A Black Feminist Statement

Feminism is not a word I use quite often and that is why I took this class to gain more knowledge about the social issues that surround gender and being male and female. However I did not think we would address other important facts such as racism and I never even thought about the impact people's "color" had or has on issues that surround their sex. Out of all the articles we read the past two weeks I decided to write my two paragraph on the Linda Nicholson's The Second Wave, A Reader in Feminist Theory. The chapter "A Black Feminist Statement" grabbed my attention because it was the first time I realized that the second wave of American woman's movement meant different things for women of different colors. When I always heard or read about feminism I always thought about the two categories of male and female and now I realize that it's white male, white female, black male, black female and all the other colors we identify people with. 

The fight for women's right was different for the black female community because they were part of two communities but never fully belonging to any. If you categorized them as female, white females were ranked higher than them in society and if you categorized them as a black person, black males were also ranked higher than them in society.  As the article says black women say "we had to struggle together with black men against racism, while we also struggle with black men about sexism" (Nicholson,65). Therefore for black women before tackling all the problems that came along with being a women at that time, they had to tackle all the problems that surrounded their class and race first.

Reading about these factors made me want to gain more knowledge about it. That is why I started reading more antifeminism articles online and what reason people gave to argue with the freedom black women were trying to gain. The myths I found that were alarming was :

1. Feminism is nothing but man hating.

2. Feminists are nothing but lesbians. 

(these two apply to white females also)

3. The black woman is already liberated.

4. Racism is the primary (or only) oppression black women have to confront.

5. Women's issues are narrow and people of color need to deal with the "larger struggle"

All these factors showed me that yes, fighting for women's right was a hard task for females at the time but it was an even harder task for the black females.