Combahee River Collective Statement Analysis

In the 1970’s African American women created the Combahee River Collective to address the unique struggles that African American women face in their day-to-day lives. In 2016, black activists founded The Movement of Black Lives to advocate for all black people more generally. Both groups incorporated at least some intersectional ideas into their arguments and used similar stylistic strategies to communicate their ideas. However, these groups differed in the ways that they established target audiences, the breadth of institutions that they addressed, and in the ways they used word choice to further their causes.

Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race, & Class. New York: Random House, 1981. Print. Kaba, Amadu Jacky. "Race, Gender And Progress: Are Black American Women

In the article The Politics of Black Women’s Studies by Akasha Hull and Barbara Smith, Hull and Smith studiously literate the politics and controversy around the fundamentals of black women’s studies in the past and modern day. Furthermore, the ideology of the article falls under the premise that racism and prejudice are still current and prominent factors that affect the development of black women’s studies in the way it is taught in universities, and the role it takes upon the lives of black women. To begin, it is evident that the premise of the article is solely based on the pros and cons that derive from black women attempting to exist in a white man’s world by making a name for themselves in society. Hull and Smith state that “the necessity

This essay will define Black feminist epistemology is the study of how the knowledge that is cultivated by black feminists is or can be proved or shown to be rational. This essay will then state that Black feminists will encounter epistemologies that are either Black feminist or White male and that the process of the verification of knowledge is dominated by homogenous groups and the opinions of minorities such as Black women are often ignored due to this. The essay will show that therefore Black feminist epistemology states that the criteria for the credibility of knowledge should be the use of lived experience, the use of dialogue to evaluate knowledge claims, the use of the ethics of caring and the ethic of personal accountability. Epistemology

This is the case that is made by Danielle McGuire in At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women’s, Rape, and Resistance-A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power. In this text, the author expands the discussion of the challenges that African American women contended with prior to and during the civil rights movement during the mid-twentieth century. The author argues that the rape and sexual violence that was prevalent during this era and its impact on Black women received minimal attention. The organization and activism that was fueled by women was similarly minimized (McGuire, 2010.

As black women always conform under patriarchal principles, women are generally silenced and deprived of rights because men are entitled to control everything. Women are silenced in a way that they lose their confidence and hesitate to speak up due to the norms present in the society they live in. Hence, even if women have the confidence to try to speak, men wouldn’t bother to listen since men ought to believe that they are superior to women. In addition to that, women often live in a life cycle of repetitions due to patriarchal principles since women are established to fulfill the roles the society had given them. It is evidenced by Celie as she struggles to survive and to define oneself apart from the controlling, manipulative, and abusive men in her life.

Black feminism issued as a theoretical and practical effort demonstrating that race, gender, and class are inseparable in the social worlds we inhabit. We need to understand the interconnections between the black and women’s

The theme of slavery still, to this day, remains and the world doesn’t need to remain shy on this brutal topic. Gaspar, David Barry, and Darlene Clark Hine. Black Women and Slavery in the Americas: More Than Chattel. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996. Print.

Crenshaw (1989, 1993) argued that race and gender are not mutually exclusive social identities that a Black woman experiences, the intersection of race and sexuality go accordantly with each other. Similarly, hooks argued that they are equally congruent values to the lives of those affected by such identities (2000). Crenshaw (1989) criticized the feminist movement for its failure to consider and promote the voices of women in the margins; the women who occupy more than one oppressed space and hold more than one oppressed status because of their race, sexuality, class, as well as gender. She noted, in “mapping the margins,” as did hooks, that some women are so oppressed in ways other than their gender that they do not see the feminist movement

Additionally, these stories reveal the great diversity among women. Generally, women are grouped together, as stated by Lorde: “As women we have either been taught to ignore our differences or view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than forces of change (Lorde, 1979).” Despite the efforts to categorize women’s issues into one mass of problems, White women perceive the world differently than African American women, Hispanic women, Native American women, etc., and vice versa. This conglomeration of “women’s issues” does not address every aspect of being a woman in patriarchal and unjust societies throughout the world.

Walker’s essay shows the dehumanization and abuse that black women have endured for years. She talks about how their creativity was stifled due to slavery. She also tells how black women were treated more like objects than human beings. They entered loveless marriages and became prostitutes because of the injustice upon them. Walker uses her mother’s garden to express freedom, not only for her but for all the black women who had been wronged.

As part of my ongoing quest to understand the intersectional and multi-faceted world we live in, I was drawn to the McIntosh reading “White Privilege:Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” and its powerful commentary on racial biases affecting women in our modern world. I loved the way she spoke about the many simple things that she as a white person doesn’t need to worry about as a default, which non-white people wouldn’t,like the assumption that her tax audits would be executed fairly and without ludicrous scrutiny. This reading inspired me to venture out into my home town and look for an event that spoke to the same issues. I found myself in a small art gallery which was featuring various pieces by indigenous women. The exhibit had a particular focus on the

The Critical Race Theory was developed by a group of feminist scholars who studied the ways “racism and sexism helped to create and reinforce a power structure that historically privileged white males had over other Americans”. In the past 20 years, critical race theorists have used slave history to prove how a negative image of black women has persisted. It is the opinion of many respected scholars that the Critical Race Theory is difficult to define with simple examples. Two female scholars Derrick Bell and Darlene Clark Hine gave detailed examples to clarify their claims that race and gender played a major role in how CRT scholars were able to demonstrate why slave owners created the “jezebel” and “mammy” stereotypes. The “jezebel” was a term that implied a black female slave was a primitive creature with uncontrollable sex urges which caused innocent white slave owners to lose self-control.

Women had many different roles in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, otherwise known as SNCC, but the legacy of their roles is not as important as the debate over their treatment. The experiences of women varied greatly depending on whether the woman was black or white. Most literature examining this issue until recently was written by white women, which provided a different perspective from black women’s stories. White women had more complaints and frustrations regarding subordination compared to black women. Gender as well as race created tensions in SNCC, and these problems created foreshadowed the feminist movement.

The reading this week brought to my attention that historic events have a way of repeating themselves. In Folklore of the Freeway, Eric Avila explains that during the “Freeway Revolt” there were different ways that communities organized and the types of issues they were fighting against. These issues and organization structures mirror current day protests. Likewise, the connections between how women were treated with respect to protests during the “Freeway Revolt” and the recent Women's match are astounding. In the context of these two events, white women are seen as saints for fighting a fight that doesn’t affect them, while women of color as ridiculed for making a big deal out of nothing.