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Essays on Black women and the civil rights movement
Black women and the black liberation movement
Combahee river collective analysis
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1. The politics of the Combahee River Collective include race, sex, heterosexuality, and class, in which contemporary Black feminists seek to combat these elements of oppression, as well as recognize and reflect on how they are interconnected, or display intersectionality.
2. The origin of contemporary Black feminism emerged from Black feminist’s contributions in the second wave of the feminist movement. Also, Black feminist’s involvement in the Black liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as personally undergoing marginalization by White Men (or more so White people as a whole) and various forms of oppression daily, resulted in the creation of contemporary Black feminism.
3. The following statement the “personal is political”
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
Malcolm X stated that the most disrespected, unprotected and neglected person in America is the black woman. Black women have long suffered from racism in American history and also from sexism in the broader aspect of American society and even within the black community; black women are victims of intersection between anti-blackness and misogyny sometimes denoted to as "misogynoir". Often when the civil rights movement is being retold, the black woman is forgotten or reduced to a lesser role within the movement and represented as absent in the struggle, McGuire 's At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power does not make this same mistake.
Throughout history, women’s roles have increased slowly. Not until the second Great Awakening did black women begin to gain roles in Christianity and in society. Between the 19th and 20th century black women used multiple methods to gain authority. Some women preached and gave speeches while other women used nonverbal approaches like writing articles. During this time period everyone wasn’t welcoming to the idea of a woman being consider a leader of any major movement. Black women didn’t always have authority in religious settings, but as time progress women became influenced by Christianity which ultimately pushed them to become leaders even though they knew everyone wouldn’t accept them.
Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York, NY: Routledge, 2000
In “In Living Color: Race and American Culture”, Michael Omi claims that racism still takes place in America’s contemporary society. According to Omi, media and popular culture shape a segregating ideology by giving a stereotypical representation of black people to the public, thus generating discrimination between races (Omi 115:166). In “Bad Feminist: Take One”, Roxane Gay discusses the different roles that feminism plays in our society. She argues that although some feminist authors and groups try to create a specific image of the feminist approach, there is no definition that fully describe feminism and no behaviors that can make someone a good feminist or a bad feminist (Gay 304:306). Both authors argue
One could also look at the women’s rights movement during that period of time, it focused on women’s right but did not necessarily tackle the intersectional issues surrounding women such as race. As it was expressed in the article, “What a Good Idea! Frames and Ideologies in Social Movement Research”, framing theory “[enables] individuals to locate, perceive, identify and label occurrences’ and ‘selectively punctuate and encode objects, situations, events, experiences and sequences of action within one’s present and past environment” (Oliver & Johnson, 2000:4). For black women, there can be instances or events that can be considered as being an issue of race but then again, an issue can also stem from gender inequalities. The issue of identifying one’s grievance as being either racial or gender based will be further discussed in the
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.
“[T]he cage may or may not be specifically developed for the purpose of trapping the bird, yet it still operates (together with the other wires) to restrict its freedom” (Alexander, 184). This metaphor used by Michelle Alexander gives a good basis on the idea of intersectionality within feminist theory. What Alexander has stressed hugely in ‘The New Jim Crow’ is the idea of racial hierarchy, which bell hooks also stresses in her chapter Men: Comrades in Struggle in her book ‘Feminist Theory: from margin to center.’ She discusses the hierarchy of men and women while also discussing race. She claims that the history of the feminist movement has not wanted to “acknowledge that bourgeois white women, though often victimized by sexism, have more
From the earlier forms of fetishizing over Saartjie Baartman in Europe, the dehumanization of black women as “mammies,” to Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s controversial Moynihan Report in 1965, African and African American female identity has been under the direct possession of white people. White Americans have continued to define the black female’s position within society by creating her narrative based on inequitable economic and societal conditions as well as gender norms that have outlined what it means to be a “true” black woman. Her behavior and body has been examined [and understood] through her direct contrast to white women, her role in supporting the white race
Although the term black liberation theology is fairly new, becoming popular in the early 1960’s with Black Theology and Black Power, a book written by James H. Cone, its ideas are pretty old, which can be clearly seen in spirituals sang by Africans during the time of slavery nearly 400 years ago. # It was through these hymns that black liberation spawned. Although Cone is given credit for “the discovery of black liberation theology,” it’s beliefs can quite clearly be seen in the efforts of men like preacher Nat Turner and his rebellion against slavery in the mid 1800’s or Marcus Garvey, one of the first men to “see God through black spectacles” in the early 1900’s. More recently, black theology emerged as a formal discipline. Beginning with the "black power" movement in 1966, black clergy in many major denominations began to reassess the relationship of the Christian church to the black community.
In the book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center written by bell hooks, an African-American author, social activist and feminist first published in 1984 the author explains what she believes are the core principles of feminism. Throughout the book the author examines the early feminist theory and goes on to criticize it saying that it did not aim for a systematic change also that the movement has the potential to improve the lives of both men and women immensely. In the book the author investigates the performance of African-American women in the movement and what is needed to drive the movement towards ending oppression of all kinds.
The origination of Black Theology was only cracked open by the idea of slave theology. The origination of Black Theology first began when churches began to become segregated. Many could not understand how Whites could continue to behave this way in the Lords house. It was soon realized that this was because according to them their God allowed segregation. The Whites even went on to say that biblical figures had slaves. Many, such as Nat Turner, Marcus Garvey, who is regarded as “the apostle of Black Theology” in the United States, Howard Thurman, and Martin Luther King all contributed to the cause of Black liberation and theology throughout black history. Due to these men Black Theology emerged as a formal discipline. Many black clergy were apart of the “Black Power” movement in 1966. Black Theology began to originate when it was realized that a new staring point was needed in theology. It was realized that just as everything else had been taught incorrect so had Biblical history. James Cone is accredited as the most prolific and sophisticated write of the new Black Theology. Black Theology was developed by early theologians because Black people needed something to believe in and give them help in times of need. The idea of Black Th...
She argues that the exclusiveness of her standpoint exists because no other woman can sincerely know or understand what it is like to be a Black woman in Western cultures. Considering that “Whites constitute [as] the most valuable citizens” in our society, as a Black woman, Collins’ experiences a life that is indescribable and incomprehensible to white women (Collins, 70). Collins appreciates the standpoint theory in a different manner than Hartsock and the Combahee River Collective do because she argues that there is importance and value in having personal experiences to explain and defend one’s standpoint as a Black woman in society. Rather than focusing on the multiple identities that arise from intersectionality, Collins focuses on the systems and institutions of power that are reinforced that casts Black women’s experiences as distinct and foreign compared to other women. From this standpoint, specific changes within the institutions can be demanded because there are real experiences behind each demand that challenge the enforced systems placed in our
It is very challenging to develop a paradigm within an interdisciplinary subject. Black Studies integrates various subject areas. Therefore, they do not just pick among the conceptual and methodological parts of the traditional disciplines, but they conceptualize the social fabric and rebrand the world in the way makes up for variety of issues that are in a disciplinary such as this one (Karenga, 398). The second issue that occurs is expressing and equal importance for concepts. Black studies have increments of academic and social study. The importance of active self-knowledge, self-realization, and self-production is imperative for critical analysis. Determining Black Studies history as a discipline is a central problem within the discipline. Stewart suggest that me make sure we have to take into consideration that Black Studies has a history long before the 1960s. He splits information into two fundamental periods: prediscipline and actual discipline history (Karenga, 400). Prediscipline period consist of scholars who often work alone, while the discipline period will be marked by self-consciousness, organization, and institutionalization (Karenga). Also, many black scholars are work have not been claim them to be as a part of the
Anthony, and Gloria Steinheim––who are all white women––for the essential role that they played in the struggle for female liberation; while simultaneously, excluded black women such as, Sourjourner Truth, Shirley Chisolm, Ida B. Wells, and Angela Davis who were instrumental in both the black liberation and feminist movements. Because of this ostracism by the feminist movement, black women decided to create womanism or black feminism, “to articulate the complexity of black American women's demand for social, economic and political equality” (Harlow). Black feminism addresses the ways in which both the black oppression and gender-based oppression operate jointly to subjugate black women in their communities, homes, jobs, and society; it is a movement that exposes the problematic practices that the feminist movement has operated under for years, and combats the notion that feminism is solely for white, upper-class women. Black female philosopher, Audre Lorde, utilizes a philosophical lens to explain the differences between black and white women in her essay, Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference. By virtue of the differences in the nature and experiences of black and white women, black feminism is a necessary and crucial movement in present-day