School of Albino feminist thought: an anthropological opera from the Calloused Hands of a Black Man

Abstract

Structured like an opera this PhD thesis sets the foundation for The School of Albino Feminist Thought & the School of Vitiligo Feminist Thought rendering the subject position of intersectionality—being Black, being female—no longer relevant insofar as Black feminism neglected the Black female albino body in the first instance. My thesis names not one, but two branches of feminism and, in so doing, women of albinism and women of vitiligo become immutable. The thesis also brings forward the dark-skinned blue-eyed girl child to deconstruct the politics of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and make it necessary to always ask what does a Black woman look like in “theory and practice.” In short, I explain that although albinism and vitiligo are not “races” they can be found among all racialized bodies — including “White people” — and while the majority of White people do not have blue eyes, in the White imaginary such eyes signify purity and a form of beauty the Black subject, especially the dark-skinned Black subject, will never possess. The pervasive belief system little Black girls with blue eyes do not exist corrupts the evolution of African-American consciousness and the trajectory of feminism. My research and theoretical frameworks disempower the history of Black feminisms for rebirth by turning the agency human cognition applies to the flesh and eye color against itself and, effectively, demonstrates the true positionality of Blackness, for example, embodies the power to transform racial consciousness and the very notion of white skin privilege/White fragility too. Thus, the primary research question at the emergence of the albino girl child from the womb becomes an academic mainstay: “Who holds dominion over whiteness?”