Racism and Sexism Questions

The Combahee

River Collective:

“Until Black Women Are

Free, None of Us are Free…”

AFAM100: Black Freedom Struggles

March 30, 2021

Class Reminders

NO QUIZ ON THURSDAY :D

Anti-Blackness and the Police State Week 12 Tuesday: Steve Martinot and Jared Sexton, “The Avant-garde of White Supremacy.” - Cancelled: Nirhani, Auandaru. “Policing Slaves Since the

1600’s: White Supremacy, Slavery, and Modern US Police Departments,” The Rebel Press .

- - Begin Claudia Rankine, Just Us (Graywolf Press, 2020); up to page 55.

Thursday: Prisons in Twelve Landscapes, Documentary (2016). https://pennstate.kanopy.com/video/prison-twelve- landscapes-1

Background

• Black feminist lesbian socialist collective active in Boston from 1974 to 1980;

• 1960’s & 1970’s divisions in feminist struggle (i.e. claims of women’s oppression was all one in the same (universal); lack of intersectionality to including sexuality, class, gender expression, etc.)

• The Combahee River Collective was a small organization, but it involved some of the luminaries of Black feminism: Barbara Smith and her twin sister, Beverly Smith, as well as Demita Frazier, Cheryl Clarke, Akasha Hull, Margo Okazawa-Rey, Chirlane McCray, and Audre Lorde.

• Equally dismayed by the direction of the feminist movement, which they believed to be dominated by middle-class white women, and the suffocating masculinity in Black-nationalist organizations, they set out to formulate their own politics and strategies in response to their distinct experiences as Black women.

Influence of Global Decolonization Movements/ Anti-Capitalist Struggles

• The CRC were not only reacting to the deficits they found in organizations led by white women and Black men. They were also inspired by the national liberation and anti- colonial movements, from the Algerian struggle against the French occupation to the Vietnamese resistance to the American war. The C.R.C. saw themselves as revolutionaries whose aspirations far exceeded women’s rights: they aspired to the overthrow of capitalism.

• The Black women of the C.R.C. were not the first to break with white feminist and Black-nationalist organizations. In many ways, they built on the work of the Third World Women’s Alliance, which was an outgrowth of the Black Women’s Liberation Committee—a caucus of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Combahee River Collective

• Critique: the white feminist movement and the Civil Rights Movement were not addressing their specific needs as Black women, namely as Black lesbians;

• Addressing racism in mainstream feminist movement as well as sexism and homophobia in the Civil Rights Movement;

• Propelled the concept of identity politics (although today, it may have a different connotation);

• But most importantly, they introduced and circulated the concept of intersectionality;

• In 1973, Barbara Smith and others delegated the regional meeting of the National Black Feminist Organization in New York City

• The name of the collective was proposed by Smith who was inspired by Harriett Tubman who led an action at the Combahee River on June 2, 1863, in the Port Royal region of South Carolina– an action that freed more than 750 slaves and is the only military campaigns in American history planned and led by a woman.

Review of intersectionality

(with)in Black Freedom Struggles

• Angela Davis: Reproductive & sexual politics of the slave plantation;

• Saidiya Hartman: legal dispossession of the slave, namely the female slave;

• Audre Lorde: temporality and poetry of black freedom struggle from a black lesbian position

• Assata Shakur: Sexism and privilege in Black radical movement and lack of resources organizing in prisons (as opposed to men); repressive mechanism of the state

• Intersectionality at the level of: the body & ability; sexuality; gender expression; class; citizenship

• Material structural inequalities: Housing; job opportunities; poverty; family life; civic life;

• Racial, gender, and sexual violence;

• Freedom, the struggle and aspiration to freedom, are not universal

“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.”

The Combahee River Collective Statement

Four Objectives (1)the genesis of contemporary Black

feminism; (2)what we believe, i.e., the specific

province of our politics; (3)the problems in organizing Black

feminists, including a brief herstory of our collective;

(4)Black feminist issues and practice.

The Genesis of Contemporary Black feminism • Origins in the historical reality of Afro-American women’s continuous life-and-death struggle for

survival and liberation. • Black women’s extremely negative relationship to the American political system (a system of

white male rule) has always been determined by our membership in two oppressed racial and sexual castes.

• A Black feminist presence has evolved most obviously in connection with the second wave of the American women’s movement beginning in the late 1960s. Black, other Third World, and working women have been involved in the feminist movement from its start, but both outside reactionary forces and racism and elitism within the movement itself have served to obscure our participation. In 1973, Black feminists, primarily located in New York, felt the necessity of forming a separate Black feminist group. This became the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO).

• Many were active in the Civil Rights Movement, Black Panther Party, and Black Nationalism.

“What We Believe…” • “Above all else, Our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that Black women are

inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else’s may because of our need as human persons for autonomy.”

• Focus on the unique intersection of identity politics, sexual, and reproductive politics; • “We believe that sexual politics under patriarchy is as pervasive in Black women’s lives as are

the politics of class and race. We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We know that there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely racial nor solely sexual, e.g., the history of rape of Black women by white men as a weapon of political repression.”

• Liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy– and vice versa. • “We are socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective

benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses.”

The Problems in Organizing Black feminists • “The major source of difficulty in our political work is that we are not just trying to fight oppression

on one front or even two, but instead to address a whole range of oppressions. We do not have racial, sexual, heterosexual, or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the minimal access to resources and power that groups who possess anyone of these types of privilege have.”

• Facing discrimination in other movements of struggle and organizing: • Black women face sexism in male-led black radical struggle; • Black women are undermined by in (white) feminist movement; • The “psychological” toll of black women who are expected to carry out role of minoritarian

informant (native informant) in having to explain the dimension of race in mostly white spaces while also being deemed as undervalued or not politically conscious

• Most mainstream political struggles do not address the intersections which the CRC propose (the intersection of sexuality, gender expression, class, reproductive politics and the body).

Black Feminist Issues and Practice • Third World Liberation: “We might, for example, become involved in

workplace organizing at a factory that employs Third World women or picket a hospital that is cutting back on already inadequate heath care to a Third World community, or set up a rape crisis center in a Black neighborhood.”

• Daycare and welfare: “The work to be done and the countless issues that this work represents merely reflect the pervasiveness of our oppression.”

• Gender and Sexual Violence & Reproductive Politics

• Eliminating racism in the white feminist movement

• Eliminating sexism in male-led black nationalist movement

Cauleen Smith, Artist • Possibilities of “being” and existing otherwise than white

heteropatriarchical formations; • Black imagination as a space of inhabitation and cohabitation; • Black women’s struggle requires sight and site of belonging; • Black herstory, for the artist, informs creative and endless

possibilities of a black futurity; • Black women’s archive as site of invention, belonging, and

collective action.

Speaking to the Historical Moment & Black Futurity

• Keeanga-Yamahatta Taylor, Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University

• Draws from CRC to think about her own and family experience of facing poverty and economic disenfranchisement despite her mother holding a “prestigious” degree;

• Uses the analysis of CRC to evaluate the ongoing structural economic inequalities which Black people face (e.g. intersections of housing, voter suppression, economy);

• To conceptualize and speak to on the ground organizing “in real time.”

Keeanga-Yamahatta Taylor on Black Feminism • “Looking at Black communities through the specific

experiences of Black women would have revealed the depths of economic and social crisis unfolding in Black America. Black women had led the way in electoral support for Obama, and with those votes came the expectation that life would improve.

• “Instead of getting better, wage stagnated, poverty increased, and policing was an added burden. These very conditions explain why Black women have led the latest iteration of Black social protest.”

• Black women’s experiences cannot be reduced to either race or gender but have to be understood on their own terms.

• Black women make on average $.0.64 on every dollar made by white men. In real dollars it means that Black women were making on average $34,000 a year compared to $53,000 for white men.

“Thus, the inclusion of Black women on their own terms is not a concession to “political correctness” or “identity politics”; it is necessary to validate the particular experiences of Black women in our society while also measuring exactly the levels of oppression, inequality, and exploitation experienced in African American communities.”

On CRC Extending the Marxist Tradition • CRC saw themselves as “radicals” but also considered themselves as socialist; • They were not acting or writing against Marxism, but instead, looked to “extend” Marxist analysis

to incorporate an understanding of the oppression of Black women. • CRC: “We are not convinced… that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and antiracist

revolution will guarantee our liberation.”

• Black women’s social positions made them disproportionately susceptible to the ravages of capitalism, including poverty, illness, violence, sexual assault, and inadequate health care and housing.

• Russian revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin, identified “special oppression” of national minorities as an added burden they faced. Lenin used this framework of “special oppression” to call upon the Communist Party in the 1920’s to become more active in the struggles of Black people against racism. Lenin also recognized that they layers of oppression faced by Black people made them, potentially, more curious about and open to the arguments of the Communists.

“Identity Politics”

• “Identity politics” was not just about who you were; it was also about what you could do to confront the oppression you were facing. Or, as Black women had argued within the broader feminist movement: “the personal is political.”

• This slogan was not just about “lifestyle” issues, as it came to be popularly understood, rather it was initially about how the experiences within the lives of Black women shaped their political outlook.

• The experiences of oppression, humiliations, and the indignities created by poverty, racism, and sexism open Black women up to the possibility of radical revolutionary politics.

• Reproductive justice, therefore, also becomes a priority (from abortion rights to ending sterilization practices that were common in gynecological medicine when it came to treating working-class Black and Puerto Rican women in the United States).

• Identity politics became a way that those suffering oppression could become politically active to confront it.

Interrogation of Class and Capitalism

• CRC identified “class oppression” as central to the experience of Black women, as in doing so they helped to distinguish radical Black feminist politics from a developing middle- class orientation in Black politics that was on the ascent in the 1970s. • KYT critiques the illusion of the small number

of Black women who are wealthy and elite that gives the pretense that U.S. capitalism is just and democratic (Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Kamala Harris); • They are represented as ”exceptions that prove

the rule.” But that exceptionalism is conflated with opportunity and that the United State can still deliver the American Dream

Revolutionary Action, A Leap • The recognition of oppression was not enough; analysis was a guide to

action and political activity; • The concentration of wealth and power among the “1 percent” is matched

only by the growing poverty and deprivation of the bottom 99%. Of course, those experiences are not shared equally, as Black women and men are overrepresented in the most dismal categories used to measure the quality of life in the U.S.

• But it does mean that those whom capitalism materially benefits are decidedly small in number, while those with mutual interest in creating a society based on human need are broad and expansive. There are, of course, many obstacles to achieving the kind of consciousness combined with political action necessary to make such a society possibility. But the CRC Statement offers an analysis and a plan for “revolutionary action” that is not limited by time and distance from the circumstances in which the members wrote it. Their anticapitalism, calls for solidarity, and commitment to the radical idea that another world is possible and, indeed, necessary remain relevant.

Revolutionary Praxis Inspired by the CRC

• Praxis is theory grounded in practice • Smith and Taylor are examples of black

feminist praxis that combine ‘revolutionary action,’ theoretical analysis, radical reimagining of creating alternative ways of belonging and being togetherà collective consciousness and collective existence that center Black women’s lived experiences

• KYT: CRC and Black feminist has reemerged as the analytical framework for the activist response to the oppression of trans women of color, the fight for reproductive rights, and of course, the movement against police abuse and violence.

• Demita Frazier: “The point of talking about Combahee is not to be nostalgic; rather we talk about it because Black women are still not free.”

Links to videos from today’s class

• https://www.democracynow.org/2018/1/22/keeanga_yamahtta_tayl or_what_we_can • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUmBgxrcDWk