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. She didnt know about the Volcker Shock and the recession that would follow. Enter the Combahee River Collective. 1/2, Woman: An Issue (Winter - Spring, 1972), pp. Solidarity was the bridge by which different groups of people could connect on the basis of mutual understanding, respect, and the old socialist edict that an injury to one was an injury to all. 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. 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. 384-401. As they explained, Black feminists and many more Black women who do not define themselves as feminists have all experienced sexual oppression as a constant factor in our day-to-day existence. And they were doing even more than that: the Combahee Statement was also written to describe how race, gender, and sexual orientation were woven together in the lives of queer Black women. Your donation is fully tax-deductible. 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 present it here, along with related scholarship from both the time period in which it was written, as well as current discussions. As a result, many Black women felt shut out of directing those organizations, just as they felt that their experiences as Black women were ignored. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. 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. 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. . She and my father met in high school, dated through college, and eventually landed in graduate school, at SUNY Buffalo, in the early nineteen-seventies. Gender was also an incomplete answer. The Black feminist collectives 1977 statement has been a bedrock document for academics, organizers and theorists for 45 years. We are of course particularly committed to working on those struggles in which race, sex, and class are simultaneous factors in oppression. Key concepts addressed in assigned readings. It celebrated the possibilities of a political coalition born out of solidarity among groups who recognized the need to be engaged in struggle. The overwhelming feeling that we had is that after years and years we had finally found each other. Accusations that Black feminism divides the Black struggle are powerful deterrents to the growth of an autonomous Black womens movement. There are no maps or predetermined paths that guarantee the success or failure of a movement. What are the similarities between Truth's and the Combahee Collective's concerns? 3/4, SOLIDARITY (FALL/WINTER 2014), pp. Both are essential to the development of any life. The quest to transform this country cannot be limited to challenging its brutal police alone. Demita Frazier had been a member of the Black Panther Party in Chicago, right up until the Chicago police helped to assassinate the Panther leader Fred Hampton, in 1969. 239-249, Meridians, Vol. One of our members 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 understand our own economic situation and to make our own economic analysis. hbbd``b`U@P: 1D8 @k2~$2012b`Mg . endstream endobj startxref 0 %%EOF 248 0 obj <>stream As children we realized that we were different from boys and that we were treated differently. My other revelation came out of their insistence that Black feminism was necessary to clearly articulate the experiences of Black women. We can obviously create a politics that is absolutely aligned with our own experiences as Black womenin other words, with our identities. One issue that is of major concern to us and that we have begun to publicly address is racism in the white womens movement. 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. 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. 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. I first encountered the Combahee River Collective Statement in a women's-studies class, my second year of college at SUNY Buffalo. 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. When I reached college, in the nineties, these same debates could be found animating womens-studies classes. Flashcards. Black feminists and many more Black women who do not define themselves as feminists have all experienced sexual oppression as a constant factor in our day-to-day existence. 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 Organizing around welfare and daycare concerns might also be a focus. As Black feminists 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 comprehension of race, color, and Black history and culture. As we grew older we became aware of the threat of physical and sexual abuse by men. It made sense of her senseless death, just shy of the twenty-first century. Combahee River Collective Statement. Although we are in essential agreement with Marxs theory as it applied to the very specific economic relationships he analyzed, we know that his analysis must be extended further in order for us to understand our specific economic situation as Black women. hb```f``e`a` @V8OCH'2 19Qiq.&)L)Sa\@>s L95 J:pj]gkivud|8:8:GsGGCi$& y@g00* @, Our situation as Black people necessitates 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. In 2016, black activists founded The Movement of Black Lives to advocate for all black people more generally. The final, definitive version was published in Zillah Eisenstein, ed., Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism (Monthly Review Press, 1979), 362-72. An example of this kind of revelation/conceptualization occurred at a meeting as we discussed the ways in which our early intellectual interests had been attacked by our peers, particularly Black males. 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. Identity politics has become so untethered from its original usage that it has lost much of its original explanatory power. The "second wave" feminist movement fought for body . 3 (Autumn, 1980), pp. 159). What We Believe 2. To clarify, the woman said she was as much in solidarity with the women who cleaned her home as she was with white middle-class women like herself, who had also been trained to lower their horizons and expect less out of life. [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 . 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. Theoretically rich and strategically nimble, it imagined a course of politics that could take Black women from the margins of society to the center of a revolution. 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. 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.. All of this stood in stark contradiction to what, as a young person, I had understood feminism to be. were not the first to break with white feminist and Black-nationalist organizations. Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create these resources. Evictions and foreclosures in the U.S. could trigger a new wave of infection and illnessbut its not too late to act. This became the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO). The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Thats right out of the Black feminist playbook.. ITHAKA. Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol. 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. My father left when I was two, and my mother took us to Dallas, where she worked as a reading specialist for the Dallas Independent School District. We have spent a great deal of energy delving into the cultural and experiential nature of our oppression out of necessity because none of these matters has ever been looked at before. During our years together as a Black feminist collective we have experienced success and defeat, joy and pain, victory and failure. 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. 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. 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. Any concept, once it is released into the world, can take on new meanings when confronted with new problems. We are a collective of Black feminists who have been meeting together since 1974. 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. Issues and projects that collective members have actually worked on are sterilization abuse, abortion rights, battered women, rape and health care. When I was seven, I saw my father jump in to stop a group of white teen-agers from threatening my older brother, only to have the police blame him for the altercation. 81-100, Meridians, Vol. 2023 Cond Nast. How One Mothers Love for Her Gay Son Started a Revolution. 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. The collective joined together to develop the Combahee River Collective Statement, which was a . 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. Demonstrations following the murder of Floyd enter their third week. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. [2]. 730-734, The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of African American Review (St. Louis University), Massachusetts Historical Review (MHR), Vol. 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. More than a fifth of Black women live below the poverty line, but their lives are largely invisible. The genesis of Contemporary Black Feminism They stand in contrast to the Black poor and working class, who live in veritable police states, with low-wage work, poor health care, substandard and expensive housing, and an acute sense of insecurity. We have spent a great deal of energy delving into the cultural and experiential nature of our oppression out of necessity because none of these matters has ever been looked at before. 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. 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. Here is the way male and female roles were defined in a Black nationalist pamphlet from the early 1970s: 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. 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. 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. We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism. 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. 1-17, Negro History Bulletin, Vol. Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership. Test. 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. Doris Jeanne Taylors life was unceremoniously extinguished two weeks after she entered the hospital. We reprint that version here in commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of its publication by Monthly Review Press. [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 movements. The Combahee River Collective Statement conceptualized the notion of intersectionalitythe idea that marginalization and oppression are experienced simultaneously in different, interlocking ways as a result of how systems of domination interact with people's identities. We do not have racial, sexual, heterosexual, or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the minimal access to resources and power that groups who possess anyone of these types of privilege have. In a political moment when futile arguments claimed to pit race against class, and identity politics against mass movements, the C.R.C. 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. Many things have changed since the publication of the document, but many have not, and therein lies the problem that continues to pull people into the streets. 1. This document was one of the earliest explorations of the intersection of multiple oppressions, including racism and heterosexism. It was mind-blowing! We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism. Much of what is meant by identity politics in its contemporary idiom is simply representationthe presence of Black, queer, gendered, and classed bodies with almost no attention paid to their political commitments. The Combahee River Collective Statement (1977) by Combahee River Collective. 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. 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. As Smith put it, These people were looking at the situation and saying, What we have here is not working. In the sixties and seventies, fighting for the rights of queer people was considered radical activism. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. A political contribution which we feel we have already made is the expansion of the feminist principle that the personal is political. %PDF-1.6 % Thus, the women of the C.R.C believed that, if Black women were successful in their struggles and movements, they would have an impact far beyond their immediate demands. Smith told me, Many of the people in the Movement for Black Lives absolutely acknowledge that they are inspired by the politics of the Combahee River Collective and by the feminism of women of color, not just Black women. She was thinking of Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and Cheryl Clarke, and of the pioneering Chicana activists Cherre Moraga and Gloria Anzalda. In many ways, they built on the work of the Third World Womens Alliance, which was an outgrowth of the Black Womens Liberation Committeea caucus of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. 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. This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. Merely naming the pejorative stereotypes attributed to Black women (e.g. As we have already stated, we reject the stance of Lesbian separatism because it is not a viable political analysis or strategy for us. During our time together we have identified and worked on many issues of particular relevance to Black women. Respond to the following prompts in 300+ words (total), with reference to the Module 2 texts: Both "Ain't I a Woman?" and "A Black Feminist Statement: The Combahee River Collective" make statements in response to exclusionary aspects of feminist activism in the 19th and 20th centuries respectively. Have a correction or comment about this article? The C.R.C. 43, No. The Combahee River Ferry, also called the Combahee River Raid, was a military operation that took place over the River Combahee, South Carolina, in 1863. Even our Black womens style of talking/testifying in Black language about what we have experienced has a resonance that is both cultural and political. 20072023 Blackpast.org. 1 / 2. In 1973, Black feminists, primarily located in New York, felt the necessity of forming a separate Black feminist group. As always, links to the underlying scholarship are free to all readers. [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 . 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 members of the Combahee River Collective march down Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, at a 1979 memorial for murdered women of color. It is a foundational document in Black feminism, whose impact continues to be seen and felt throughout US political life today. Our development must also be tied to the contemporary economic and political position of Black people. The Combahee River Collective started its activities in 1974 and was committed to a non-hierarchical structure. [3]. 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.
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