Bell Hooks Ain T I A Woman Analysis

In her 1981 work Ain’t I a Woman?: Black women and feminism, bell hooks denounced the then still dominantly White feminist movement: “While it is in no way racist for any author to write a book exclusively about white women, it is fundamentally racist for books to be published that focus solely on the American white woman's experience in which that experience is assumed to be the American woman's experience.” Her work not only challenged the intention of the feminist movement, but supplied another perspective on the Civil Rights Movement and the subservient positions constrained upon black women at the time, leading to the face of Black resistance to oppression to be seen as a man’s struggle; this, she argued, was comparable to the feminist movement, in which these exploited women were asked to step

aside and fade into the background. Similarly, forms of suppression toward the Black feminist are rampant in contemporary feminism, such as some apt White feminists endorsing intersectionality in the woman’s rights movement, yet excluding women of colour in their work or upholding their ineptitude for speaking on Black rights when they, themselves, are not Black. Whenever there is a glimpse of White feminists speaking on racial oppression toward Black women, there is the acknowledgement of both the racial and sexist persecution exclusive to them, but also a glamorization of dealing with this rather than any real discussion of how this combination impacts women of color; this superficial discussion might lead to the inclusion of a few women who are not White, but that is valuing Black women and not their intellect.
As an example, Black women have either had minor or no participation in academic conversation and mainstream feminist ideals, although their inclusion in Black civil society has been longstanding.

Excluding Black women organizations, male-dominated groups had either not spoken up about issues affecting these women, or they had done so by coercion (Collins, 1990). Black feminist Pauli Murray (1970) had found, from 1916 to 1970, the Journal of Negro History put out merely five articles dedicated to Black women alone since its establishment. Similarly, many Black female leaders of that time were exposed to the brunt of sexism breeded from exploitation brought on by slave masters; leaders like Elaine Brown (1992), a revolutionary involved in - and subsequently a leader - of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, expressed the sexism conveyed by her fellow Panther men. Descriptively, the position of a Panther was not determined by gender, but competence, and there were plenty of women who lead competently - Elaine Brown, Angela Davis, Kathleen Cleaver - but, there were also men who refused to take orders from women and let the foundation of the group shake because of

it.