Content area
Full Text
Cet article examine deux documents publiés par le Comité national d'action sur le statut de la femme (CNA) (National Action Committee for the Status of Women) à son zénith, sur les luttes anti-racistes au début des années 1990. Quand on compare l'histoire officielle du CNA avec un texte féministe anti-raciste on remarque à quel point le multiculturalisme blanc inclusivement recentré sur un féminisme blanc, fait autorité. Cette réaction d'un féminisme blanc à l'anti-racisme reste dominant et continue d'entacher l'histoire des hiérarchies raciales-nationales du CNA.
The consolidation of an anti-racist feminist movement during the late 1980s and early 1990s marks a pivotal turning point in the history of Canadian feminism. The National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) was a key site of intense institutional struggle over racism in the women's movement during this period, and was ultimately transformed by it. This "dramatic shift" (Gottlieb 377) in NAC can be broadly mapped out as a decade of effective mobilization led by feminists of colour. A "real groundswell" (NAC 1985) emerged in the mid1980s and resulted in the creation of a Visible Minority and Immigrant Women Committee (1986). Winning this space for institutionalizing anti-racism inside NAC was crucial for making permanent gains, particularly as it was followed by several years of organizing by "strong women of Colour caucuses" (Gottlieb et al. 374). By 1996, with the highly successful NAC-CLC Women's March Against Poverty, it was clear that the "real push from within by anti-racist feminists" had resulted in unprecedented political and organizational changes (Robertson 313). NAC had elected its first feminist of colour President (after two decades of white feminist leadership), it was operating witliin a new anti-racist mandate, and had an affirmative action policy which ensured strong representation in the leadership by racialized women. Perhaps most importantly, NAC's agenda now reflected priorities defined by women of colour, from the membership through to the Executive, in a political culture committed to building grassroots alliances.1
Despite its significance as one of the most transformative organizational struggles over racism in the post- 1960s women's movement in Canada, this piece of NAC's history has yet to be written. In part this reflects die need for more research to build on the important but sparse documentary record of...