black women

The current incarnation of Black Feminism is a political/social movement that grew out of a sense of feelings of discontent with both the Civil Rights Movement and the Feminist Movement of the 1970s. Not only did the Civil Rights Movement primarily focus only on the oppression of black men, but many black women faced severe sexism within Civil Rights groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The Feminist Movement focused on the problems faced by white women. For instance, earning the power to work outside of the home was not an accomplishment for black feminists; they had been working all along. Neither movement confronted the issues that concerned black women specifically. Because of their intersectional position, black women were being systematically disappeared by both movements. Black women began creating theory and developing a new movement which spoke to the combination of problems, sexism, racism, classism, etc., that they had been battling.

One of the theories that evolved out of this movement was Alice Walker's Womanism. Angela Davis was one of the first people who formed an argument centered on intersectionality; she did this in her book, "Women, Race, and Class." Kimberle Crenshaw, prominent feminist law theorist, gave the idea a name while discussing Identity Politics in her essay, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Color." Another Feminist theorist is Patricia Hill Collins; much of her work concerns the politics of black feminist thought and oppression. While many of these theorists were beginning their writing, Black Feminist groups were forming. One of these groups is The Combahee River Collective, founded by Barbara Smith; this group's primary goal was "the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking."

References

• Crenshaw, K. 1991. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review 43(6) 1241-99.
• Combahee River Collective. 1977. A Black Feminist Statement. in Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case For Social Feminism. Zillah Eisenstein, ed.
• Roth, Benita. 2004. Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America's Second Wave, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.