River Collective Response Essay

In April 1977, the Combahee River Collective, a black feminist group that began meeting in 1973, wrote and published the Combahee River Collective statement. The statement lists their organization’s intentions for social justice which focuses on the liberation of women of color, including queer, poor and foreign women of color. The source gives a glimpse into the extent of black progress in the post-Civil Rights Movement era, and how the movement developed political awareness and future organizing. The organization supports socialism, a radical statement during the Cold War, but a socialist movement that would also have to be feminist and anti-racist in order to be the most effective. However, they are also against some radical claims made

Before this organization, movements did not think to study how race and sex and gender, and other marginalized identities, intersect to create a unique form and experience of oppression. This document, therefore, does not support fractionalized movements, like lesbian separatism or the exclusion of black women from roles of leadership in either the feminist or anti-racist movements. They see mainstream movements without an intersectional framework as exclusive and therefore unproductive. Because these women understand the hardships that come with single-issue movements, they include the perspective of queer women of color, who other social justice movements constantly overlook and undermine their issues. Additionally, the Collective focuses on their self-love and self-appreciation as women of color. Since there is such a strong force of oppression and dehumanization towards women of color, and black women, in particular, others, including black men, could see their expression of self-love as radical. Additionally, the fact that they “reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind. To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough,” continues to challenge the dehumanization of black women, either by idolizing them or by shaming and devaluing them. This statement targets men who fetishize black women as “queens” but at the same time

Unlike other organizations, the Collective makes a powerful case for the importance of fighting for LGBTQIA+ rights, as they claim that the liberation of queer women of color would ensure the liberation of everyone, since they face most forms of oppression. In other words, the overthrow of systems of oppression that affect queer women of color would result in the eradication all forms of oppression. This is a very different agenda than most movements, including the Civil Rights Movement, where queer activists had to hide their queer identity and did not get the same opportunities in leadership as their straight counterparts. Only queer women of color, and straight women of color who understand the limitations of an exclusive, single issue movement, would recognize the necessity of intersectional social justice movements to be the most