Week Three Reader Report
Instructions: After you have completed all readings on Afrocentricity, Black Feminism, and Womanism for week three, answer the following question(s)/prompt(s) based upon what you have read. All answers must be provided using complete sentences. Note: Your reader report will be different each week. This reader report is two pages.
1. In two to three paragraphs (five to seven sentences per paragraph), define Afrocentricity according to Woodyard’s “Locating for Asante” and Hine’s “The Black Studies Movement.” Synthesize the definitions, similarities and differences of Afrocentricity as outlined in both readings. (10pts)
2. Create a double bubble map to compare and contrast Michelle Wright’s “Feminism” and the Combahee River Collective’s “A Black Feminist Statement.” (10pts)a. *Note: The purpose of a Double Bubble map is to compare and contrast two things. A Double Bubble map often allows for greater depth of thought by requiring students to think in terms of point and counter point. When youcontrast one point with another, there is often a balance between the differences. You can add an unlimited number of similarities and differences. So, be intentional and specific about the similarities and differences between the two differences.
b. **Example:
3. In one paragraph (five to seven sentences per paragraph), define & summarizeintersectionality as outlined in your Lisa B. Thompson’s essay. In a second paragraph (five to seven sentences per paragraph), explain the connection between intersectionality and Black feminism as you understand it from your readings. (10pts)
______ / 30pts
A Black Feminist Statement
T H E C O M B A H E E R I V E R C O L L E C T I V E
We are a collective of black feminists who have been meeting together
since 1974.1 During that time we have been involved in the process of defin-
ing and clarifying our politics, while at the same time doing political work
within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organiza-
tions and movements. The most general statement of our politics at the
present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against
racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression and see as our particular
task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the
fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of
these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As black women we
see black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the mani-
fold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.
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 prov-
ince of our politics; (3) the problems in organizing black feminists, including
a brief herstory of our collective; and (4) black feminist issues and practice.
1 . T h e G e n e s i s o f C o n t e m p o r a r y B l a c k Fe m i n i s m
Before looking at the recent development of black feminism, we
would like to affirm that we find our origins in the historical reality
of Afro-American women’s continuous life-and-death struggle for sur-
vival and liberation. Black women’s extremely negative relationship to
the American political system (a system of white male rule) has always
been determined by our membership in two oppressed racial and sexual
castes. As Angela Davis points out in “Reflections on the Black Woman’s
Role in the Community of Slaves,” black women have always embodied,
if only in their physical manifestation, an adversary stance to white male
rule and have actively resisted its inroads upon them and their commu-
nities in both dramatic and subtle ways. There have always been black
women activists—some known, like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman,
Frances E. W. Harper, Ida B. Wells Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell, and
thousands upon thousands unknown—who had a shared awareness of
The Combahee River Collective Statement appeared as a movement document in April 1977. The
final, definitive version was published in Zillah Eisenstein, ed., Capitalist Patriarchy and the
Case for Socialist Feminism (Monthly Review Press, 1979), 362–72. We reprint that version here
in commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of its publication by Monthly Review Press.
R E P R I S E
archive.monthlyreview.org
DOI: 10.14452/MR-070-08-2019-01_3
29
http://archive.monthlyreview.org
https://dx.doi.org/10.14452/MR-070-08-2019-01_3
how their sexual identity combined with their racial identity to make
their whole life situation and the focus of their political struggles unique.
Contemporary black feminism is the outgrowth of countless generations
of personal sacrifice, militancy, and work by our mothers and sisters.
A black feminist presence has evolved most obviously in connection
with the second wave of the American women’s movement beginning in
the late 1960s. Black, other Third World, and working women have been
involved in the feminist movement from its start, but both outside reac-
tionary forces and racism and elitism within the movement itself have
served to obscure our participation. In 1973 black feminists, primarily lo-
cated in New York, felt the necessity of forming a separate black feminist
group. This became the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO).
Black feminist politics also have an obvious connection to movements
for black liberation, particularly those of the 1960s and 1970s. Many of us
were active in those movements (civil rights, black nationalism, the Black
Panthers), and all of our lives were greatly affected and changed by their
ideology, their goals, and the tactics used to achieve their goals. It was
our experience and disillusionment within these liberation movements,
as well as experience on the periphery of the white male left, that led to
the need to develop a politics that was antiracist, unlike those of white
women, and antisexist, unlike those of black and white men.
There is also undeniably a personal genesis for black feminism, that is,
the political realization that comes from the seemingly personal experi-
ences of individual black women’s lives. Black feminists and many more
black women who do not define themselves as feminists have all experi-
enced sexual oppression as a constant factor in our day-to-day existence.
Black feminists often talk about their feelings of craziness before be-
coming 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. 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 define those things that make our lives what they are
and our oppression specific to us. In the process of consciousness-raising,
actually life-sharing, we began to recognize the commonality of our ex-
periences and, from that sharing and growing consciousness, to build a
politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression.
Our development also must be tied to the contemporary economic and
political position of black people. The post–World War II generation of
black youth was the first to be able to minimally partake of certain edu-
cational and employment options, previously closed completely to black
30 M O N T H L Y R E V I E W / J A N u A R Y 2 0 1 9
people. Although our economic position is still at the very bottom of the
American capitalist economy, a handful of us have been able to gain cer-
tain tools as a result of tokenism in education and employment which
potentially enable us to more effectively fight our oppression.
A combined antiracist and antisexist position drew us together initially,
and as we developed politically we addressed ourselves to heterosexism
and economic oppression under capitalism.
2 . W h a t We B e l i e v e
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 else’s but because of our need as human
persons for autonomy. 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 a priority or worked seriously for the
ending of that oppression. Merely naming the pejorative stereotypes at-
tributed to black women (e.g., mammy, matriarch, Sapphire, whore, bull-
dagger), let alone cataloguing the cruel, often murderous, treatment we
receive, indicates how little value has been placed upon our lives during
four centuries of bondage in the Western hemisphere. We realize that the
only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our libera-
tion is us. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters,
and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work.
This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of
identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially the
most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to
working to end somebody else’s oppression. 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 po-
litical movements that have preceded us that anyone is more worthy of
liberation than ourselves. We reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking
ten paces behind. To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.
We believe that sexual politics under patriarchy is as pervasive in black
women’s lives as are the politics of class and race. We also often find
it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in
our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We know that
there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely
racial nor solely sexual, e.g., the history of rape of black women by white
men as a weapon of political repression.
Although we are feminists and lesbians, we feel solidarity with pro-
gressive black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white
T H E C O M B A H E E R I V E R C O L L E C T I V E S T A T E M E N T 31
women who are separatists demand. Our situation as black people ne-
cessitates that we have solidarity around the fact of race, which white
women of course do not need to have with white men, unless it is their
negative solidarity as racial oppressors. We struggle together with black
men against racism, while we also struggle with black men about sexism.
We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the
destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperial-
ism as well as patriarchy. We are socialists because we believe the 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. Material
resources must be equally distributed among those who create these re-
sources. We are not convinced, however, that a socialist revolution that is
not also a feminist and antiracist revolution will guarantee our liberation.
We have arrived at the necessity for developing an understanding of class
relationships that takes into account the specific class position of black
women who are generally marginal in the labor force, while at this par-
ticular time some of us are temporarily viewed as doubly desirable tokens
at white-collar and professional levels. We need to articulate the real class
situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for
whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their
working/economic lives. Although we are in essential agreement with
Marx’s theory as it applied to the very specific economic relationships he
analyzed, we know that this analysis must be extended further in order
for us to understand our specific economic situation as black women.
A political contribution which we feel we have already made is the expan-
sion of the feminist principle that the personal is the political. In our con-
sciousness-raising sessions, for example, we have in many ways gone beyond
white women’s revelations because we are dealing with the implications of
race and class as well as sex. Even our black women’s style of talking/testify-
ing in black language about what we have experienced has a resonance that
is both cultural and political. We have spent a great deal of energy delving
into the cultural and experiential nature of our oppression out of neces-
sity because none of these matters have ever been looked at before. No one
before has ever examined the multilayered texture of black women’s lives.
As we have already stated, we reject the stance of lesbian separatism
because it is not a viable political analysis or strategy for us. It leaves out
far too much and far too many people, particularly black men, women,
and children. 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 we do not have the misguided notion that
it is their maleness, per se—i.e., their biological maleness—that makes
32 M O N T H L Y R E V I E W / J A N u A R Y 2 0 1 9
them what they are. As black women we find any type of biological de-
terminism a particularly dangerous and reactionary basis upon which to
build a politic. 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 women’s oppression, negating the facts of class and race.
3 . Pr o b l e m s i n O r g a n i z i n g B l a c k Fe m i n i s t s
During our years together as a black feminist collective we have ex-
perienced success and defeat, joy and pain, victory and failure. 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.
We have tried to think about the reasons for our difficulties, particularly
since the white women’s movement continues to be strong and to grow
in many directions. 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 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 ad-
dress a whole range of oppressions. We do not have racial, sexual, hetero-
sexual, or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the minimal
access to resources and power that groups who possess any one of these
types of privilege have.
The psychological toll of being a black woman and the difficulties this
presents in reaching political consciousness and doing political work can
never be underestimated. There is a very low value placed upon black
women’s psyches in this society, which is both racist and sexist. As an
early group member once said, “We are all damaged people merely by vir-
tue of being black women.” We are dispossessed psychologically and on
every other level, and yet we feel the necessity to struggle to change our
condition and the condition of all black women. In “A Black Feminist’s
Search for Sisterhood,” Michele Wallace arrives at this conclusion:
We exist as women, who are black, who are feminists, each stranded for the mo-
ment, working independently because there is not yet an environment in this
society remotely congenial to our struggle—because, being on the bottom, we
would have to do what no one else has done: we would have to fight the world.2
Wallace is not pessimistic but realistic in her assessment of black femi-
nists’ position, particularly in her allusion to the nearly classic isolation
most of us face. We might use our position at the bottom, however, to
make a clear leap into revolutionary action. If black women were free, it
T H E C O M B A H E E R I V E R C O L L E C T I V E S T A T E M E N T 33
would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom
would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.
Feminism is, nevertheless, very threatening to the majority of black
people because it calls into question some of the most basic assumptions
about our existence, i.e., that gender should be a determinant of power
relationships. Here is the way male and female roles were defined in a
black nationalist pamphlet from the early 1970s.
We understand that it is and has been traditional that the man is the head of
the house. 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 men—
they are made by nature to function differently. Equality of men and women
is something that cannot happen even in the abstract world. Men are not
equal to other men, i.e., ability, experience, or even understanding. The value
of men and women can be seen as in the value of gold and silver—they are
not equal but both have great value. We must realize that men and women
are a complement to each other because there is no house/family without a
man and his wife. Both are essential to the development of any life.3
The material conditions of most black women would hardly lead them
to upset both economic and sexual arrangements that seem to represent
some stability in their lives. Many black women have a good understand-
ing of both sexism and racism, but because of the everyday constrictions
of their lives cannot risk struggling against them both.
The reaction of black men to feminism has been notoriously negative.
They are, of course, even more threatened than black women by the
possibility that black feminists might organize around our own needs.
They realize that they might not only lose valuable and hard-working al-
lies in their struggles but that they might also be forced to change their
habitually sexist ways of interacting with and oppressing black women.
Accusations that black feminism divides the black struggle are powerful
deterrents to the growth of an autonomous black women’s movement.
Still, hundreds of women have been active at different times during the
three-year existence of our group. And every black woman who came,
came out of a strongly felt need for some level of possibility that did not
previously exist in her life.
When we first started meeting early in 1974 after the NBFO first eastern
regional conference, we did not have a strategy for organizing, or even a
focus. We just wanted to see what we had. After a period of months of not
meeting, we began to meet again late in the year and started doing an in-
tense variety of consciousness-raising. The overwhelming feeling that we
34 M O N T H L Y R E V I E W / J A N u A R Y 2 0 1 9
had is that after years and years we had finally found each other. Although
we were not doing political work as a group, individuals continued their in-
volvement in lesbian politics, sterilization abuse and abortion rights work,
Third World Women’s International Women’s Day activities, and support
activity for the trials of Dr. Kenneth Edelin, Joan Little, and Inez Garcia.
During our first summer, when membership had dropped off consider-
ably, those of us remaining devoted serious discussion to the possibility of
opening a refuge for battered women in a black community. (There was no
refuge in Boston at that time.) We also decided around that time to become
an independent collective since we had serious disagreements with NBFO’s
bourgeois-feminist stance and their lack of a clear political focus.
We also were contacted at that time by socialist feminists, with whom we
had worked on abortion rights activities, who wanted to encourage us to attend
the National Socialist Feminist Conference in Yellow Springs. One of our mem-
bers did attend and despite the narrowness of the ideology that was promoted
at that particular conference, we became more aware of the need for us to un-
derstand our own economic situation and to make our own economic analysis.
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. 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 sup-
port group. At the beginning of 1976, when some of the women who had
not wanted to do political work and who also had voiced disagreements
stopped attending of their own accord, we again looked for a focus. We
decided at that time, with the addition of new members, to become a study
group. We had always shared our reading with each other, and some of us
had written papers on black feminism for group discussion a few months
before this decision was made. We began functioning as a study group and
also began discussing the possibility of starting a black feminist publica-
tion. We had a retreat in the late spring which provided a time for both
political discussion and working out interpersonal issues. Currently we are
planning to gather together a collection of black feminist writing. We feel
that it is absolutely essential to demonstrate the reality of our politics to
other black women and believe that we can do this through writing and
distributing our work. 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.
T H E C O M B A H E E R I V E R C O L L E C T I V E S T A T E M E N T 35
4 . B l a c k Fe m i n i s t I s s u e s a n d Pr a c t i c e
During our time together we have identified and worked on many is-
sues of particular relevance to black women. The inclusiveness of our poli-
tics makes us concerned with any situation that impinges upon the lives
of women, Third World, and working people. We are of course particularly
committed to working on those struggles in which race, sex, and class
are simultaneous factors in oppression. We might, for example, become
involved in workplace organizing at a factory that employs Third World
women or picket at a hospital that is cutting back on already inadequate
health care to a Third World community, or set up a rape crisis center
in a black neighborhood. Organizing around welfare or daycare concerns
might also be a focus. The work to be done and the countless issues that
this work represents merely reflect the pervasiveness of our oppression.
Issues and projects that collective members have actually worked on
are sterilization abuse, abortion rights, battered women, rape, and health
care. We have also done many workshops and educationals on black femi-
nism on college campuses, at women’s conferences, and most recently
for high school women.
One issue that is of major concern to us and that we have begun to pub-
licly address is racism in the white women’s movement. As black femi-
nists we are made constantly and painfully aware of how little effort white
women have made to understand and combat their racism, which requires
among other things that they have a more than superficial comprehen-
sion of race, color, and black history and culture. Eliminating racism in the
white women’s movement is by definition work for white women to do,
but we will continue to speak to and demand accountability on this issue.
In the practice of our politics we do not believe that the end always jus-
tifies the means. Many reactionary and destructive acts have been done
in the name of achieving “correct” political goals. As feminists we do not
want to mess over people in the name of politics. We believe in collec-
tive process and a nonhierarchical distribution of power within our own
group and in our vision of a revolutionary society. We are committed to
a continual examination of our politics as they develop through criticism
and self-criticism as an essential aspect of our practice. As black feminists
and lesbians we know that we have a very definite revolutionary task to
perform and we are ready for the lifetime of work and struggle before us.
N o t e s
1. This statement is dated April 1977.
2. Michele Wallace, “A Black Feminist’s
Search for Sisterhood,” Village Voice, July
28, 1975, 6–7.
3. Mumininas of Committee for Unified
Newark, Mwanamke Mwananchi (The Na-
tionalist Woman) (Newark, New Jersey:
Mumininas of Committee for Unified
Newark, c. 1971), 4–5.
36 M O N T H L Y R E V I E W / J A N u A R Y 2 0 1 9
http://riseupnewark.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Mwanamke-Mwananchi-FreedomArchives
http://riseupnewark.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Mwanamke-Mwananchi-FreedomArchives
Copyright of Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine is the property of Monthly
Review Foundation and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to
a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written permission. However, users may
print, download, or email articles for individual use.