The Widow Of An Indian Chief Watching The Arms Of Her Splendid Husband Summary

English painter Joseph Wright’s uncontested masterpiece is his work The Widow of an Indian Chief Watching the Arms of Her Deceased Husband. The painting depicts a lone native woman under a tree, mourning her loss. The weather above mirrors her distress: the sky an ominous purple, spiderwebbed with white lighting, while a volcano in the foreground threatens to boil over. With head cradled in hand and shoulders caved downwards, the widow grieves on.

It’s her posture that’s most familiar to me. It’s the embodiment of resignation, of defeat. It’s a posture so broken it’s something you see only when the world’s at its worst. I know that slump; I’ve seen it on my closest friend Morgan. It’s the shape she sank into, years ago, when Eric Garner’s

death went without justice; later, she physically crumbled that way when a noose was hung on the door of a local black sorority. It’s a posture she’s become all too familiar with as a black woman in an unequal world. I see Morgan reflected in that mourning widow.
I also see myself, because upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that the Indian woman in the painting doesn’t look much like an Indian. She’s very pale and slightly reminiscent of the fine ladies in Romantic-era portraits. It’s clear that Wright painted the piece without knowing what a Native American looked like. The woman’s physicality seems at odds with the painting’s narrative. She’s dressed in the garb of a native but she couldn’t look more out of place, an uncanny allegory for my uncomfortable position within black women’s fight for equality.
There I am, uncertain and conflicted about my privileged role and the part I may or may not play in a community that doesn’t belong to me. I want to aid in the fight for equality for people of color, yet I struggle with the way I should. I stand out, dressed in the culture that isn’t mine to wear, not meaning to cause harm but perhaps doing so unwittingly. How do you help someone who may not want or need it?
I’ve come to struggle with this question only recently and mainly because of my friendship with Morgan. We met when we were 14 and were most likely drawn to each other because we so defied the standard to be found in our small, southern community. Morgan and I were both raised in the north only to be suddenly relocated to the south, and we both struggled with the societal differences to be found across the Mason-Dixon line. In a sea of confederate flags, we were yankees at heart. Our friendship blossomed as we discovered our common interests: we both love a good music festival and the New England coast. And we both have a deep and abiding concern over social justice, an issue often neglected in our southern town.
Though I had lived in Georgia for years before she moved, I was there to listen to her frustrations as she adjusted to the changes in culture, and as we bonded over the “terrible, terrible south,” our friendship only grew. But I was always aware that our experiences as women and as blue dots in a red state were more of a dichotomy than a singular ordeal. I’ll never understand what it’s like to be Morgan, not completely, because I’m not black, and she is. I can acknowledge that.
But it still hurts to see her angry and hopeless when she’s faced with racism in a world that has come so far but has so far yet to go. I see why she doesn’t bother to raise her hand during class debates. I see how she’s treated differently than I am by our teachers. I remember vividly how scared and tearful she was after Clinton lost the election. She hugged me and whispered, “Hate won.” So I want to help her because she’s one of my best friends and because I’ve experienced to some degree the same dismissal and injustice. But I don’t know how to help, and more specifically, I don’t know if I should try to help at all.
If I try to insert myself into the fight for another community’s rights from my advantaged state, I’ll risk pitying some of the women I respect and love most. And I know that Morgan isn’t someone to be pitied. Pity implies weakness on her part, and she is anything but weak; she’s survived years of racist and sexist abuse and remained unembittered. Her sunny disposition is testament to her resilience.
But like anyone else, I want to help others who aren’t as privileged as myself. It just feels wrong to reduce my best friend of New England coastlines, rock and roll, and soul food to a skin color. I diminish her when I focus on her skin color, and I mar our relationship when I pity her. So I struggle to see how any of my efforts to advance her interests work to help her.
However, I do also know that in Ian Parker’s New Yorker article “The Gift,” the philanthropist Zell Kravinsky makes a good point: inaction makes you complicit. And I have never been, nor do I want to be, complicit. Kravinsky’s ethos assumed responsibility for the less fortunate; Zell gave away his 45 million dollar fortune and even went so far as to donate a kidney.
But giving away a kidney is different than taking up the cause of another less privileged sister; medical donations can’t be doubted on the grounds that they were done in a condescending manner, and organ donations undeniably work to benefit those unfortunate enough to need them.

Playing a role in the fight for social justice is not nearly as immediate or direct a positive change. Matters of life and death are much more simple than those concerning the complex socioeconomic and political nuances of racial and gender inequality.

My help might offend; it’s easy to see how good intentions can seem condescending and empty when someone offers to engage and empower another whose very disempowerment benefits the former. The losses of black women are essentially my gains, and any apologetic gesture could ring hollow and

trite.
In addition to any concerns I may have over the power dynamics within intersectional feminism, there’s always the question of whether this brand social justice is effective at all. What actual change can we be reasonably expected to exact when we as women all claim responsibility for other women? In Lauren Collins’s New Yorker article “Friend Game,” mother Lori Drew was acquitted of a crime she had conspired with her daughter to commit. She allowed and encouraged her daughter to cyber bully another girl to the point of suicide, yet the judge ruled that her activities, however distasteful they were, did not exclusively place the noose around the neck of the young girl who committed suicide. Perhaps Drew’s indifference towards the actions of others is the right attitude to adopt. Maybe we are really only responsible for our own actions.
Yet to think that way would be to resign ourselves to the notion that the attitudes of a society cannot be improved. The civil rights movements of Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, and Cesar Chavez were all rooted in a philosophy that prioritized the needs of others above the needs of any one person. What then, would become the norm if we refused to hold others to a level of accountability? Do we not owe it to ourselves to constantly revise upon our opinions, find flaws in them and adjust our perspectives accordingly?
It’s a terrifying thought, to stand up to notions of racism or sexism, steeped in violence, hatred and ignorance. Any amount of resistance, no matter how subtle, contains a degree of danger to it. But I can’t let fear paralyze our strides towards equality. The danger and difficulty inherent in the fight for human rights is exactly why I should be an intersectional feminist, even if that carries the risk of offending. Within my relationship with the black feminist community specifically, I need to support and empower other black women, refute any instances of racism or sexism, and actively demand that government institutions work to eliminate the discrepancies in treatment found across genders and colors. These actions can be as subtle as buying from black-owned brands or as clear as participating in marches, but they need to be done if I am to carry out my responsibility as an intersectional feminist.
But I should also be clear in that my responsibility to the black feminist community as an intersectional feminist has limits as well. My role within the fight for equality amongst black women ends where white women begin to take ownership of a black woman’s struggle. I will not wrest away the protests of another black woman only to call them my own. My role is one of a supporter, not a leader. Anything more would be to assume an authority that isn’t mine.
Joseph Wright’s Indian Widow may be a flawed attempt — at best, naive; at worst, ignorant —to depict the reality of exploitation, but it is an attempt.

The painting starts a conversation; it sheds light on an important issue. It’s an endeavor to capture and understand the grief of a downtrodden community. However unwieldy or indelicate its execution, it does not appear to have been done with malice; Indian Widow instead offers a chance to start a meaningful discourse on subjugation and oppression. In the same way, my attempts to contribute to the progress black women are making will be flawed, but that doesn’t foreclose the need for me to make them. So although I may feel torn between the desire to do right by my sisters and the fear of saying the wrong thing, at least I’m trying. And I have to try, if for no one else, for

Morgan.
I think of Morgan, my best friend who was only 7 when she was first called the “n word” on the playground, who drives to our high school on roads named after Confederate war heroes, who was excluded and discounted as too black, too ghetto, too loud, and too bold far too many times for far too many things in favor of her white peers. She deserves better, and so do all black women. And if standing on the sidelines is complicit, I refuse to be. I can’t ever pretend to own Morgan’s experiences or the trials of any black women. I won’t take their struggles as my own. To do so would diminish and trivialize their fight for equality, but I can stand beside them and support their demands for equality. I can promote tolerance within our communities. I can call out the bigots and demand a higher standard from my peers. Anything less would be to refuse the moral obligations I hold within a society.