Black Feminism

The theme of this essay will look at black feminist perspectives on gender, firstly from this

perspective a black women’s experience provides stimulation of the feminist awareness. Black

feminism writings highlights the importance of aspects of the past, which inform the current

issues facing black women. The writings of American black feminists emphasize the influence of

the powerful legacy of slavery, segregation and the civil rights movement on gender inequalities

in the black community. They point out that early black groups of women at the early part of the

century supported the campaign for women’s rights, but realized that the question of race needed

recognition. Black women have always suffered from discriminated based on their skin color and

gender. In recent years, black women have not been central to the women’s liberation movement,

taking control of their identities much less, than of concepts of their race. The oppression of

black women is visible in different locations compared to that of white women. Black feminism

argues, therefore, that any theory of gender equality, which does not consider racism, should not

claim to explain black women’s oppression adequately. Class dimensions are another factor,

which needed acknowledgement, particularly, in the case of the black women, also black women

in the labour market, which will be touched upon further in the essay. Some black feminists have

understood the strength of black feminist theory to be the focus on the relationship between race,

class, and gender concerns, (Anthony Giddens 2001:118). A major division in western Black

feminism thought, particularly for the British context, is that between the language and politics

of the United States and Britain; for the principle of United States politics, ‘Black’ is a term

referring to the African-American population. In Britain, ‘Black is a political category often

describing Asians, Africans and Afro-Caribbean’s, with often a wider inclusion of ‘non-white’

people. The changing meanings of ‘Black’ as a racial, cultural, national, or political term, has

implications for the development and meanings of Black feminisms. The relationship between
the terms ‘Black’ and feminism allows for sustained critique, both of the feminist movement and

identities, and of Black politics, (Kadiatu Kanneh 1998: 86,87). Beverly Guy Shefell a feminist

writer argues that black women’s experiences in both racial and gender oppression resulted in

needs and problems separate from white women and black men and that black women must

struggle for equality as both women and African Americans,

The black women’s critique of history has not only involved them coming to terms with

absences, black women have also been annoyed by the ways in which it has made black women

visible. History has constructed their sexuality and femininity as deviating from those qualities

with which white women, as prize objects of the western world, were bestowed. Black feminist

have forever demanded that the persistence of racism receive acknowledgement as an

arrangement feature of their relationships with white women.

Three concepts, which are central to feminist theory, developed into a concern in black women’s

lives, the family, patriarchy, and reproduction. When used they are placed in a context of the

experience of white women who are invariably middle class women and become inconsistent

when applied to the lives and experiences of black women. The family can be a source of

oppression for the black family, also in questioning how the black family has united as a prime

source of resistance to oppression, and recognizing that during slavery, periods of colonialism

and under the present authoritarian state. The black family has been a site of political and

cultural resistance to racism. In addition, black feminist have trouble separating the two forms of

oppression because racist theory and practice is frequently gender-specific. Ideologies of black

female sexuality do not come about primarily from the black family. The way the gender of the

black women is constructed differs from constructions of white femininity because it is also

subject to racism (Heidi Safia Mirza 1998:45, 46). Much of the black women’s critique has
highlighted the suppression within feminism of black/ white difference. This happens in one of

two ways, the first that the rejection of difference, which is understood in the assumption that all

women have particular interests in common. Looking at this closely, by all accounts worldwide

interests tend to be those of a particular group of women. For instance, the pro-abortion feminist

stance in the 1970s did not take into account the large numbers of black women’s reproductive

struggles. Without proper consultation, and under the shadow of poverty, these were not

experiences restricted only to black women, but it was the intervention of black women, which

exposed this. Which now focuses on choice and reproductive rights, (Heidi Safia Mirza1998:71).

Black feminists expressed that the right to an abortion and contraception was often less relevant

to them as they struggled for their rights to have children and against sterilization policies. In

their everyday lives in a racist society, the issues that are immediate for women of colour are

frequently different from the concerns of white women,

The notion of difference has a long history in relation to western feminism. Even though feminist

thinkers infrequently used the word, the degrees to which women were the same as or different

from men, and divided by factors such as class, formed the basis of debate about their roles, their

rights, and their goals in the nineteenth century society. Subsequently, second-wave feminists

have openly used this expression to voice the inequalities and disadvantages that women

experience. When compared to men, and in revaluing some aspects of femininity, which

previously was ignored, until recently, difference has been used by western theorist, referring to

the differences between women, rather than just between two genders. There have been two

formulations of this, one, which focuses on the diversity of experience, the other concerned

with difference as informed by postmodernist thinking. Focusing on black women’s experiences

highlights the ways in which race plays an important part in their social and economic
positioning. Evidence suggests that race significantly affects black women’s experiences of

treatment in areas such as education, the health service, and the labour market. The influence of

race on how black women receive representation in popular culture and the mass media has also

been demonstrated. Taking into account different racial stereotypes, it can be seen that the

principal of gender roles; such as stereotypes about the dominant Asian father and the dominant

black mother or stereotypes about black men and women as sexual studs. These all indicate the

reliance on gender traits for identifying ethnic difference, in looking at specific gender links

between ethic and gender divisions in employment and reproduction. Afro Caribbean women

tended mostly to work in Britain as service workers in manufacturing and nursing. Afro-

Caribbean men tended to work in construction or the buses. A sexually differentiated labour

market will structure the placement of subjects according to sex but ethnic divisions will

determine their subordination with them so, for example, black and white women may both be in

a lesser within a sexually differentiated labour market but black women will be in a lesser

position to white women within this. Evidence suggests that within western societies, gender

divisions are more important for women than ethnic divisions in terms of labour market

subordination. In employment terms, migrant or ethnic women are usually closer to the female

population as a whole than to ethnic men in the type of wage-labour performed. Black and

migrant women are already disadvantaged by their gender in employment that it is difficult to

show the effects of ethnic discrimination. The location of black women in the labour market

reflects and compounds the dimensions of inequality intrinsic to British society, Irrespective of

race feminist thinkers and historians have pointed to the ways in which work seems to privilege

the men’s experience over women’s; to the ways in which women have been denied access on

equal terms to paid work, and to the ways in which definitions of work exclude women’s
contribution. Historically, home and work have not always been separate. It was only with the

emergence of industrial capitalist production that they became spatially separated and even now,

the separation is not complete. Women have always been part of the informal cash economy that

co-existed with the development of formal production in factories and other specialized

workplaces. Women have always done domestic work for no financial reward; the significant

shift was not from leisure to work but from homework to employer-employee working relations,

(Ray E. Pahl 1992:123). In conclusion, gender inequality refers to the various differences in

status, power, and prestige enjoyed by women and men in various contexts. Feminist approaches

reject the idea that gender inequality is somehow natural. Black feminists have seen factors such

as class and ethnicity, in addition to gender, as essential for understanding the oppression

experienced by non-white women.