School of Albino feminist thought: an anthropological opera from the Calloused Hands of a Black Man
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Date
23/02/2022Item status
Restricted AccessEmbargo end date
23/02/2024Author
Beckles, Arturo
Delano Beckles, Yirmeyah Arturo
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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?”