Southern University: Hip-Hop & Politics

When Your Identity is Both Your Shield and Your Prison (Keira Miracle-Tilford and Zarinne Page)

• Eugene B. Lee-Johnson • Season 2 • Episode 6

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What happens when racism and sexism combine? Keira Miracle Tilford and Zarinne Page dive deep into the concept of gendered racism – a term coined by sociologist Philomena Essed to describe how these two forms of discrimination create a unique hybrid experience for those affected.

The conversation reveals shocking economic realities: Black women in Louisiana earn just 44 cents for every dollar white men make, despite being America's most educated demographic. This stark disparity exemplifies how intersecting identities create compounded disadvantages that neither education nor hard work alone can overcome.

From workplace discrimination to healthcare inequities, the hosts explore how gendered racism manifests across all aspects of life. Black women must navigate contradictory stereotypes – simultaneously dehumanized by racism while infantilized by sexism, expected to work harder for less recognition and reward. In healthcare settings, this translates to deadly consequences, with Black women experiencing maternal mortality rates 37.1% higher than their white counterparts, largely because medical professionals often dismiss their pain and concerns.

The discussion extends beyond Black experiences to address how indigenous women disappear at alarming rates without media attention, how Latina women face unique challenges related to immigration status, and how East Asian women battle infantilizing stereotypes. Throughout, Keira and Zarinne emphasize that understanding intersectionality means recognizing that people are not monoliths – our identities contain multitudes that shape how we experience the world and how the world responds to us.

Whether you're new to these concepts or well-versed in intersectional theory, this thought-provoking conversation will transform your perspective on identity, discrimination, and the complex ways in which race and gender intersect in our society. Listen now to expand your understanding of how we can build a more just world that recognizes and addresses these overlapping systems of oppression.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

Greetings everyone. This is Kira Miracle Tilford, and today I'm here with Zarin Page and we have a lot to discuss today regarding a very, very controversial topic at least not to me and not to Miss. Z but it's gendered racism. So what do? How do we define gendered racism? Well, I have done some of my research and in our own academic terms, sociologist Philomena Essed coined the term gendered racism back in 1990, 1991. And it quote unquote is to describe how sexism and racism narrowly intertwine and combine under certain conditions into one hybrid phenomenon.

Zarinne Page:

And so today there's a lot of people who do not recognize what intersectionality is and as both women and both being black, we have a lot of experience and a lot of and notice a lot of things that happen in the world that are are part of the gendered racism conversation, gendered racism. To me those are great points I will heart back and forth to how it is your sex impacts, how racism will affect you. So it's not just us being black women, because black men are affected by gendered racism too. It's more so just how, how the patriarchy is both inherently sexist and racist and how both of those things will impact someone because of their gender and their race. And Kimberly Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality, she of course said it's where they intertwine. And I feel like, as a black woman, in today's time, it is a conversation that needs to be had, and black men too, and others it needs to be had, and black men too, and and others it needs to be had of their sex as well.

Zarinne Page:

And when you look back to colonial times and slavery, you will see that that's where gender racism got its roots, because sexism existed before the concepts of race were even a thing. Women were already put at like a lower top, were at the bottom of the totem pole in comparison to men before we were even ever brought across um the waters. But how the how it impacts us is different. For one in in colonial black men were. They had the pressures on them of fulfilling the patriarchy but weren't given the opportunity for that fulfillment. Because I'm going to put this pressure on you to be the breadwinner, to do this, to do that, but I'm not going to give you the opportunity to because of your race. Black women experience it. Black women experience it, and I can just speak personally for myself. As for, we aren't even allowed to even be at the level of a white woman. We're even below them. So you have, like we're unable to, or at least being are unable to be seen as credible because of our woman status.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

Yes, and I'd like to talk about the work, the workspace um in Louisiana, for every dollar that a white man gets, a black woman gets 44 cents.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

And that disparity alone goes to show that our, our, uh, our value is is undermined and we have to work extra hard in order to, in order for our work to be deemed as worthy.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

And, ironically, black women are the most, are the highest um educator, or are the most highly educated in the us, yet we are the most underpaid in the us and that that that in itself shows the disparity. And in white spaces, or I would say in more quote-unquote business, corporate spaces, there's a lack of Black women who, well, granted, there's a lack of Black women because, one, they are not always seen as wanting to be hired and then, two, um, they have to make sure that their resume is hits all the points necessary, and it's not just the resume. They have to make sure that they look the part quote, unquote, and it has to do with hair. They have to make sure that they look the part quote, unquote, and that has to do with hair. They have to make sure they act the part quote, unquote, and it has to do with their personality and assimilating to the type of corporate jargon-esque personality in order to be deemed as worthy of the job.

Zarinne Page:

But that's just an example, in the corporate space it goes back to the double disadvantage hypothesis, where Black women are seen as having basically two things stacked against them Not only their Sex, but their race as well, when we know the saying of you got to try, you know twice as hard to be half as good, whereas we got to try like four times as hard to be a fourth of you, and and it's not even.

Zarinne Page:

it goes beyond just how it's experienced in your job, but it goes into how it's experienced in your day-to-day life, Because we are dehumanized by our race but infantilized because of our sex.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

That too.

Zarinne Page:

And we are then still masculinized by our race and objectified by our sex, by our sex.

Zarinne Page:

But that can the same can be said for black, black men as well, because they are expect to be almost hyper masculine, more so than a white man is, but are still, in turn, like, objectified, like I said, how it has roots in slavery, the mandingo whole trope that's like pushed out in media of black men, and of course we know the jezebel trope that's pushed out, um, for black women. And I think it begs a bigger conversation as to, within our own community, as to how we not only like break down that stereotype for what, how we break down that stereotype that white people have against us, but also break it down for each other. Like we no longer have black women looking at black men as, like you know, uh, mandingo, or just an objectified male, male being, and black men no longer looking at us as jezebels, as harlots or things like that we can even look at it from the a sports perspective, because ever since and I'll talk about black boys specifically ever since they're young they're, they're well black, both black boys and black girls are hypersexualized.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

however, when black boys are young and if they're stereotypically, come from a single parent household with a mother and no father, when they're at school and they're playing sports, a lot of coaches they say, oh, you look like you could play football or, you know, you got the body of a linebacker. And it's just like why are you making comments about that boy's body when, who knows, he could actually be?

Zarinne Page:

an astrophysicist?

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

yeah, I want to be an astrophysicist, want to be a doctor, want to, you know, go into some sort of other industry instead of actually of, instead of being an athlete, and. But within the black community, a lot of our like a lot of um, um family members are like, oh, you would excel if you were to pursue this athletic career. But it's just like we don't always have to breed our boys in into athletes, like they could also become, because we need more black men in other industries we do it.

Zarinne Page:

Black people are only seen as acceptable when we're entertaining whether that be on tv, on a field, tap dancing, whatever you want it to be, but I would like to know what was like as a black, like a woman, as an athlete because we're also still seen in that entertainment sector as well is the only way we can be accepted. Do you feel like you felt those same, that same type of stereotype on?

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

you or was it different not necessarily so I could talk about. I could talk about a few things actually. So, for those of you who don't know, I play softball. I've been playing softball for 13 years of my life. I play at the division one level at an hbcu.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

Softball in itself as a sport is a very white dominated sport. There's not that many women of color that pursue softball because, one, it's very expensive and two, it's like stereotypically, a lot of black women play basketball, or girls want to play basketball or want to be put in soccer. Um, but uh, I would say, at least for me as a young black female, uh, being an athlete, there were stand in terms of like, being recruited and being considered as a star athlete or as a coachable athlete. For girls, you have to have good grades. You're not supposed to cry. You're not supposed to show any emotion on the field. You're supposed to suck it up.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

Um, you're supposed to cry. You're not supposed to show any emotion on the field. You're supposed to suck it up. You're supposed to respect your coaches. You're supposed to get all your homework done, make all your sacrifices, not allowed to go to school dances. You have to play on the weekend, you got to go to practice, whereas for boys, a lot of boys get away with having a bad GPA, abusing their girlfriends, throwing a fit on the field, disrespecting their teammates, disrespecting their coaches. You know, and I've noticed with a lot of young male, black male athletes, they're very coddled and as a girl, as a black woman, you're very coddled and and as a girl, as a black woman, you're held to a higher standard as opposed to a young black boy.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

You're coddled, you're the baby as your, your athletic performance determines your value and your worth, whereas a woman, you have to be an athlete and you have to be a doctor, and you have to be a lawyer and you have to be able to speak well you're also supposed to treat everybody well and I've noticed that with a lot of young male athletes they get away with a lot of mess.

Zarinne Page:

It seems like, as a black woman, your athleticism doesn't save you, quote, unquote. No, because with black men, you can see how it does save them, in a sense, from yes, hey, they look at that as their way out. Yes, like, oh, I'm gonna. Either I'm gonna entertain in some form or fashion, whether it be I grab a mic or I grab a ball Right and as long as I do that and keep them entertained, then I've fulfilled my needs.

Zarinne Page:

But see how patriarchy works is as a woman, you still have other needs outside of. Even if you're fulfilling and got your family out the hood and did what you had to do, you still have to fulfill those roles as a woman and as as being subservient to a man.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

Right, and then also too, because, as, as being subservient to a man, right, and then also, too, because there's not. Because I would say one thing, like in the athletic sphere, there's not a lot of professional opportunities for women because there's no money there. Women aren't going to get paid if they don't play, if they play professionally, as opposed to a man who goes to the nba, the mlb, the n, they get paid millions and millions of dollars. There's no real opportunity there. Um, however well, for women I would say it's getting better, it's getting better now, but um, but the thing is, it's just you. You mentioned that a lot of black boys are bred to thinking that's their only way out. Then again, once they get in there, they're coddled.

Zarinne Page:

They don't have um any other skills, or um they well, they fail to realize that they they're working for a multi-billion dollar corporation where the majority of the managers are white, the majority of the audience is white and the majority of the audience is white and their time there is temporary, exactly, and that the minute somebody else that's younger and with more agile, more athletic comes in, you're pushed to the side, which is why the importance that it's not stressed in school, the importance of school to them, because from an early age, black men are taught that like hey, like this is what I can do, this is how I can perform for them, um, they don't feed into their mind, they don't feed into their other avenues that they can take.

Zarinne Page:

We, we understand that black men aren't enrolled in college nearly as much as black women are, and a big reason for that is because of the school to prison pipeline system and because of the fact that they feel as though, if I'm not in school to play, basketball I don't see a point in me even being there, because they're told that their only value is there.

Zarinne Page:

And as for black women, we're taught, we, we see that and we're like well, one of us has to have the for lack of a better word the mind to get us out or the mind to manage it. And I think it's a disservice to young black men everywhere, because there are so many other avenues that they could take with their education and they're so bright. But if all you be in them or only show them that this is what you can be and that's, that's the only idols they get to have too, they don't get to have. Like you know, the neuroscientist is the idol, because as a community we don't cultivate that type of thinking. They get other, they get ostracized. Black women too. Like when you meet a black woman that is big, that is, wants to be more of a I guess like a homemaker, and wants to not necessarily put her worth and everything into her education, that gets ostracized too. So it's like a lose-lose situation. Our education, the system, the education system was not meant for us, period.

Zarinne Page:

We weren't even supposed to read or write a hundred percent, and so now they make it to where we fit in their particular avenues. As to, they're like okay, we'll allow them to go to school, we'll allow them to to learn, but we want them to fit the mold of what we want. We want to form them to who they can be for us. How can they serve us? Yeah, a black man that is, you know, running a business like a plumbing company or something that's not serving them, but one that's dribbling a ball or holding a mic or keeping the race from advancing to the places, the spaces that white people have that serves them.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

Yeah, I'm starting to realize that a lot of the things that um are socialized into us are just purely for entertainment. Like purely for entertainment, um, because when you think about affirmative action and the trump administration rolling back on the department of education, black people are in, we're in these spaces, we are, but they don't want us there no.

Zarinne Page:

That's why affirmative action was yeah, like that and they don't want to see, they don't want us here anymore because they know that what we have and what we can give has value, and we also look at the bigger picture.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

You know, we want to make our communities better, we want to set examples.

Zarinne Page:

So we don't have to.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

We want to make sure we give examples so we don't have to show our young children that they can only be certain things. Yeah, so our young children that they can only be certain things.

Zarinne Page:

Yeah, so, and that's all that we've. We've been conditioned to place value in into.

Zarinne Page:

We haven't been afforded the opportunity to even begin to place value in other sectors of life outside of entertainment, because that's what we were told is valuable. And for so many black people they are still striving for that validation, almost like of knowing that, like they're acceptable to white people. And I get back in the day it was a survival instinct, but now it's. It's. It's almost to the point to where you. We've been in those spaces and done it the way that they want us to and it hasn't changed much. That mindset can be seen in all spaces, not just in the workplace and entertainment. It can be seen in the medical industry as well, with black women experiencing a mortality like a mortality rate much higher than that of their other race counterparts, whether it's white counterparts, their indigenous counterparts, hispanic counterparts.

Zarinne Page:

Black women are oftentimes not taken seriously in medicine. I mean, our bodies were experimented on. You have women such as sarah bartman who were literally put in museums because of how they were built. Like we are objectified due to sexism but then dehumanized again because of our race. So I think a lot of medical, like medicine, practitioners, like they see us as experiments almost. They don't see us as actual human beings with actual emotions and who've actually experienced pain, and that's another thing. A lot of white doctors do not believe that black people experience pain in the same way that they do, and I can speak from personal experience that I've had.

Zarinne Page:

I was an athlete in high school as well and I have have had a long time shoulder injury and I've went to several doctors and it wasn't until I got seen by a black doctor and it was a man that he believed the level of pain that I was experiencing in my shoulder and that type of representation is just. It's needed, Like another is. This is when I went to get my eye checkup done the whole staff at VisionWorks they were black women.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

It was the most seen, heard and understood.

Zarinne Page:

I've ever felt like going to any type of medical place and I didn't have to worry about do they think I'm making it up? Do they not want to believe it? Are they going to wait until I'm damn near on my deathbed to try to do something about the pain that I'm experiencing? And it's just a comforting feeling to know that you were taken seriously, not just because of my gender but because of my race too.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

And that's why we need black doctors. We need doctors that look like us. We need lawyers that look like us. Black doctors, we need doctors that look like us. We need lawyers that look like us. We need people who are in these professions, who have similar experiences as we do, and I got some numbers for you. So, according to the national library of medicine, seven percent of the us population is is made up of black women. 13.6 percent is black people. Seven percent of the us population is black women and out of that, 37.1 percent are more susceptible to for maternal mortality rate as opposed to non-hispanic white women. It's 14.7 percent.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

And according to pregnancy related mortality 42.4% for black women, non-Hispanic white women 13% and for obesity, 34.7% for us and for non-Hispanic white women, 21.6 21.6 percent. So you could see that well, we don't really make up that much of the us population, yet these numbers affect us at such a high rate it's unacceptable yeah, it's unacceptable, and you mentioned, like sarah bartman, let's look at henrietta lex they literally took her cells without letting her family know and she's literally saved so many lives off of one stem cell.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

And we are experimenting. Like you said, we're experimenting on without consent, without really any like mindfulness and um. It's really upsetting and that's why I just hope that our demographic stays in school, stay educated, and we find ways to continue to advocate for ourselves when it comes to the health care system, advocate for our lives, people. Then we need to do some some sort of digging, because I know there's a lot of people out there that really just like walk around, not aren't like really conscious of certain things, and I just think that, like, if we're conscious, we have a duty to help make others more conscious and I feel like that's where black men could really step up and understand that a part of them is they're not privileged in the sense that they it's because it's not an oppression, olympics, it's not that like, oh, we have it worse off than you.

Zarinne Page:

I just think it will help for them to recognize that you benefit in certain aspects from a patriarchy, but it it hinders you as well.

Zarinne Page:

So I feel like when a lot of women do make the double disadvantage, uh, claim to them, I don't think it's received well, because they're like well, you know, I still face things too that you don't have the experience in terms of if me and a black man get pulled over, we're going to be treated much differently from the police. But I think black men could take it as an opportunity to step in and be like hey, like we, they would rather probably listen to us than y'all yeah, like out of the sheer fact that at least I'm a man, and I don't mean it in the sense that one is better than the other, but more so. Just that I think. I think black men could really just step up in that aspect and in terms of the conversation, the gender racism, because I think it's hard for people to step outside of themselves. Yes, I am discriminated against, but also understand that you benefit from certain things as well, like for me, for example.

Zarinne Page:

I didn't grow up very poor, like I was you know, I was middle class, yeah, a little bit of money enough to survive, and so I understand that that benefits me in some way, and so these conversations need to be had when they understand that I do benefit in some way, because when we both apply to a job, they're more likely to get you Out of the sheer fact that you're a man, and men are seen as more competent, as more capable than me, and it's not just in jobs, but that if you were to go to a doctor, they would believe your pain a little bit more than mine, because I'm a woman with my womanly emotions and I'm just over exaggerating.

Zarinne Page:

But yeah, I think the medical field is a place where it could use work, and I think also the not entertainment. Specifically the music industry is where it could be talked about too, because the stereotypes that surround black artists, regardless of the type of music they make. They're destructive.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

I mean that's so valid, but that's literally how they make their money off of exploitation yes so like there's a lot of people in the industry who aren't honest and literally know that, okay, this is gonna make me money, then I don't care what, what it, what kind of effect it gives. You know, we can talk about like sexy red and her being a quote-unquote industry plan and we can talk about, uh, the differences of, like black women in media. That's a whole different conversation. But like that's literally how the entertainment industry industry makes their money off of exploitation. But I feel like in a lot of industries black people, people of color, are exploited Most people In a capitalist society.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

If you're working class, you're exploited. Lower class exploited. If you're not the top 1%, you're exploited.

Zarinne Page:

It's just done at a different rate for us. Exactly, we are the probably the main people of exploitation and outside of just black people being exploited, gendered racism. Racism affects just more than just black people.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

I can only speak on my experiences as a black woman, but it affects other races as well.

Zarinne Page:

We have indigenous sisters that have been missing for quite some time, that no one cares to, to look for. We have, like latina women who are facing a lot of immigration problems that no one seems to care for. You have a lot of east asian women who are often infantilized by western society and it's just. It's not that their men don't experience these. The men of those races don't experience those things, it's just. It's just a unique experience, that's. That's more. So.

Zarinne Page:

What the gender racism conversation is is that how your experience, because of your sex and because of your race, will create something that's unique to those people who fit into that category. I can never speak on a black man's experience because that's something uniquely to him and other black men that they will have gone through, just like they can't speak on my experience as a woman and as a black woman, because it's something they'll never go through, and I just yeah, and to go back to the, to the indigenous women, the National League of Cities reports that five thousand seven hundred and twelve women, young women and girls are missing who are native.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

The US Department of Justice or, yeah, the US Department of Justice in their federal missing persons database they only have 116 cases, wow, yeah. And according to the Urban Indian Health Institute, across 70 cities there was a study, 71 cities, there was a study 25% are missing, 56 percent were murdered and 19 percent were unknown. I don't know, uh, what that specific number is, but I just know they did a study on across 71 cities of the missing, um, indigenous women. And it's just unfortunate that women, indigenous women, aren't taken seriously when this is quite literally their land, like this is literally where their people come from. They're not taken seriously, they're not cared for, they're not sought after and it's really upsetting knowing that it could literally be me, it could be my sister. I'm not indigenous, but I'm just speaking in general. Like I could go missing, my sister could go missing, you can go missing, my mama could go missing and no one would care, and it's not just.

Zarinne Page:

It's not that they don't care about women, it's just that they don't care because you're not white, because, if we go back in time, an offense towards a white woman was considered one of the biggest outrageous.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

That's why homies are lynched and like sentenced to prison.

Zarinne Page:

Yeah I mean, we don't have to just speak on emmett till, we can speak on george stanley, we can speak on all of these, like references to black men approaching a white woman and and the whole idea of a white woman being the picture of fragility, the picture of like innocence, the picture of purity. Yet Yet we're all women, we're all oppressed. The patriarchy discriminates against us the same way and they're seen as more they they have. There's a desire to protect them more than us I totally agree, zane.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

Um, I feel that we aren't taken as seriously and I hope this conversation well. The goal of this conversation and to the listener, to the audience, is to feel more enlightened and to not only think about how they walk through the walk through the world critically, but also critically think about how certain you would just have to think critically about how certain people's identity affect them in this life and also how it affects you. You know like next time when you are walking down the street, be more mindful of how people are being perceptive of you and also think about how you're being perceptive of others, and I just hope that people People consider race and sexism, racism and sexism and understand that, like you said, it's a double down on women, women of color, and, granted, we just need support. We're always going to advocate for ourselves. Women will always advocate for ourselves.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

We have to and we have to, but we will also love the support and just the the, the critical consciousness of how our identities shape our lives. This has been a great conversation. Do you have anything to add, see?

Zarinne Page:

I would add one last thing is that I I think gender racism, like you said, it, should not only cause you to be more conscious, conscious of your perspective of people, but just keep in mind that you are not a monolith and that, like you, are not just black. You're not just women.

Zarinne Page:

you are not just queer, you are not just, you know, neurodivergent, you are not just of a lower socioeconomic status. All of those things come together and are cumulative and make up you, and I think that's really what gendered racism is. It's the understanding that black people, white people, all people are more than just what they're seen as. That there's something else there. Thank you so much for joining in. Kieran Zier signing off.

Keira Miracle-Tilford:

Bye than just what they're seen as that. There's something else there. Thank you so much for joining in, kira and Zia signing off bye, bye, reggie B.