Clenora Hudson-Weems is the author of 12 books and a professor at the University of Missouri. She’s dedicated her work to understanding Africana womanism; a term she herself coined. KBIA’s Olivia Love spoke with Hudson-Weems about her 5 step solution for racism, and other comments about her findings.
Hudson-Weems: I hail from Memphis, Tennessee. How about that? I'm a southern girl.
I actually came here in 1990. That was a long time ago. I had received my PhD in American Studies. After two degrees in British Literature. This is in 1988. I've written, published 12 books.
Love: I know that you coined the term Africana womanism. So if you can quickly explain that for people who don't know, the kind of definition and reach of that.
Hudson-Weems: Africana womanism is a global concept as you know, it's global. It is a family centered paradigm that was designed specifically for all women of African descent and by extension their families and people in general because I have a lot of women who are not of Africana background, who find Africana womanism very, very much relatable to who they are and what they do and how they go about living which is exactly what Africana womanism does for the Africana community. And it prioritizes specifically race class and gender. Okay. That is very important and that is what distinguishes Africana womanism from other female based constructs.
Love: So let’s pivot towards talking about what the civil rights movement today looks like.
Hudson-Weems: And it was after just a series of what I call Emmett Till continuums. You knows that that really kind of kicked it off for us was the lynching that we, quote unquote lynching, that we witnessed. And the case of George Floyd, the 46 year old guy from Minneapolis, Minnesota, originally from Houston, Texas, that thing just kind of like, it just got the ball into into motion again. That we really have to do something about and we saw, we saw blacks and whites together, globally, who were speaking out and crying out and against the, you know, the crime of, of racial dominance, you know, the power, the awesome power of racial dominance.
Hudson-Weems: But how do we cope with the ugly? So we have a problem here with racism. We got to acknowledge it. Stop pretending when people say well now I can see I got it now understand how it was you always understood let's be for real.
The five steps started with acknowledgement of the crime. Okay. And from acknowledgement, remorse, you have to be sorry for it when you know it's wrong. It's ugly. You have to be sorry for it. And then from that comes the pivotal element which is atonement.
There must be some way of compensating for the wrong. Okay? And from atonement comes, obviously a redemption from God, He will, he will redeem you for doing good. And from redemption, you move to the final stage for a racial healing, and that is forgiveness. And when blacks and whites can come together, and blacks can forgive the perpetrators of historical wrongs and say, Hey, here we are today together, let's move forward.