Words of Fire (54 page)

A black feminist ideology, first and foremost, thus declares the visibility of black women. It acknowledges the fact that two innate and inerasable traits, being both black and female, constitute our special status in American society. Second, black feminism asserts self-determination as essential. Black women are empowered with the right to interpret our reality and define our objectives. While drawing on a rich tradition of struggle as blacks and as women, we continually establish and reestablish our own priorities. As black women, we decide for ourselves the relative salience of any and all identities and oppressions, and how and the extent to which those features inform our politics. Third, a black feminist ideology fundamentally challenges the interstructure of the oppressions of racism, sexism, and classism both in the dominant society and within movements for liberation. It is in confrontation with multiple jeopardy that black women define and sustain a multiple consciousness essential for our liberation, of which feminist consciousness is an integral part.

Finally, a black feminist ideology presumes an image of black women as powerful, independent subjects. By concentrating on our multiple oppressions, scholarly descriptions have confounded our ability to discover and appreciate the ways in which black women are not victims. Ideological and political choices cannot be assumed to be determined solely by the historical dynamics of racism, sexism, and classism in this society. Although the complexities and ambiguities that merge a consciousness of race, class, and gender oppressions make the emergence and praxis of a multivalent ideology problematical, they also make such a task more necessary if we are to work toward our liberation as blacks, as the economically exploited, and as women.

ENDNOTES

1
Gerda Lerner, ed.,
Black Women in White America: A Documentary History
(New York: Vintage, 1973), 573.

2
Mary Church Terrell, “The Progress of Colored Women,”
Voice of the Negro
1, no. 7 (July 1904): 292.

3
See Lerner,
Black Women
, especially 566-72; and Bert James Loewenberg and Ruth Bogin, eds.,
Black Women in Nineteenth-Century American Life
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976), 234-42.

4
See Lerner,
Black Women
, 609—11.

5
Elizabeth Cady Stanton as quoted by William Chafe,
Women and Equality: Changing Patterns in American Culture
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 44. Some eighty years after Stanton's observation, Swedish social psychologist Gunnar Myrdal, in an appendix to his
An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy
(New York: Harper & Row, 1962), also saw the woman problem as parallel to the Negro problem.

6
Chafe,
Women and Equality
, 77.

7
Helen Hacker, “Women as a Minority Group,”
Social Forces
30 (1951): 60—69.

8
For examples of feminist writings using the race-sex analogy or the master-slave model, see Simone de Beauvoir,
The Second Sex
, trans. and ed. H. M. Parshley (New York: Random House, 1974); Kate Millett,
Sexual Politics
(New York: Avon, 1969); Shulamith Firestone,
The Dialectics of Sex
(New York: William Morrow, 1970); and Mary Daly,
Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1973).

9
See Sara Evans,
Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left
(New York: Vintage, 1980); Catharine Stimpson, “Thy Neighbor's Wife, Thy Neighbor's Servants: Women's Liberation and Black Civil Rights,” in
Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness
, ed. Vivian Gornick and Barbara Moran (New York: Basic Books, 1971), 452—79; and Angela Davis,
Women, Race, and Class
(New York: Random House, 1981). Recently, there has been some debate concerning precisely what lessons, if any, women learned from their participation in the abolitionist and Civil Rights movements. For an argument against the importance of race-oriented movements for feminist politics, see E. C. DuBois,
Feminism and Suffrage
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978).

10
Other limitations have been noted by Linda La Rue, who contends that the analogy is an abstraction that falsely asserts a common oppression of blacks and women for rhetorical and propagandistic purposes (“The Black Movement and Women's Liberation,” in
Female Psychology: The Emerging Self
, ed. Sue Cox [Chicago: Science Research Association, 1976). In
Ain't I a Woman
(Boston: South End Press, 1981), bell hooks questions whether certain women, particularly those self-identified feminists who are white and middle class, are truly oppressed as opposed to being discriminated against. Simpson bluntly declares that the race-sex analogy is exploitative and racist. See also Margaret A. Simons, “Racism and Feminism: A Schism in the Sisterhood,”
Feminist Studies
5 (1979): 384—401, for a critical review of this conceptual approach in feminist theorizing.

11
Chafe,
Women and Equality
, 76; Althea Smith and Abigail J. Stewart, “Approaches to Studying Racism and Sexism in Black Women's Lives,”
Journal of Social Issues
39 (1983): 1—15.

12
hooks,
Ain't I a Woman
, 7.

13
Frances Beale, “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female,” in
The Black Woman: An Anthology
, ed. Toni Cade (New York: New American Library, 1979), 90—100.

14
See, e.g., Beverly Lindsay, “Minority Women in America: Black American, Native American, Chicana, and Asian American Women,” in
The Study of Woman: Enlarging Perspectives of Social Reality
, ed. Eloise C. Synder (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 318—63. She presents a paradigm wherein whiteness, maleness, and money are advantageous; a poor, black woman is triply disadvantaged. Lindsay argues that triple jeopardy, the interaction of sexism, racism, and economic oppression, is “the most realistic perspective for analyzing the position of black American women; and this perspective will serve as common linkage among the discussions of other minority women” (328).

15
See Barbara Smith, ed.,
Home Girls: A Black Feminist Antheology
(New York: Kitchen Table Press, 1983), especially section 3; and Audre Lorde, “Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving,”
Black Scholar
13 (Summer 1982): 20—24, and
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
(Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1984).

16
For other attempts at nonadditive models, see Smith and Stewart “Approaches to Studying Racism”; Elizabeth M. Almquist, “Untangling the Effects of Race and Sex: The Disadvantaged Status of Black Women,”
Social Science Quarterly
56 (1975): 129—42; and Margaret L. Andersen,
Thinking about Women: Sociological and Feminist Perspectives
(New York: Macmillan, 1983). The term “ethnogender” is introduced in Vincent Jeffries and H. Edward Ransford,
Social
Stratification:
A Multiple Hierachy Approach
(Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1980); and Edward Ransford and Jon Miller, “Race, Sex, and Feminist Outlook,”
American Sociological Review
48 (1983): 46—59.

17
Davis,
Women, Race, and Class
, 7.

18
Bonnie Thornton Dill, “The Dialectics of Black Womanhood,”
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
4 (1979): 543-55, especially 547. Smith and Stewart, “Approaches to Studying Racism,” 1, make a similar point.

19
In slavery, there was 100 percent labor force participation by black women. In 1910, thirty-four percent were in the official labor force. In 1960, the figure was forty percent, and by 1980, it was over fifty percent. Comparable figures for white women are eighteen percent in 1890, twenty-two percent in 1910, thirty-seven percent in 1960, and fifty-one percent in 1980. For a more detailed discussion, see Phyllis A. Wallace,
Black Women in the Labor Force
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1980).

20
Angela Davis, “Reflections of the Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves,”
Black Scholar
3 (December 1971): 2—16, offers an enlightening discussion of the irony of independence out of subordination. See also Deborah Gray White,
Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), for a more detailed analysis of the contradictions of the black female role in slavery. For a discussion of the role of black women in the family, see Robert Staples,
The Black Woman in America
(Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1973); Robert Hill,
The Strengths of Black Families
(New York: Emerson Hall, 1972); Herbert Guttman,
The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750 to 1925
(New York: Random House, 1976); Carol Stack,
All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community
(New York: Harper & Row, 1974); and Charles Willie,
A New Look at Black Families
(New York: General Hall, 1976). For a discussion of black women's community roles, see Bettina Aptheker,
Woman's Legacy: Essays on Race, Sex, and Class in American History
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982); Paula Giddings,
When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America
(New York: William Morrow, 1983); Lerner,
Black Women
; Sharon Harley and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, eds.,
The Afro-American Woman: Struggles and Images
(Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1978); Linda Perkins, “The Impact of the ‘Cult of True Womanhood' on the Education of Black Women,”
Journal of Social Issues
39 (1983): 17—28; and the special issue, “The Impact of Black Women in Education,”
Journal of Negro Education
51, no. 3 (Summer 1982).

21
See Robert Staples, “The Myth of the Black Matriarchy,” in his
The Black Family: Essays and Studies
(Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1971), and
The Black Woman in America
. Also see hooks,
Ain't I a Woman
and Cheryl T. Gilkes, “Black Women's Work as Deviance: Social Sources of Racial Antagonism within Contemporary Feminism,” (working paper no. 66, Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College, Center for Research on Women, 1979). However, more recently Robert Staples has argued that black women who are too independent will be unable to find black mates and that black men are justified in their preference for a more traditionally feminine partner (“The Myth of Black Macho: A Response to Angry Black Feminists,”
Black Scholar
10 [March—April 1979]: 24—32).

22
See White,
Ar'n't I a Woman?
and Jacqueline Jones,
Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family, From Slavery to the Present
(New York: Basic Books, 1985).

23
Michael Albert et al.,
Liberating Theory
(Boston: South End Press, 1986), 6.

24
For further discussion of suffrage and racism, see Davis,
Women. Race, and Class;
Giddings,
When and Where I Enter;
Harley and Terborg-Penn,
The
Afro-American Woman
, and Barbara H. Andolsen,
“Daughters of Jefferson, Daughters of Bootblacks”: Racism and American Feminism
(Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986).

25
See Gloria Joseph and Jill Lewis,
Common Differences: Conflicts in Black and White Feminist Perspectives
(New York: Avon, 1981); Diane K. Lewis, “A Response to Inequality: Black Women, Racism, and Sexism,”
Signs
3 (1977): 399—61; and bell hooks,
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
(Boston: South End Press, 1984), for extended discussions of the dynamics of structural subordination to and social conflict with varying dominant racial and sexual groups.

26
Lewis, “A Response to Inequality,” 343.

27
Giddings,
When and Where I Enter
; Harley and Terborg-Penn,
The Afro-American Woman;
and Davis, “Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves.”

28
See Evans,
Personal Politics
; and Clayborne Carson,
In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).

29
Michele Wallace,
Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman
(New York: Dial, 1979). See also Linda C. Powell, “Black Macho and Black Feminism,” in Smith,
Home Girls
, 283—92, for a critique of Wallace's thesis.

30
For statements by Truth, Stewart, Cooper, Ruffin, and Harper, see Loewenberg and Bogin,
Black Women in Nineteenth-Century American Life
; and Lerner,
Black Woman
; for Lorde, see Lorde,
Sister Outsider
; for Davis, see Davis,
Women, Race, and Class
; for Beale, see Frances Beale, “Double Jeopardy,” and “Slave of a Slave No More: Black Women in the Struggle,”
Black Scholar
12, no. 6 (November/December 1981): 16—24; and for Murray, see Pauli Murray, “The Liberation of Black Women,” in
Women: A Feminist Perspective
, ed. Jo Freeman (Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield, 1975), 351—63.

31
Regarding the church, see Pauline Terrelonge Stone, “Feminist Consciousness and Black Women,” in Freeman, ed., 575—88; Joseph and Lewis,
Common Differences
; Jacqueline Grant, “Black Women and the Church,” in
But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies
, ed. Gloria T. Hull et al. (Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1982), 141—52; and Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, “ 'Together and in Harness'; Women's Traditions in the Sanctified Church,”
Signs
10 (Summer 1985): 678—99. Concerning politics, see La Rue,
The Black Movement;
Mae C. King,, “The Politics of Sexual Stereotypes,”
Black Scholar
4 (March/ April 1973): 12—22; and Manning Marable,
How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America
(Boston: South End Press, 1983), especially chapter 3. For a discussion of sexual victimization, see Barbara Smith, “Notes for Yet Another Paper on Black Feminism, or Will the Real Enemy Please Stand Up,”
Conditions
5 (1979): 123—27, as well as Joseph and Lewis,
Common Differences
. For a critique of the notion of the matriarch, see Stone,
Feminist Consciousness
; and Staples, “The Myth of the Black Matriarchy.”