Historically, Black Women’s issues have been displaced by those of both white women and of the African American community as a whole. From the moment Africans set foot on the shores of the “New World,” the brutality they experienced was not just racialized, but gendered. Both African men and women were stripped naked, shaved, chained, branded, and inspected then sold and forced to work in the fields, plowing and picking cotton until their backs ached and their fingers bled. They also saw their family members sold away. However, their experiences diverged when it came to gender. African men and women experienced the brutality that accompanied the institution of slavery in different ways. European men as well as African overseers raped African …show more content…
Black women’s issues are black issues, as well as issues of race in addition to gender. The theory of intersectionality posits that black women stand at the intersection of race, gender, and class, which form a matrix of oppression. In other words, black women, along with black men, are systematically oppressed due to their race. Because race and class are inextricably linked, black women experience class discrimination along with black men. However, they are also oppressed because of their gender, and this oppression can come at the hands of both white men and black men in their …show more content…
Although the institutionalization of the fields of Black and Women’s Studies were still years away, the aforementioned black women, along with many others, were essential to the development of the epistemological and theoretical concepts that would later become the foundation. We can clearly see gaps in the literature in the area of Black Women’s Studies, as the writers discuss these women from the standpoint of either the Africana or Feminist Tradition. Some make mention of the intersection of racial and gendered oppression, but only in passing Black Women’s Studies is not a twentieth century creation. On the contrary, black women have had a liberationist consciousness since the 1800s. At that time, black women began to develop “intellectual and activist traditions” which produced works that represent early black feminist ideals. It is important to acknowledge these early works, as they are antecedents to the field of Black Women’s Studies. In order to understand the trajectory of the field, we must start at the
Zora Neale Hurston, a profound literature novelist during the effective Harlem Renaissance, established a written picture illustrating the lives of poor, afflicted Southern black women. Much of her work portrayed what was called common black women's “self-definition, feminism and Blackness expressed through the folk experience”(Crabtree, 1985) — the simple folkways and values of women of color who had survived slavery through their feminism and strength. In Jennifer Jordan’s essay “Feminist Fantasies: Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Jordan added that Hurston was also an “artist and anthropologist who pursued her work and pleasure with an intense dedication and with little regard for the conventional restrictions society
Another important issue that Mullings addresses is how African American women have been treated by society especially in the media.
Stevenson, Rosemary. Black Women in America: an Historical Encyclopedia. Ed. Darlene Clark Hine, Elsa Barkley Brown, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Pub., 1993.
In this article the author Audre Lorde speaks depth on women feminist from an African American point of view on society during 1980. Not only was she a black women speaking on behalf of her community, she was also the only African American women who was a lesbian. She argues that Black women and other women from across the world should not be looked over in the feminist community. Women of all kind should know their worth in their society.
In the weekly readings for week five we see two readings that talk about the connections between women’s suffrage and black women’s identities. In Rosalyn Terborg-Penn’s Discontented Black Feminists: Prelude and Postscript to the Passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, we see the ways that black women’s identities were marginalized either through their sex or by their race. These identities were oppressed through social groups, laws, and voting rights. Discontented Black Feminists talks about the journey black feminists took to combat the sexism as well as the racism such as forming independent social clubs, sororities, in addition to appealing to the government through courts and petitions. These women formed an independent branch of feminism in which began to prioritize not one identity over another, but to look at each identity as a whole. This paved the way for future feminists to introduce the concept of intersectionality.
“Because women of color experience racism in ways not always the same as those experienced by men of color and sexism in ways not always parallel to experiences of white women, antiracism and feminism are limited, even on their own terms” (Crenshaw, 162). African American women experience oppression differently than White women due to social constructs about race and their political position within society.
Rooks, Noliwe. The Women Who Said, I AM. Vol. Sage: A Scholarly Journal On Black Women 1988.
In Patricia Hill Collins’ black feminism, both the criticisms and alternative methodologies offer some insights into the nature of a position of privilege and what it means to inhabit it.
Karenga, Malauna. Introduction to Black Studies. Los Angeles: University of Sankore Press Third Edition, 2002.
McGuire’s larger goal is to show that African-American women actively resisted and protested the prevalence of white men’s violence towards themselves, and from that tradition of dissent grew forms of activism that shaped the Civil Rights Movement. McGuire illuminates the stories and experiences of African-American women whose lifelong battle against oppression consequently trained and prepared them for the emerging Civil Rights
Black Women’s Studies plays an important role in the discipline of Africana Studies. Black women studies is the history, cultures and experiences of black women. The important subjects of black women studies are, gender,race, and class. These studies look at the social context to understand racism and sexism. Black women who are not always represented as intellectuals have been able to rearticulate the knowledge of everyday Black women as Black intellectuals. A large number of scholars from the working class and poor Black areas entered schools during the period of social upheaval in the 60s and 70s. Spaces opened up in graduate schools through struggle, and traditionally white departments in the social sciences and the humanities expanded
What is a black woman's position in this world? Where exactly do they belong? These questions pose as a response to the racism and sexism, that black women endure that ultimately impacts their lives. During the 60’s and 70’s, black women often found themselves lost, not having a exact position in which they belong to. There was the civil rights movement along with the feminist movement, but where exactly did women of color fit in? They played a pivotal role in the movement, but received little recognition in return, more importantly they were seen as invisible. What claimed to be the “feminist” movement, fighting for the equality of women, proved itself to be fighting only for the equality of white upper-class women, and forgetting about the oppression of black women.
Aldridge, Delores P., Carlene Young. "Africana Womanism: An Overview." Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies. Lexington Books, 2000: 205-217. The University of Missouri-Columbia. Web. 11 April 2014.
Williams also evaluates the story of Hagar in order to compare Hagar’s life with the lives of contemporary black women so to underscore their shared histories under oppressive forces. Ethicists Katie Canon understands Black Feminist Consciousness as more accurately identified as Black Womanist Consciousness according to Alice Walker’s concept and definition. Canon’s failure to describe the two as distinct personal identifiers suggests that she understands Black female consciousness as womanist thereby imposing an identity on women who might not claim womanist subjectivity. This point is further made through Junior’s scholarship as it reflects that African American women do not universally accept the “womanist” definition or identifying title. In addition, while Junior notes bell hook’s concerns about how the term womanism connotes a negativity that pits Black women with white women, none of the scholars raise questions about or discuss whether the identity markers of “feminist” or “womanist” inhibit collaboration and solidarity among Black
In her blog posting “ ‘Noting to Say’: ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ and Gender,” Emma Jeremie Mould discusses the double bind women of color find themselves in. First, they are overdetermined by the racist discourse of the Whites. Second, black women find themselves codified within the discourse of native men. In addition, she contends that some Western feminists analyze the plight of black women from the top down, through an approach that reinforces a racialized hierarchy among women.