Book Review: Black Feminist Thought (Patricia Hill Collins) Essay

“I am a black feminist… I recognize that my power as well as my primary obsessions come as a result of my blackness as well as my womaness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable” … As a woman of color, I find that some feminists don’t seem terribly concerned with the issues unique to women of color—the ongoing effects of racism and post-colonialism, the status of women in the Third World, working against the trenchant archetypes black women are forced into (angry black woman, mammy, hottentot, and the like). (Gay 173).

In the article Black Women Should Seek Gender Equality, she examines the burden of racism and sexism and neglect for gender rights amongst black women. Her main argument is that “due to sexism in the Civil Rights Movement, black women should not subordinate the fight against discrimination based on sex to the struggle against racial discrimination” (Murray 163). She also argues that black women have been the backbone of black families and while black men received more acceptance in society, they kept their wives inferior. Although the arguments contain some validity, in historical contexts there are some

In history, women have always struggled to gain equality, respect, and the same rights as men. Women had had to endure years of sexism and struggle to get to where we are today. The struggle was even more difficult for women of color because not only were they dealing with issues of sexism, but also racism. Many movements have helped black women during the past centuries to overcome sexism, racism, and adversities that were set against them. History tells us that movements such as the Feminist Movement helped empower all women, but this fact is not totally true. In this paper, I will discuss feminism, the movements, and its "minimal" affects on black women.

Black feminists have investigated how rape as a specific form of sexual violence is embedded in a system of interlocking race, gender, and class oppression (Davis 1978, 1981, 1989; Hall 1983). Reproductive rights issues such as access to information on sexuality and birth control, the struggles for abortion rights, and patterns of forced sterilization have also garnered attention

In order to understand the meaning of what Patricia Hill Collins calls the matrix of domination it is necessary to consider how identity politics; such as civil rights, feminism, and the LGBT movement could be considered a response to domination. Domination are forms of power evident in control, exclusion, and discrimination. Patricia Hill Collins ‘ideas of intersectionality and the matrix of domination are important because they present an analysis claiming that systems of race, social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, and age form mutually constructing features of social organization, which shape Black women’s experiences and, in turn, are shaped by Black women” (Collins, 2000). Collins focuses on the influences of intersectionality of Black women.

The foundations of intersecting oppressions become grounded in interdependent concepts of binary thinking, oppositional difference, objectification, and social hierarchy.

In an attempt to define Black Feminism, Collins clarifies that it must “avoid the idealist position that ideas can be evaluated in isolation from the groups that create them (Collins 385).” This clarification forms her basis for why Black Feminism is necessary, and who it serves. Thinking about feminism historically, the concerns of black women were pushed aside in favor of fighting sexism; a notable example occurs within the Suffrage movement, where votes for white women were prioritized over women of color in order to push such legislation through. And even when feminism began looking at other social injustices, such as racism and class issues, often only prominent feminists were invited to the discussion. What resulted was, and often continues to be, a problem of white women speaking for oppressed people. It’s impossible, Collins argues, to have Black Feminist thought without examining the experiences and positions of African American women. Therefore, Black Feminism must be a movement that “encompasses theoretical interpretations of Black women’s reality by those who live in it (Collins 386).” However, such a definition brings about many questions:

In an attempt to define Black Feminism, Collins clarifies that it must “avoid the idealist position that ideas can be evaluated in isolation from the groups that create them (Collins 385).” In reality, this forms her basis for why Black Feminism is necessary, and who it serves. Thinking about feminism historically, the concerns of black women were pushed aside in favor of fighting sexism, most notably during the Suffrage movement. And even when feminism began looking at other social injustices, such as racism and class issues, only prominent feminists were invited to the discussion. What resulted was, and often continues to be, a problem of white women speaking for oppressed people. It’s impossible, Collins argues, to have Black Feminist thought without examining the experiences and positions of African American women. Therefore, Black Feminism must be a movement that “encompasses theoretical interpretations of Black women’s reality by those who live in it (Collins 386).” However, such a definition brings about many questions: who’s experiences are valued, how do black women take their voice back, and how can they center feminist thinking on their own unique standpoint?

Womanism allows black women to affirm and celebrate their color and culture in a way that feminism does not.In the words of theorists such as Clenora Hudson-Weems and Alicia Boisnier, Black women struggle to identify with traditional feminism, because they don’t identify with the issues that black women typically experiance. Delores Williams, a womanist theologian, associates womanism with the traditions and activism formed from the conditions, events, meanings and values within the African- American community. Williams further asserts that the task of the Womanist theologian is to embody activism by seeking out the voices of the unheard and the experiences of the neglected. She identifies the distinct difference between the experiences of the black woman and the white woman that makes it difficult to identify with feminism.

Among the central claims of black feminists is the inseparability of the structures and systems of gender, race, and class. Most black feminists deny it is possible for women to focus exclusively on their oppression as women. On the contrary, each woman needs to understand how everything about her provides part of the explanation for her subordinate status. In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African-American women outside academia. In reclaiming and legitimizing the ideas of women of such diverse backgrounds, Collins demonstrates that there is indeed a distinct philosophical tradition among African-American women that is both Afrocentric and feminist in its themes and approaches. According to Collins, African-American women inhabit a sex/gender hierarchy in which inequalities of race and social class have been sexualized. By examining the links between sexuality and power, Collins reveals how important controlling Black women’s sexuality has been to the effective operation of domination overall. In other words, Collins claims that sexuality becomes a domain of restriction and repression when it is tied to race, class, and gender. Comparably, in her book Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race, Eileen J. Suarez Findlay, exposes the race-related double standards of sexual norms and practices in Puerto Rico. Findlay, examines concepts of honor based on gendered and

Black feminist thought has gained popularity in recent years and remains a noteworthy matter in view of the fact that in the United States black women form an oppressed group. Inequality entails a complex situation, in which oppression cannot be identified as one type, for example, race, gender, class or sexual preference. In this particular situation, we will acknowledge the challenges from the standpoint of black feminists. Patricia Hill Collins educates us through the four tenets of black epistemology, in addition to the contradictions against the scientific methods of social science; positivistic knowledge. Beyond the characteristics of epistemology, there are several key implications for black feminist thought.

In today’s world with becoming a strong young black woman every day, my mind has expands toward the very things I never really knew and being mindful of black women’s experiences has familiarity of the structure of the black feminist. In Black Feminist Thought, by Patricia Collins, draws the attention to the theory of black feminist innovations and their opinions on women of color. She also embraces figures made by black women intellects who performed a role in evolving this theory. In similarity to Collins’ novel, The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, the African American female individuals depicted as the women of color labeled in the novel, Black Feminist Thought. In conjunction with the depicted black women in Collins’ Black Feminist

Patricia Hill Collins black feminist philosopher has written books and spent extensive time on studying the central concept of feminist epistemology is that of women placed in a particular position or condition and hence of fixed knowledge: knowledge that reflects the particular perspectives of women. In her book Black Feminist Thought Collins, expresses her concern as a black women moving from her neighborhood in Philadelphia to Boston she says, “My world grew larger, but I felt I was growing smaller. I tried to disappear into myself in order to deflect the painful, daily assaults designed to teach me that being an African American, working-class woman made me lesser than those who were not. And as I felt smaller, I become quieter and eventually was virtually silenced (Collins, 1990, p. xi).” However, she did not stay quiet for long, majoring in Sociology gave her the opportunity to study race and offer her endless opportunity to go many directions. In addition Collins wrote Black Feminist Thought in order to help empower African-American women. She knew that when an individual Black woman’s consciousness concerning how she understands her everyday life undergoes change, she can become empowered. Such consciousness may stimulate her to embark on a path of personal freedom, even if it exists initially primarily in her own mind. My deepening understanding of empowerment stimulated more complex arguments of several ideas. I emphasize Black feminist thought’s purpose,

With its extensive multidisciplinary coverage, The Womanist Reader was an excellent sort of one-stop resource for the information I needed to complete the midterm project for this class. In looking at race, sex, and gender, for my project, I noticed that works from major contributors to black feminist scholarship were associated with the womanist scholarship found in this volume. As a means of situating the course of Black studies, and why there is a need to understand the quotidian lives of women as a way of translating the humanity of people of African descent, this text offered connections that I had not fully considered.

Within our society, there are a variety of movements that pertain to feminist ideology that exist to ensure that everyone’s voice can be heard. While the mainstream women’s movement pushes for gender liberation, it is not as fully intersectional as it should be. Terms such as Womanist Thought and Black Feminist Thought have been created to focus on other forms of oppression that mainstream feminism can often fail to address. While portions of these differing movements tend to overlap, each affiliation has their individual goals and mindsets that separate one another. Both womanist thought and black feminist thought highlight the need to focus on intersectionality within social movements while exposing the lack of solidarity and equality within mainstream feminism.