the combahee river collective statement quizlet

163-179, Feminist Studies, Vol. 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. As children we realized that we were different from boys and that we were treated differently. After all, werent we all women? 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. After the C.R.C. As black feminists, members struggle together with black men to fight racism, but against black men to fight sexism. Vacations in the Soviet Union were hardly idylls spent with ones dearest. 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. 4. 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. I had been a socialist since I was fourteen, and, in the groups that I had become active with, feminism was always painted as hostile to socialism. 16 minutes. pioneered the notion of identity politics, perhaps one of the most controversial and misunderstood terms in all of U.S. politics. The Combahee River Collective started its activities in 1974 and was committed to a non-hierarchical structure. 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 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. Summary: The Combahee River Collective. Although our economic position is still at the very bottom of the American capitalistic economy, a handful of us have been able to gain certain tools as a result of tokenism in education and employment which potentially enable us to more effectively fight our oppression. But my mothers experiences were altogether different. saw themselves as socialists and as part of the broader left, but they understood that no mass movement for socialism could be organized without responding to the particular forms of oppression experienced by Black women, Chicana women, lesbians, single mothers, and so many other groups. How One Mothers Love for Her Gay Son Started a Revolution. 164-189, The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 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. No one before has ever examined the multilayered texture of Black womens lives. [1] This statement is dated April 1977. A political contribution which we feel we have already made is the expansion of the feminist principle that the personal is political. The Combahee Statement obliterated that premise. She founded the legendary Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, with Audre Lorde, in 1980. [1] During that time we have been involved in the process of defining and clarifying our politics, while at the same time doing political work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and . Smith served on the Albany city council from 2006 to 2013, and later worked in the Albany mayors office on issues related to inequality. The Combahee Collective's 1977 "A Black Feminist Statement" was, and still is, a crucial statement of black feminism. 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 particular time some of us are temporarily viewed as doubly desirable tokens at white-collar and professional levels. 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. 14, No. I kept coming back to the C.R.C.s basic claim: 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. 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. Although our economic position is still at the very bottom of the American capitalistic economy, a handful of us have been able to gain certain tools as a result of tokenism in education and employment which potentially enable us to more effectively fight our oppression. 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. We might use our position at the bottom, however, to make a clear leap into revolutionary action. What distinguished the C.R.C. Monthly Review | A Black Feminist Statement If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression. The Combahee River Collective is devoted to fighting race, sex, and class oppression. 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. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like interlocking, manifold, inroads and more. The Combahee River Collective Statement is believed to be the first text where the term identity politics is used. As we grew older we became aware of the threat of physical and sexual abuse by men. We were not being reductive, we were not being separatists, she said. Today, there is a small but influential Black political classa Black lite and what could be described as the aspirational Black middle classwhose members continue to be constrained by racial discrimination and inequality but who hold the promise that a better life is possible in the United States. 1-24, Off Our Backs, Vol. Photograph by Ellen Shub / Courtesy the Estate of Ellen Shub. They are, of course, even more threatened than Black women by the possibility that Black feminists might organize around our own needs. A good portion of the tension was generated by wild and unfounded assertions that socialism and the spoils of social democracy were only of interest to white people. 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. 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? More generally, Black men dominated the leadership of the organized Black left. 730-734, The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of African American Review (St. Louis University), Massachusetts Historical Review (MHR), Vol. Match. The Combahee River Collective Statement: Annotated But they were not only reacting to the deficits they found in organizations led by white women and Black men. I had to put it away. But the radicality of Black womens politics was based on their position at the bottom. 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. The claims that socialism was for white people were an affront to a long lineage of Black communists and socialists here in the United States. In 1973, Black feminists, primarily located in New York, felt the necessity of forming a separate Black feminist group. 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. We began functioning as a study group and also began discussing the possibility of starting a Black feminist publication. 1, No. I first encountered the Combahee River Collective Statement in a women's-studies class, my second year of college at SUNY Buffalo. Because Black women were among the most marginalized people in this country, their political struggles brought them into direct conflict with the intertwined malignancies of capitalismracism, sexism, and poverty. Many Black women have a good understanding of both sexism and racism, but because of the everyday constrictions of their lives, cannot risk struggling against them both. [3]. As they put it, If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.. The first was that oppression on the basis of identity . For the first Read MoreCombahee River Collective (1974-1980) Of course, what comes next will depend on what those who constitute the movement do. Combahee River Collective Statement Flashcards | Quizlet Our development must also be tied to the contemporary economic and political position of Black people. 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. Currently we are planning to gather together a collectIon of Black feminist writing. 4-5. | Columbia Journal of Race and Law For this months Annotations series, we chose the Combahee River Collective Statement, written in 1977 and first published in Zillah Eisenstein, ed., Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, 1979. 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. Flashcards. The C.R.C. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody elses oppression. In 2016, black activists founded The Movement of Black Lives to advocate for all black people more generally. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work. The view is decidedly different from the top. 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. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political . demanded politics that could account for all, and not just aspects of their identity. Alexander Gnassi . The overwhelming majority of Black women were working-class and were forced to labor both outside and inside their homes. 159). "$JP 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. Terms in this set (20) interlocking. In the statement, the authors described the concept of identity politics in the following way: We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody elses oppression. But her caution also betrays the hope and deep desire for radical change that all revolutionaries harbor. 6-7. 155-191, Race, Gender & Class, Vol. The Combahee River Collective formed in Boston, in 1974, during a period that regularly produced organizations that claimed the mantle of radical or revolutionary struggle. But then I understood it differently, not just as a critical document in the canon of feminist literature or as a much-needed exposition of the origins of Black feminism. 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. We discovered that all of us, because we were smart had also been considered ugly, i.e., smart-ugly. Smart-ugly crystallized the way in which most of us had been forced to develop our intellects at great cost to our social lives. The eugenics programs of the early twentieth century continued into the nineteen-seventies, as tens of thousands of women in the United States were subjected to sterilization procedures without their informed consent. The reaction of Black men to feminism has been notoriously negative. The final, definitive version was published in Zillah Eisenstein, ed., Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism (Monthly Review Press, 1979), 362-72. "w- d4bJeR|oEj ')IwLDc8="zJ 8X!. We need to think about things in a different way. And who better to do that than feminists of color who are queer and on the left? She added, One of the signs to me that feminist-of-color politics are influencing this moment is the multiracial, multiethnic diversityand not just racial and ethnic, but every kind of diversityof the people who are in the streets now. JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. mammy, matriarch, Sapphire, whore, bulldagger), 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.