whether white or not, has been ignored.

Works Cited

Ames, Mark. Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion : From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and beyond. Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull, 2005. Print.

Ayers, H., Rothrock, Z. and King, K. (2006) Archaeological Investigations of the Battle of Blair Mountain: May 13 to November 19, 2006, on file (unpublished)

Sanders, J. Victoria. "Target Market." Bitch Media. Web. 01 May 2012. <http://bitchmagazine.org/article/target-market>.