2.1: Context and Foundation

Positioning Black Feminist & Womanist Studies

What comes first for the Black woman—race and identity as a descendant of the Trans-Atlantic Chattel Slave Trade or feminine liberation? What if she/they identify as queer or lesbian? How might her socio-economic status impact where and how she positions herself within the world? These questions inquire: Does the Black/Africana woman need liberation, and if so, from whom or what systems of oppression? As a field, Black Feminist/Womanist studies centers the concerns of Black women from the intersections of race, gender, class, and sexuality within the Western system of oppression that centers an imperialist, white, heteronormative, capitalist patriarchal position. While Black Feminism/Womanism centers on the inherent value and liberation of Black women, it does not position the Black woman’s liberation as an adjunct to or interference of another’s liberation, and instead views the Black woman’s liberation as a basic human right, equal to all rights bestowed on humanity.

Throughout this chapter, Black Feminism/Womanism will be used interchangeably to describe the concerns and contours of the field. For the concerns of this chapter, we will consider Black Feminism and Womanism as a larger umbrella where differing ideologies fall under with differing focuses. While we will compare and contrast the differences amongst the ideologies, we must remember to hold central to our comparisons that the ultimate belief that race, gender, class, and sexuality represent oppressive systems that link and bind a harmful structure that impacts our everyday lives. This harm extends and includes the way we understand and see the world and the way we gain access to critical resources like healthcare, food, shelter, education, and basic needs. These differing social constructs predicated on ideas of oppression form a mesh that define harmful models of subjugation based on erasure.

Spotlight: The Combahee River Collective

The Combahee River Collective defines their position as, "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. 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." [1]

Black Feminism argues that a Black woman’s race is the lens in which she understands and experiences her feminist/womanist identity. The Combahee River Collective serves as a defining foundation to understand the intersectional position(s) Black women experience, and as such will serve as the guiding framework for this chapter. They express the political positioning of Black Feminism as “the shared belief that Black women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else’s but because of our need as human persons for autonomy.”[1] Despite the historical stereotypes used to define and describe Black women (bull dagger, mammy, matriarch, Sapphire, whore), as well as the routine racialized and sexualized violence many Black women must endure, Black Feminism asserts that Black women are the only people who holistically care for Black women and labor for their collective liberation. This endearing and enduring love for Black women and their communities is defined by the model, "lifting as we climb," which was the motto of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW).

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Mary Church Terrell, long-time civil rights and women's rights leader in the District of Columbia. Terrell was the first president of the National Association of Colored Women and a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The image was published in "Twentieth century Negro literature, or, A cyclopedia of thought on the vital topics relating to the American Negro, by one hundred of America's greatest Negroes," published in 1902 by J.L. Nichols & Co. and Premier Pub. Co. (CC BY-NC; Collection of Washington Spark, Author Unknown, via Flickr)

Spotlight: National Association of Colored Women (NACW) 

National Association of Colored Women, NACW, was founded in Washington, D.C., on July of 1896 at what was the First Annual Convention of the National Federation of Afro American Women. The convention represented the successful alliance and merger of three prominent organizations concerned with the advancement of Black American women: The Woman’s Era Club, The National Federation of Afro-American Women, and The Colored Women’s League. It operated under the name NACW from 1896 to its incorporation in 1904, when it then became known as the National Association of Colored Women’s Club (NACWC). NACW adopted the motto, “Lifting as we climb,” to show their aims and goals were aligned with all aspiring and ambitious women. The organization worked on civil rights, social injustices, and actively fought for women’s rights along with the abolishment of lynchings and Jim Crow laws. Their mission was to support upward and social mobility of the Black race, develop education, attend to the needs of children and the elderly, while also fighting for women’s suffrage.

This chapter will commence with slavery as the inception of Black Feminism/Womanism and will follow the intersectional concerns that first incited the Black Feminist movement throughout the 19^th century and continued into the 20th and 21st centuries.

Note: This chapter does not focus on LGBTQI+ concerns despite some overlap of ideas and interests. This is not because the author/s do not support the Queer community and platform, but instead is because the author/s desire is not to conflate LGBTQI+ and Queer issues with all gender issues. It is the author/s belief that LGBTQI+ and Queer issues deserve a platform that singularly addresses the unique struggles, concerns, concepts, and theories of the Queer community. The author of this chapter is not a Queer scholar, and it is her desire for this platform to be elevated by someone fully prepared to voice the totality of concerns from within the Queer community. This is a call and supplication for inclusion of Africana LGBTQI+/Queer’s voices.

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Endnotes

[1] Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement.” All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us are Brave: Black Women’s Studies. 2^nd edition, 13.

Note: To access the entire copy of Combahee River Collective, please see the following citation (and link) or download the attached file:

The Combahee River Collective Statement. United States, 2015. Web Archive. https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0028151/.