Discussion Board Week 4-5
Black Feminist thought
Calling from Patricia hill Collins and Angela Davis
Standpoint theory
Where do we approach our research from?
From what perspective?
From what identities?
From what lived experience?
From what economic/cultural/political/historical context?
Free writing: Why is it important for us to ask these questions when we do research/do psychology work/do social justice work? From where do you approach your work/research? How do you bring your differing identities/experiences to the table when you’re doing your work (or how do you not)?
Black feminist thought
Produced BY and FOR Black women
Again, historically feminism has focused heavily on white women’s experiences
Think about an intro class in your field -> who are you taught?
Black women have a unique standpoint on/perspective of their own experiences
Oral history -> not published in journals or produced in a lab
Black feminist thought
3 key themes of Black Feminist Thought:
Importance of Black women’s self-definition and self-valuation
Intersectionality
Importance of Black women’s culture
Importance of Black women’s self-definition and self-valuation
Self-definition: challenges biases/stereotypes ascribed to Black women by others
Self-valuation: replacing these external images with authentic representations
Pushing back against what stereotypes do (both ”positive” and negative)
Stereotypes create monolithic categories of ppl with no room for nuance or humanity
Pushing back allows us to acknowledge power and control -> let’s talk about #GirlBoss
Why is this important?
In defining your own experience, you reject the dehumanization that comes with external stereotypes and resist features of oppression/domination
Also how you can protect your own psyche from internalized racism/anti-Blackness
Intersectionality
Interlocking nature of gender, race, and class oppression
Black women have a “clearer view of their own subordination than that of Black men or white women...their experience at the intersection of multiple structures of domination” (p. 19)
No illusions that whiteness or maleness will protect from oppression
Holistic view allows for a critical lens of the whole system as flawed, as opposed to a prioritizing of an “issue” over another
Remember Black women’s oppression is not Black + women + other identities = X
Allows for us to push back against dichotomous mindsets -> let’s think about the Women’s Movement
Importance of Black women’s culture
Culture is ever-changing and historically contextualized -> what can art, music, language, etc etc offer us?
“There is no monolithic Black women’s culture – rather, there are socially-constructed Black women’s cultures that collective form Black Women’s culture”
Changes how we define “activism” – what can this look like? Activism of the psyche (private, unseen)? Activism/healing with each other away from the gaze of white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism
Everyday living as a sign of resistance
Combahee River Collective
“Identity Politics”
Oppression on the basis of identity– whether it was racial, gender, class, or sexual orientation identity – was a source of political radicalization (p.8)
Black women were ”disproportionately susceptible to the ravages of capitalism, including poverty, illness, violence, sexual assault, and inadequate healthcare and housing” (p. 8)
The personal is political
Turning personal experience into political action
Solidarity: “intended to strengthen the political commitments from other groups by getting them to recognize how the different struggles were related to each other and connected under capitalism” (p. 11)