The Black Feminist Thought By Patricia Hill Collins

Doetsch-Kidder’s (2016) monograph defines the important role of intersectionality as a defining sea-change in the way that women of color began to unify across racial and cultural barriers. Interviews with minority activists define the perception of the diversification of feminist ideology through the lens of intersectionality. One interview with a African-American activist named Donna illustrates the unity between women of color that evolved in the 1970s: “But overall, we are all fighting for civil rights, so there has to be some type of overlap with each one” (Doetsch-Kidder, 2016, p.103). This development defines the “overlapping’ ideology of different feminist groups, which soon began to devolve the racial and cultural barriers not only between women of color, but also with white feminist groups. In Doetsch-Kidder’s (2016) point of view, the civil rights movement laid the foundation for intersectional feminist principles to be practiced for women seeking greater representation in the workplace.

“I am a black feminist… I recognize that my power as well as my primary obsessions come as a result of my blackness as well as my womaness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable” … As a woman of color, I find that some feminists don’t seem terribly concerned with the issues unique to women of color—the ongoing effects of racism and post-colonialism, the status of women in the Third World, working against the trenchant archetypes black women are forced into (angry black woman, mammy, hottentot, and the like). (Gay 173).

Patricia Hill Collins’s work, Black Feminist Thought seeks to center Black Women into intersectionalist thought, addressing the power struggles that face them not only due to their race but also to the gender. Masculine rhetoric and powerful male leaders such as Huey P. Newton and Eldridge Cleaver have overshadowed Black Women’s stories, both in and out of the Civil Right Rights/Black Power

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.

Early feminism was typically focused only on white women, likely because racism was still extremely prominent at the time feminism began emerging. It was not until Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the term “intersectionality” in 1989 that feminism started to look at oppressed group’s needs (Nash, 2008, 2). Intersectionality is a way of thinking that acknowledges that when a person has identities that belong to more than one oppressed group, it impacts their quality of life more negatively. In this paper, I will argue that intersectionality is important in the discussion of feminist theories and activism because it ensures that feminism is for all women, not just a select group of them. Intersectionality has changed the way the feminist movement handles the overlapping of different identities, which has helped feminist theorists understand the experiences of women of colour much more clearly. While intersectionality has a very important role in the conversation and practice of feminism, there are certainly critiques of the concept that should be brought up. These critiques, however, can offer a way to improve the study of intersectionality.

By expressing this with the African American society of women who are continuously torched by the demanding words of men, McLune appeals strongly to all American women’s intellect of equality and respect. Women should not have to be judged by men and expect to be treated as if they owe anyone something, let alone have to be mistreated and belittled, if that were to be the case then men should be treated the same, therefore McLune’s audience, should understand that that is not how you define a black woman in any terms.

Ever since the period of slavery, Black women have described the different forms of multiple oppressions they face of race, class, and gender with terms like “interlocking oppressions,” “simultaneous oppressions,” “double jeopardy,” “triple jeopardy” and so on.

This was an effort to meet the needs of African American women that were being oppressed by racism in the Feminist movement. Similarly, Black Feminist Movement was a response to the sexual oppression of black women in the Black Liberation Movement (Hooks, 2000). The principal purpose of the Black Feminism Movement was to provide a strategy to adequately address the needs of the female African Americans in areas of class, race, and gender (Haslanger, 2000). It aimed at taking effective actions to stop classist, sexist, and racist discrimination of the black women. Although the Black Liberation Movement was ostensibly for the liberation of the African race, the movement was indeed for the liberation of African American Men.

In order to understand the meaning of what Patricia Hill Collins calls the matrix of domination it is necessary to consider how identity politics; such as civil rights, feminism, and the LGBT movement could be considered a response to domination. Domination are forms of power evident in control, exclusion, and discrimination. Patricia Hill Collins ‘ideas of intersectionality and the matrix of domination are important because they present an analysis claiming that systems of race, social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, and age form mutually constructing features of social organization, which shape Black women’s experiences and, in turn, are shaped by Black women” (Collins, 2000). Collins focuses on the influences of intersectionality of Black women.

Collins’ experiences teaching were fundamental to the development of her ideology. She began teaching undergrad African-American studies courses when the field was still relatively new to academia and was therefore seen as invalid. Her goal was to teach social justice to her classes full of Black students, primarily women, “finding a way to speak to them and not just about them.” Teaching Black studies challenged Collins to find new ways to get through to students and answer questions which constructed the process of writing Black Feminist Thought. The material she wrote was then used to teach a course on contemporary Black women. After this, Collins discovered two questions that would provide guidance for her scholarship in the decades to come: “what accounts for social justice?” and “what can we do to foster social

Just as Crenshaw (1989) demon-strated that Black women were too female to represent racism and too Black to represent sexism, Collins (2002) stated that due to their double marginalized identities, Black women do not have full group membership for race and women social identities due to the “whiteness for feminist thought and the maleness for Black social and political thoughts and the combination of main-stream scholarship-all negate Black women’s realities.” However, it can also be argued that Black lesbian and bisexual women also lack group membership when it comes to discourse on the experiences of Black women, which has focused primarily on the intersection of race and gender. In line with Collins’ statement, while Black women are not male enough for race discourse or White enough for feminist discourse, it appears that Black sexual minorities are not heterosexual enough to be considered in discourse on the experiences of Black women. Whilst discourse by Black feminist on the implications of the intersectionality of race and gender has raised awareness on how these two marginalized identities must be considered to inform on the experiences of Black women, the implication of intersectionality theory has not been fully ex-plored by research on the LGBTQ community (Fish, 2008). For a complete understanding of Black women’s experiences, sexual orientation should be added to the discourse on Black wom-en’s experience with

Coalition politics is significant to black feminists because it calls on other groups that have experienced some form of being marginalized and emphasizes that working together would create a more impactful result than continuing being divided. Black women experience oppression from multiple levels including race, class and gender and for this reason, back women activists, scholars, and worker must continuously seek to unite and for the forefront of a revolutionary struggle to define and achieve liberation for all oppressed people.” (Harmer and Neville 1999: p.22) Throughout the quarter, we have looked a variety of authors such as Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, Cathy J. Cohen and Janet Mock who have used their literature to

In her 1981 book “Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism” author and social activist Bell Hooks discusses the stigma against black women and how it is rooted in the combination of sexism and racism that black women experienced during times of slavery. Hooks explains that the stigma that this has caused effects black women even today in supposedly safe spaces such as the civil rights and feminist movements. She goes on to explain how the popular “feminist movement” caters only to white women while simultaneously demonizing black (and all other non-white), poor, and even disabled and queer women.

Patricia Hill Collins’ piece, Defining Black Feminist Thought, sets out to do exactly that: to determine what Black Feminism is, who is a Black Feminist, and who can become a Black Feminist. While not always specifically stated, her argument and analysis arises from the historical context of the role of Black women in feminist and activist spaces, as well as the social reality of differing lived experiences of African American women from traditional white female feminists. Created in 1990, Collins’ work is well situated in the time period of Third Wave Feminist thinking, incorporating strong themes of the need for intersectionality and altering opinions within feminism, as well as proposing that multiple versions of feminism can be

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.