A BRIEF HISTORY OF BLACK FEMINISM By Robyn Sands The first (official) black feminist organisation, the National Black Feminist Organization in New York, was set up in 1973, years after mainstream feminism began making waves in the western world, but there has always been a specific need for Black feminist organisations to overcome a unique set of oppressions and disadvantages. Black women were being openly discriminated against for being black within feminism, and for being women within the Black Liberation Movement. Forms of feminism which strive to overcome gender and class oppression but fail to acknowledge race can alienate many people. In 1974 the Combahee River Collective, a black lesbian feminist organisation in Boston, wrote a statement which would become a key document in black feminist theory in which they argued that the liberation
Above: The Combahee River Collective
of black women entails freedom for all people, since it would require the end of racism, sexism, and class oppression. One of the foundation texts of black feminism is An Argument for Black Women’s Liberation as a Revolutionary Force, authored by Mary Ann Weathers and published in 1969 in the radical feminist magazine No
More Fun and Games: A Journal of Female Liberation published by Cell 16, in which she argues that "Women's Liberation should be considered as a strategy for an eventual tie-up with the entire revolutionary movement consisting of women, men, and children.� In 1979 Alice Walker coined the term Womanism in her short story Coming Apart. It has been asserted that the term womanist has come to represent a feminist of colour, since the Feminist movement had been experienced by many as intrinsically racist. Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi is a Nigerian literary critic who published the article, "Womanism: The Dynamics of the Contemporary Black Female Novel in English" in 1985 in which she described her interpretation of womanism. She asserts that the womanist vision is to answer the ultimate question of how to equitably share power among the races and between the sexes, but arrives at a more separatist stance than Alice Walker. Clenora Hudson-Weem coined the term Africana Womanism in the late
Above: The Combahee River Collective
1980s, which rejects feminism because it is set up in a way as to promote the issues of white women over the issues of black women. HudsonWeems argues that feminism will never be okay for black women due to the implications of slavery and prejudice. The Africana Womanism Society lists eighteen characteristics of the The Africana womanist, including self-naming, self-defining, familycentered, flexible and desiring positive male companionship.
“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 manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.�
— Combahee River Collective
WHAT IS ‘INTERSECTIONALITY’? The term Intersectionality was coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, a prominent figure in Critical Race Theory and a professor at UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School. The theory suggests that various social and cultural categories such as gender, race, class, ability, sexual orientation and other axes of identity interact on multiple and often simultaneous levels, contributing to systematic injustice and social inequality. Intersectionality
holds that the classical conceptualizations of oppression within society, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and beliefbased bigotry, do not act independently of one another. Instead, these forms of oppression interrelate, creating a system of oppression that reflects the "intersection" of multiple forms of discrimination.
OUR HISTORY—FAR FROM BLACK AND WHITE By Morgan Cormack Black history month didn’t exist when my black British mother was in school. Being born in 1964, exactly 101 years after the Slavery Abolition Act, should have meant a society with equal opportunities to learn about world history. Sadly, that was not the case and, with no internet, mum got her only lessons in black history from the television; her teachers - the actors she admired, the lesson plan - an array of well dramatised scenes and the learning materials snippets of radio shows and news clips. Growing up in a predominantly white working class area could be the answer as to why she didn’t receive this knowledge but I think it was something more. Black history has long been left out of many curriculums and, to this day, a large proportion of institutions don’t even acknowledge it. Black history was deemed unimportant and, for mum, that meant not
being able to learn about her own history and the struggles that black women had to face in this country in the past. Thankfully times have changed and vicariously, through her daughters’ education, she too has learnt about figures such as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and lesser known pioneers like Mary Seacole. However, my mother raises a good point: noticing the focus on American black history and lack of teaching around British black history paves the way for ignorance and prejudice, especially concerning women. “People would have a better perception of British black people and the struggles they faced” my mother argues referencing the post-war emigration that many Caribbean people, including my grandparents, underwent in order to rebuild Great Britain. Throughout her working career my
mother was constantly reminded of her “treble prejudice” of being black and a single mother. My mother suggests that if people were taught about the achievements of black individuals from an early age, there would be far less educational ignorance. Learning about British black women in particular would show people that often, in coming from the Caribbean, those who came here faced as much hardship as their male counterparts. The women were often left to work and fend for their families, whilst the husband got settled in their new country, and would follow later. So why is black history limited to a month? If we were still in a racist society, then having four weeks dedicated to black history would be a huge milestone. As it is, our society has progressed and still having this distinction is puzzling. History has no colour and therefore, specific months should not need to be given out to various races in an attempt at equality. Instead, we should all learn from a young age about the accomplishments of each other and learn to cherish diversity. Rather than focusing on American events, we should
instead look to the hardships faced closer to home. My mother argues that we should get rid of the term “black history” in favour for simple “history” in order to break down these racial barriers. And you know what they say – mum knows best!
Discussion group Tuesdays and Thursdays 5pm-7pm uea.feminism@gmail.com @UEA_Feminism http://www.ueafeminism.wordpress.com/ http://www.ueafeminism.tumblr.com/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/ uea.feminism/ Front cover and borders by Asia Patel. Photos taken from libcom. If you would also like to submit a piece for next month’s zine, please contact us using the details above!