Summary Of Patricia Hill Collins 'Black Feminist Thought'

708 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Black feminist theory and civil rights

In her seminal text, Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins codifies a vast literature on Black feminist thought to develop a coherent social theory. Collins draws from not only social scientific research, but literature, poetry, music and oral history. She highlights the existing exclusion and denial of intersection social identities and intersecting/overlapping systems and forms of domination experienced by sub-populations like Black women in America. Bringing together White myopia and Male myopia, the perspective of the Black feminist highlights that Black women are “set undeniably apart because of race and sex with a unique set of challenges” (Cleage 1993 as cited in Collins 2008). Like the work of Du Bois, Black feminist thought …show more content…

One cannot assume that experiences and conditions of inequality of a particular set of individuals are applicable across geographic, social, political, or economics boundaries and contexts.
3) As knowledge and awareness is generated regarding different features of inequality, those subjected to it and those in relation to oppressed populations may engage with their contexts differently and spur social change. Thus, understandings of inequality must remain dynamic and be willing to let go of long-held assumptions regarding certain groups or behaviors.
4) One must question who is permitted to make observations, claims, and generalizations about inequality (in other words, who is allowed to study inequality?). Black feminist thought notes that all Black women can serve as intellectual leaders in the discipline, regardless of educational or technical training to serve as traditional intellectuals in the academy. Given the tendency to draw from our own norms as sociologists, it is important to concede that other, non-traditional thinkers and researchers, including those who may not immediately identify themselves as such, may have important contributions to make to the study, in particular, helping to disrupt the role of norms and

Show More
Related

  • Patricia Hill Collins '' Intersectionality Is Not Neutral'

    561 Words  | 2 Pages

    Interstitial politics, defined by Kimberly Springer as a “politics in the cracks” is also a key element in intersectional analysis. As Black feminists it’s our job to locate places of contradiction and conflict, because in working alongside these sites of power and gatekeeping, we can achieve a better knowledge of how they operate as well as develop strategies to dismantle them. This embracing of sociopolitical dissonance embodies the spirit of dialectical practices in Black feminism. In the chapter “Distinguishing Features of Black Feminist Thought” Patricia Hill Collins emphasizes that

    Read More

  • An Intersectional Approach: The Analyses of Davis and Hua

    2002 Words  | 5 Pages

    Angela Davis incorporates the theory of intersectionality to explain the emergence and inaccuracy of the myth of the black rapist in her paper. Within this paper, which is titled “Rape, Racism and the...

    Read More

  • Kellner Intellectual Analysis

    1043 Words  | 3 Pages

    Collin thinks “race, class and gender represent the three system of oppression that most heavily affects African American women”. She also believes there are other groups than Black Women being affected by this oppression.

    Read More

  • The Identity of Black Women in the Post-Bellum Period 1865-1885

    2673 Words  | 6 Pages

    Throughout history, the black woman has always had a multitude of responsibilities thrust upon her shoulders. This was never truer than for southern black women in the period between 1865 and 1885. In this span of twenty years, these women were responsible for their children, their husbands, supporting their families, their fight for freedom as black citizens and as women, their sexual freedom, and various other issues that impacted their lives. All of these aspects of the black woman’s life defined who she was. Each of her experiences and battles shaped the life that she lived, and the way she was perceived by the outside world.

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Origins Of The Urban Crisis

    1145 Words  | 3 Pages

    I know I talked about this earlier in the paper, but inequality is still a major issue that we still have in the United States today. African Americans today still are not treated the same as the white majority. In the case of Detroit, there were inequalities in the work place and in housing. There were laws that were enacted to help to prevent these types of discrimination, for example the Fair Housing Act. There were also laws to help prevent workplace discrimination.

    Read More

  • Voice of Equality in the Works of Toni Morrison and bell hooks

    1157 Words  | 3 Pages

    Toni Morrison and bell hooks believe that mainstream society condemns black life as meaningless and unimportant.  In Toni Morrison's "On The Back of Blacks", she describes the oppression the black community experiences from today's white society.  She labels it ...

    Read More

  • Moynihan Negro Family

    1321 Words  | 3 Pages

    Collins, Patricia Hill. "Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images." Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2000. 89. Print.

    Read More

  • Bell Hooks Feminist Theory Analysis

    903 Words  | 2 Pages

    In her novel called “Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center” one of the many areas bell hooks speaks of is the perpetual racial confinement of oppressed black women. The term double-bind comes to mind when she says “being oppressed means the absence of choices” (hooks 5). The double-bind is “circumstances in which choices are condensed to a few and every choice leads to segregation, fault or denial” Therefore, this essay will discuss how hooks’ definition of oppression demonstrates the double-bind in race relations, forcing the socially underprivileged minority to “never win,” and as a result allowing the privileged dominate “norm” to not experience perpetual segregation.

    Read More

  • Racial Struggles and Maternal Creativity: Analysing Du Bois and Walker

    1044 Words  | 3 Pages

    Du Bois opening of his first chapter with 'Of our spiritual striving ' 'in his literature The Soul Of Black Folks illustrate the soul of a black young boy who saw his life in two different world, the world of a black and white person; the life of been a black and a problem in the hill of New England where he grew up and faced racial discrimination. He was a sociologist,writer and educator; he was a controversial leader of the negro thought. Alice Walker wrote about how creative and artistic our mothers and grandmother were in the 1920s in her essay 'In Search Of Our Mother 's Garden ' Alice Walker grew up in the 1960s in south Georgia where her mother worked as a maid to help support the family 's eight children. She grew up seeing the

    Read More

  • Stereotypes Of African American Women

    1426 Words  | 3 Pages

    African American women are considered the most disadvantaged group vulnerable to discrimination and harassment. Researchers have concluded that their racial and gender classification may explain their vulnerable position within society, despite the strides these women have made in education, employment, and progressing their families and communities (Chavous et al. 2004; Childs 2005; Hunter 1998; Settles 2006; Wilkins 2012). Most people agree that race and gender categories are explained as the biological differences between individuals in our society; however sociologists understand that race and gender categories are social constructions that are maintained on micro and macro levels. Historically, those in power who control the means of production within a society have imposed race, class, and gender meanings onto the minority population in order to maintain their dominant position and justify the unequal treatment of minority individuals by the divisions of race, class, and gender categories (Collins 2004; Nguyen & Anthony 2014; Settles 2006;).

    Read More

  • Analysis Of What Has Happened Here? By Elsa Barkley Brown

    524 Words  | 2 Pages

    Elsa Barkley Brown focuses on the intersectionality of being a black woman in America, in “What Has Happened Here?”. Black women experience different forms of oppression simultaneously. Indeed, racism, sexism, classism, as well as heterosexism, intertwine and form layers of oppression.

    Read More

  • A Critical Analysis Of Peggy Mcintosh

    927 Words  | 2 Pages

    “These denials protect male privilege from being fully recognized, acknowledged, lessened, or ended (Shaw, Lee, 86).” It is hypocritical that men are getting the heat for not recognizing their over-privilege when white people cannot recognize their own. White female feminist who advocate equality, and seem to fail to realize they have more privileges than most other minorities. Peggy McIntosh tries to recognize her white privilege in her daily life, so she composed a list of fifty-four observations. From her observations McIntosh drew the conclusion that her morals have been affected, because she believed in equality for all, yet she did not realize she had a dominance which opened many doors for her. We see daily that the white race has more power over other races. In her essay she mentions: “At school, we were not taught about slavery in any depth; we were not taught to see slaveholders as damaged people. Slaves were seen as the only group at risk being dehumanized (Shaw, Lee, 87-88).” If students were taught to see slaveholders as damaged people, then it could impact white privilege which “needs” to remain

    Read More

  • Intersectionality In Kimberle Crenshaw's This Bridge Called My Back

    786 Words  | 2 Pages

    Kimberle Crenshaw is feminist critic of race theorist that speak on behave of intersectionality and the effect it has on politics. As Crenshaw describes intersectionality as the way that certain structures in our society cause vulnerability for certain identities especially, for black women. Crenshaw states, “Black women are sometimes excluded from feminist theory and antiracist policy discourse because both are predicated on a discrete set of experiences that often does not accurately reflect the interaction of race and gender” (140). This statement is support through her keynote speech during the Women of the World festival in 2016. One example that she uses through her speech is employment opportunities for black women.

    Read More

  • What I Mean When I Say White Feminism Summary

    1048 Words  | 3 Pages

    The ostracization of women of color is inherently “reinforced when [only Caucasian] women speak for and as women” (Crenshaw 154), an ingredient of the homogenous trend referred to as white feminism in mainstream media. In her piece “This Is What I Mean When I Say "White Feminism”, African American freelance writer Cate Young explicates the phrase white feminism in correspondence with Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality. Young delineates white feminism as a “specific set of single-issue, non-intersectional…feminist practices…that allows for the exclusion of issues that specifically affect women of color” (Young). According to Crenshaw, the values of white feminism do not take “the interaction of race and gender” (Crenshaw 140) into account of its mission for gender equality.

    Read More

  • The Feminist Movement: The Black Feminist Perspective

    442 Words  | 1 Pages

    Black women s multiple oppressions resulting in the ideologies and

    Read More

More about Summary Of Patricia Hill Collins 'Black Feminist Thought'

Open Document