The Master's Tools

Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older – know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.

New Discourses Commentary
The phrase “master’s tools” as it is relevant within Critical Social Justice dates back to a 1984 essay by the black feminist Audre Lorde, who was attempting to make the case that the “tools” of the dominant system (these would be the “master’s tools”) will not dismantle the dominant system itself (these would be the “master’s house”). Lorde specifically contended that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. This statement draws upon a rather tortured metaphor to slavery (see also, post-traumatic slave syndrome), and generally insists that it will require using means and methods outside of the dominant system to disrupt and dismantle the dominant system and the oppression it causes (see also, epistemic oppression, epistemic violence, strategic resistance, strategic essentialism, revisionism, radicalism, and identity politics). Among the underlying assumptions in this metaphor is the idea that the existing system is unfairly dominant and requires dismantling (see also, revolution).

The metaphor obviously refers to the conditions of (African) slavery (in America – see also 1619 Project). Under those conditions, because the master would not allow his slaves to make use of his own tools to destroy his property, there is some truth to the claim that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” but there’s also obvious silliness: those tools are both capable and nearest to hand, so in a revolt, they certainly could and very likely would be precisely what tears down the master’s house. This appears not to matter to Lorde’s metaphor because the nature of black feminist (and later, critical race Theory, and later still Critical Social Justice) thought is that whether or not it would be allowed is the only relevant feature in the case of a systemic bigotry (e.g., systemic racism).