Class Notes 4/24

4/23 Black Feminism

  1. Preliminary Notes
    1. Interlocking oppression
    2. capitalism/socialism
    3. Economic inequality
    4. Lineage
    5. What is the
  2. Questions
    1. What constitutes “Black Feminism” and how does it intersect with/how is it distinct from the two movements with which it overlaps––the Black Freedom Struggle and Second Wave Feminism?
    2. What necessitates a politics and praxis of Black Feminism? What specific issues does it seek to address, and how? What are the most important principles of the Black Feminist Movement?
    3. A key aspect of the CRC statement is a critique of capitalism. What is the nature of this critique? How is it related to the politics of racial and gender liberation?
    4. How radical is this document? What does it seek to accomplish, and through what means? How do you situate it in the historical moment in the late 1970s, when it was written?
    5. How are the following terms important within the CRC’s discussion of black feminism?
      1. Interlocking oppression
      2. Socialism
      3. Lesbian identity
      4. Third world
  3. Class discussion
    1. “The first was that oppression on the basis of identity...of radical politics and activism.”(8).
      1. Precarity of Black women
      2. Social vies making it harder for women to get into those leadership roles
      3. Black women tend to be most known in US culture as entertainers
        1. Subdivision for a greater group of Black women
        2. What is the relationship between icons and the quote?
          1. Devalue of Black women as a whole and it has a trickle down effect
      4. “A more accurate view of the United States comes from the ground, not the perch of the White House...and often struggle.”(10-11).
        1. How would the members of the CRC talk about the precarity of Black women? Do they have experiences, identiis, operate or are impacted by the culture that are distinct by other women, people of color, people in general? In what ways does the CRC make a claim about the singularity of Black women’s experience?
          1. “We believe that sexual politics…political oppression.”(19).
            1. They were left out of the second movement
            2. Not a bigger discussion of how
          2. Does Black women’s experience constituent a unique subjectivity separate from white women or black men
            1. Yes because they are all compounded on each other
            2. Facing both racism and sexism
            3. “We do not have racial, sexual...types of privilege have.”(22).
      5. Who is to blame?
        1. Failures of the movement and the spossibitie that come about concerning acknowledgement of these injustices
        2. “One issue that is of major concern and that we have begun to publicly…. But we will continue to speak to and demand accountability on this issue.”(27).
      6. How radical is this?
        1. “We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy.”(19).
        2. What would the world they are seeking look like?
          1. Housing to be transformed, standard salaries
          2. Looking back to Black Panthers ten point program
            1. Socialist thought
        3. Is capitalism the root of Black women’s oppression? Can capitalism be reformed? How would it be?
        4. A socialist revolution isn’t enough it has to be feminist too and geared towards Black women
          1. Can we kick around with the ideas of socialism
      7. What would a feminist revolution look like?
        1. Taking a subdivision won’t work you would have to get other groups behind you too
          1. “We reject the stance of… black women and children.”(21).
            1. In what terms are they responsible for the movement
            2. There is a place for men in the movement but we are really critical of the way that men have been socialized and lesbian separatism is on the basis of oppression due to sexual identity instead of race and class
          2. Having others in the movement
            1. Need to understand the movement, listen, be able to take a backseat
            2. Going back to Baldwin’s idea of until you are willing to give up everything you believe, have been made to believe, and social privilege, then change won’t happen it will wait
        2. Black men’s reaction
          1. Page 24 “might lose allies...Black women’s movement”

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