The Black Consciousness Movement ( Bcm )

Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Ed. By Patricia Hill Collins. (New York: Routledge, 2000. ii, 336 pp. Cloth, $128.28, ISBN 0-415-92483-9. Paper, $26.21, 0-415-92484-7.)

A necessary and common fight for equality has been one that has survived throughout all of man’s existence. Due to recent racial divide and the product of racial profiling, a movement has risen up to combat these common issues. The most recent and most well-covered is the Black Lives Matter Movement. Even though it has been lauded by some media sources and individuals as the next great movement to champion for civil rights, the Black Lives Matter movement is not the same as the African-American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s nor is it likely to be as successful. If the Black Lives Matter Movement continues with discrepancies in ideology, lack of clear leadership, and trends of hate, the movement is doomed to fail.

Culture is such a broad and complex term that can be defined in numerous ways. It is said that in part is the integrated pattern of human knowledge, communication, belief, art, literature, and music one acquires upon learning and transmitting characteristics from previous generations. Culture is symbolic communication, and its symbols are learned and carefully perpetuated in a society through its institutions. In Black Culture and Black Consciousness by Lawrence W. Levine, he carefully attempts to uncover Afro-American culture during the antebellum and postbellum periods. More often than none, historians like to emphasize the things that get lost in the culture of Afro-Americans when they are taken from Africa and forced to live as enslaved people in North America. However, in Levine’s book, we discover that he carefully

In the United States, there has been many cases of Racial injustice. From the beginning of the start of the United States of America it was the injustice to the Native Americans being captured and used for slave labor while their bison be slaughtered for sportsmanship. But this paper is on the specific race of the African Americans. There are many races that have been racially profiled and ostracized by the English people. But the treatment that African Americans have endured even till this day is disheartening. African Americans have gone through enslavement during the early 1600’s to the mid 1800’s. Then the African Americans were obstructed by the Jim Crow laws creating the ‘Separate but Equal” propaganda during the late 1800’s into the 1960’s. After the abolishment of the Jim Crow Laws, people were considered equal until the recent actions of many police officers using deadly force on African American youths in the early 2000’s.

| Relevant Biographical Information About the Author: * White * Born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa in 1903 * Father was Scottish and mother was South African of English heritage * Worked at a reformatory with black youths

As a result, the black feminist movement developed, where black women were the sole leaders of the movement that liberated all people. Many black women believed that it was counterproductive for the Civil Rights Movement to neglect the needs of black woman because black men continued to use the same systemic oppression that white people used against them on black women. In “I Am a Revolutionary Black Woman,” Angela Davis writes that “black women constitute the most oppressed sector of society” (Davis 461). It is evident that black women have been super exploited by American society economically, sexually, and politically, making them the lowest on the social hierarchy. Because of black women’s low social standing, if the black woman is liberated, then everyone else will follow, which will ensure the liberation of all people. Thus, Davis argues that “women’s liberation is especially critical with respect to the effort to build an effective black liberation movement” (461). Unlike Hamer, Davis believes that black women should liberate themselves from the black man if they are too oppressive like the white man; black men should be held accountable for their chauvinistic efforts, and should embrace the fight for liberation of women just as black women supported the liberation of black men.

Similarly, Patricia Hill’s work “Black Feminist Thought” explains the need for black feminism. For Hill U.S. black feminism is needed in order for black women to survive, cope with, and resist their differential treatment in society. Black feminist thought creates a collective identity among this marginalized group of African-American women. Hill provides several features that make U.S. Black feminist thought different than any other set of feminism. The first feature Hill speaks about is ‘blackness’ it is this concept that makes U.S. black feminist a different group that suffers a “double oppression”. Thus, U.S. Black women collectively participate in a dialectical relationship which links African American women’s oppression and activism. Hill speaks on the U.S. black feminist thought and the dilemma they face in American society. During the women’s right movement there was a tremendous difference between black and white women’s experiences, “while women of color were urged, at every turn, to become permanently infertile, white women enjoying prosperous economic conditions were urged, by the same forces, to reproduce themselves”. It is this difference in attitudes that demonstrate why there is a need to focuses on the linkage of experiences and ideas experienced by the black women in America. Consequently, Davis analyzes the hypocritical differences of the government of the

Imagine the idea of living in a society where you are segregated from your peers as a result of the colour of your skin. Envision living in a place that you no longer wish to call home because the people around you are being eradicated left right and center.

Throughout history, black people have been hurt and battered physically, mentally, and emotionally by white people and those who believe they are superior. From the beginning of the 19th century to the ongoing 21st century, black identity has evolved in accordance to the struggles African Americans are facing at the time. From the abolitionist movement to the Black Lives Matter movement, the evolving issues facing black identity in the struggle for equality and constitutional rights can be seen through the literature and writing by the black leaders of the time.

“If any efforts are to be made to free Black people of the constraints and conditions that characterize racial subordination, then theories and strategies purporting to reflect the Black community’s needs must include an analysis of sexism and patriarchy. Similarly, feminism must include an analysis of race if it hopes to express the aspirations of non-white women. Neither Black liberationist politics nor feminist theory can ignore the intersectional experiences of those whom the movements claim as their respective constituents” (Crenshaw, 1989, p.

In history, women have always struggled to gain equality, respect, and the same rights as men. Women had had to endure years of sexism and struggle to get to where we are today. The struggle was even more difficult for women of color because not only were they dealing with issues of sexism, but also racism. Many movements have helped black women during the past centuries to overcome sexism, racism, and adversities that were set against them. History tells us that movements such as the Feminist Movement helped empower all women, but this fact is not totally true. In this paper, I will discuss feminism, the movements, and its "minimal" affects on black women.

In an attempt to define Black Feminism, Collins clarifies that it must “avoid the idealist position that ideas can be evaluated in isolation from the groups that create them (Collins 385).” In reality, this forms her basis for why Black Feminism is necessary, and who it serves. Thinking about feminism historically, the concerns of black women were pushed aside in favor of fighting sexism, most notably during the Suffrage movement. And even when feminism began looking at other social injustices, such as racism and class issues, only prominent feminists were invited to the discussion. What resulted was, and often continues to be, a problem of white women speaking for oppressed people. It’s impossible, Collins argues, to have Black Feminist thought without examining the experiences and positions of African American women. Therefore, Black Feminism must be a movement that “encompasses theoretical interpretations of Black women’s reality by those who live in it (Collins 386).” However, such a definition brings about many questions: who’s experiences are valued, how do black women take their voice back, and how can they center feminist thinking on their own unique standpoint?

Black feminist thought has gained popularity in recent years and remains a noteworthy matter in view of the fact that in the United States black women form an oppressed group. Inequality entails a complex situation, in which oppression cannot be identified as one type, for example, race, gender, class or sexual preference. In this particular situation, we will acknowledge the challenges from the standpoint of black feminists. Patricia Hill Collins educates us through the four tenets of black epistemology, in addition to the contradictions against the scientific methods of social science; positivistic knowledge. Beyond the characteristics of epistemology, there are several key implications for black feminist thought.

These explanations analyze factors such as fear of dividing the minority community, lack of knowledge of feminism, the focus on male liberation in the black social movement in the 60’s, and the idea of matriarchy (Simons). Overall, black feminist, on the other hand, believe that racism, the major factor, hinders the development of feminist awareness among minority women and other problems that seem to arise within the feminist movement and community (Simons).

Black Feminism argues that sexism, class oppression and racism are linked together. Mainstream feminism that more than often benefits white women, strives to overcome class and gender oppression, however they do not recognise that race can discriminate against women also. Activist, Alice Walker states that black women experience a different kind of oppression when compared to their white counterparts. Professor of Sociology and social activist, Patricia Hill Collins summarises that Black feminism is ‘a process of self-conscious struggle that empowers women and men to actualise a humanist vision of community.’ Her quote welcomes individuals of any gender, whom understands black women’s struggle to fight with them. [Collins, 1991:39]