For the first Read MoreCombahee River Collective (1974-1980) They fared no better in organizations led by white women, who, for the most part, could not understand how racism compounded the experiences of Black women, creating a new dimension of oppression. Apparently, the sisterhood was powerful. 4, Commemorative Issue: 50 Years of AAR (Winter 2017), pp. But her caution also betrays the hope and deep desire for radical change that all revolutionaries harbor. In our consciousness-raising sessions, for example, we have in many ways gone beyond white womens revelations because we are dealing with the implications of race and class as well as sex. The reaction of Black men to feminism has been notoriously negative. The major source of difficulty in our political work is that we are not just trying to fight oppression on one front or even two, but instead to address a whole range of oppressions. We might, for example, become involved in workplace organizing at a factory that employs Third World women or picket a hospital that is cutting back on already inadequate heath care to a Third World community, or set up a rape crisis center in a Black neighborhood. What distinguished the C.R.C. It made sense of her senseless death, just shy of the twenty-first century. All Rights Reserved. Men are not equal to other men, i.e. The Combahee River Collective Statement is believed to be the first text where the term identity politics is used. 271-280, The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, By: Review by: Liz Kennedy , June Lapidus, Feminist Studies, Vol. Eliminating racism in the white womens movement is by definition work for white women to do, but we will continue to speak to and demand accountability on this issue. The post World War II generation of Black youth was the first to be able to minimally partake of certain educational and employment options, previously closed completely to Black people. saw themselves as revolutionaries whose aspirations far exceeded womens rights: they aspired to the overthrow of capitalism. Test. We publish articles grounded in peer-reviewed research and provide free access to that research for all of our readers. The class and race tensions within feminism lasted far beyond the seventies. We just wanted to see what we had. [3] They are perhaps best known for developing the Combahee River Collective Statement, [4] a key . He is the leader of the house/nation because his knowledge of the world is broader, his awareness is greater, his understanding is fuller and his application of this information is wiser After all, it is only reasonable that the man be the head of the house because he is able to defend and protect the development of his home Women cannot do the same things as menthey are made by nature to function differently. Equally dismayed by the direction of the feminist movement, which they believed to be dominated by middle-class white women, and the suffocating masculinity in Black-nationalist organizations, they set out to formulate their own politics and strategies in response to their distinct experiences as Black women. 159). document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); We were told in the same breath to be quiet both for the sake of being ladylike and to make us less objectionable in the eyes of white people. advances at the expense of someone or something (perces), the methods and actions taken to accomplish strategies, the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to do a particular thing, especially by recruiting a small number of people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality within a workforce, supposedly; purportedly; allegedly (apparemment), related to jobs not requiring physical labor, something that discourages or prevents a certain action, London Bridge is falling down - Meaning behin. Of course, what comes next will depend on what those who constitute the movement do. She founded the legendary Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, with Audre Lorde, in 1980. The authors argued that race, sex, and class had to be considered together in the lives of black women, and that no one would fight for them except themselves. In this section we will discuss some of the general reasons for the organizing problems we face and also talk specifically about the stages in organizing our own collective. The fact that racial politics and indeed racism are pervasive factors in our lives did not allow us, and still does not allow most Black women, to look more deeply into our own experiences and, from that sharing and growing consciousness, to build a politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression. 2023 Cond Nast. In the case of Black women this is a particularly repugnant, dangerous, threatening, and therefore revolutionary concept because it is obvious from looking at all the political movements that have preceded us that anyone is more worthy of liberation than ourselves. As we have already stated, we reject the stance of Lesbian separatism because it is not a viable political analysis or strategy for us. This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We have found that it is very difficult to organize around Black feminist issues, difficult even to announce in certain contexts that we are Black feminists. In the fall, when some members returned, we experienced several months of comparative inactivity and internal disagreements which were first conceptualized as a Lesbian-straight split but which were also the result of class and political differences. As Smith put it, These people were looking at the situation and saying, What we have here is not working. The sanctions In the Black and white communities against Black women thinkers is comparatively much higher than for white women, particularly ones from the educated middle and upper classes. Smith served on the Albany city council from 2006 to 2013, and later worked in the Albany mayors office on issues related to inequality. I had seen feminism as the domain of white women primarily concerned with glass ceilings and access to abortion. More than a fifth of Black women live below the poverty line, but their lives are largely invisible. 1, No. Learn. 1. It leaves out far too much and far too many people, particularly Black men, women, and children. We now have language, we have an analysis of whats going on with the prison-industrial complex, with mass incarceration, with police brutality, with extrajudicial murderswe have that, and we have bases of operation, because there are definitely Black Lives Matter organizations in various cities around the country. She continued, But the question for me is: Whats next? 1 (Spring, 2001), pp. Black feminists often talk about their feelings of craziness before becoming conscious of the concepts of sexual politics, patriarchal rule, and most importantly, feminism, the political analysis and practice that we women use to struggle against our oppression. Both are essential to the development of any life. But we can take inspiration from the imaginative optimism of the Combahee Statement. There are no maps or predetermined paths that guarantee the success or failure of a movement. It celebrated the possibilities of a political coalition born out of solidarity among groups who recognized the need to be engaged in struggle. In her introduction to Sisterhood is Powerful Robin Morgan writes: I havent the faintest notion what possible revolutionary role white heterosexual men could fulfill, since they are the very embodiment of reactionary-vested-interest-power. All rights reserved. the pejorative stereotypes attributed to Black women. Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create these resources. But we do not have the misguided notion that it is their maleness, per sei.e., their biological malenessthat makes them what they are. If the 1960s was America's decade of mass mobilisation, the 1970s perhaps saw the greatest explosion of groups clambering for their rights to simply exist. They envisioned coalition politics on the basis of mutual solidarity, including a commitment to the struggles against sexism, heterosexism, racism, class oppression, exploitation, and imperialism. [2]. Teaching with Reveal Digitals American Prison Newspapers Collection, Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, As Angela Davis points out in Reflections on the Black Womans Role in the Community of Slaves,. We are a collective of Black feminists who have been meeting together since 1974. March 24, 2022. Instead, popular culture and mainstream media outlets are fixated on Oprah Winfrey, Beyonc Knowles, and Michelle Obama, to whom they turn for insights into the experiences of Black women. http://circuitous.org/scraps/combahee.html. 428-447, The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol. We are socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses. We had a retreat in the late spring which provided a time for both political discussion and working out interpersonal issues. 5, No. A Black Feminists Search for Sisterhood, The Village Voice, 28 July 1975, pp. 52-71, Feminist Studies, Vol. Alexander Gnassi . For example, we were told in the same breath to be quiet both for the sake of being ladylike and to make us less objectionable in the eyes of white people. We must also question whether Lesbian separatism is an adequate and progressive political analysis and strategy, even for those who practice it, since it so completely denies any but the sexual sources of womens oppression, negating the facts of class and race. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face. A Black Feminists Search for Sisterhood, The Village Voice, 28 July 1975, pp. This may seem so obvious as to sound simplistic, but it is apparent that no other ostensibly progressive movement has ever consIdered our specific oppression as a priority or worked seriously for the ending of that oppression. Above all else, Our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that Black women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody elses may because of our need as human persons for autonomy. The value of men and women can be seen as in the value of gold and silverthey are not equal but both have great value. During our years together as a Black feminist collective we have experienced success and defeat, joy and pain, victory and failure. There have always been Black women activistssome known, like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frances E. W. Harper, Ida B. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work. Although we were not doing political work as a group, individuals continued their involvement in Lesbian politics, sterilization abuse and abortion rights work, Third World Womens International Womens Day activities, and support activity for the trials of Dr. Kenneth Edelin, Joan Little, and Inz Garca. [1] This statement is dated April 1977. 2 (Summer, 1979), pp. demanded politics that could account for all, and not just aspects of their identity. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political . We have also done many workshops and educationals on Black feminism on college campuses, at womens conferences, and most recently for high school women. In A Black Feminists Search for Sisterhood, Michele Wallace arrives at this conclusion: We exists as women who are Black who are feminists, each stranded for the moment, working independently because there is not yet an environment in this society remotely congenial to our strugglebecause, being on the bottom, we would have to do what no one else has done: we would have to fight the world. 2, Harriet Tubman: A Legacy of Resistance (2014), pp. 4-5. Today, in the midst of the greatest wave of protest and social upheaval in more than a generation, books about racism, policing, and the Black Lives Matter movement top best-seller lists. The members of the Combahee River Collective march down Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, at a 1979 memorial for murdered women of color. Instead, they argued that Black womenand all oppressed peoplehad the right to form their own political agendas, because no one else would. During the summer those of us who were still meeting had determined the need to do political work and to move beyond consciousness-raising and serving exclusively as an emotional support group. The final, definitive version was published in Zillah Eisenstein, ed., Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism (Monthly Review Press, 1979), 362-72. Black, other Third World, and working women have been involved in the feminist movement from its start, but both outside reactionary forces and racism and elitism within the movement itself have served to obscure our participation. In its earliest iteration, Black feminism was assumed to be radical because the class position of Black women, overwhelmingly, was at the bottom of society. We will discuss four major topics in the paper that follows: (1) the genesis of contemporary Black feminism; (2) what we believe, i.e., the specific province of our politics; (3) the problems in organizing Black feminists, including a brief herstory of our collective; and (4) Black feminist issues and practice. Evictions and foreclosures in the U.S. could trigger a new wave of infection and illnessbut its not too late to act. 225 0 obj <> endobj 240 0 obj <>/Filter/FlateDecode/ID[<55A8DDF17D624C57A3DD9554302617BF><2BF3B81EF49545358296A73A72E810D6>]/Index[225 24]/Info 224 0 R/Length 78/Prev 307736/Root 226 0 R/Size 249/Type/XRef/W[1 2 1]>>stream The quest to transform this country cannot be limited to challenging its brutal police alone. We have a great deal of criticism and loathing for what men have been socialized to be in this society: what they support, how they act, and how they oppress. But they were not only reacting to the deficits they found in organizations led by white women and Black men. 164-189, The Massachusetts Review, Vol. During our years together as a Black feminist collective we have experienced success and defeat, joy and pain, victory and failure. The fact that individual Black feminists are living in isolation all over the country, that our own numbers are small, and that we have some skills in writing, printing, and publishing makes us want to carry out these kinds of projects as a means of organizing Black feminists as we continue to do political work in coalition with other groups. showed how to understand the relationship between race, class, and gender through the actual experiences of Black women. [3] Mumininas of Committee for Unified Newark, Mwanamke Mwananchi (The Nationalist Woman), Newark, N.J., 1971, pp. ThePennsylvaniaMagazineofHistoryandBiography, Combahee River Collective Statement: A Fortieth Anniversary Retrospective, Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves, "One Great Bundle of Humanity": Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911), Missing in Action Ida B. I first encountered the Combahee River Collective Statement in a women's-studies class, my second year of college at SUNY Buffalo. We decided at that time, with the addition of new members, to become a study group. We have tried to think about the reasons for our difficulties, particularly since the white womens movement continues to be strong and to grow in many directions. Wallace is pessimistic but realistic in her assessment of Black feminists position, particularly in her allusion to the nearly classic isolation most of us face. We believe in collective process and a nonhierarchical distribution of power within our own group and in our vision of a revolutionary society. I havent the faintest notion what possible revolutionary role white heterosexual men could fulfill, since they are the very embodiment of reactionary-vested-interest-power. We hope you find it a valuable resource for yourself, and for students. We began functioning as a study group and also began discussing the possibility of starting a Black feminist publication. Black, other Third World, and working women have been involved in the feminist movement from its start, but both outside reactionary forces and racism and elitism within the movement itself have served to obscure our participation.