Extract 6: ‘Lessons from the 1960s’ by Audre Lorde
This extract is part of our Series 1 Topic 2 Podcast on ‘Roots of Intersectionality.’ Find the podcast here.
Context
Audre Lorde was a black, lesbian, feminist activist. Our second extract from her works is also taken from ‘Sister Outsider’, but is an extract taken from the speech ‘Lessons from the 1960s’, which she delivered at Harvard University in 1982. This speech looks to the future, and all marginalised and oppressed identities allying together to fight the oppression each community experiences both individually and collectively.
Extract
“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. Malcolm knew this. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew this. Our struggles are particular, but we are not alone. We are not perfect, but we are stronger and wiser than the sum of our errors. Black people have been here before us and survived. We can read their lives like signposts on the road and find, as Bernice Reagon says so poignantly, that each one of us is here because somebody before us did something to make it possible. To learn from their mistakes is not to lessen our debt to them, nor to the hard work of becoming ourselves, and effective.
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Within each one of us there is some piece of humanness that knows we are not being served by the machine which orchestrates crisis after crisis and is grinding all our futures into dust. If we are to keep the enormity of the forces aligned against us from establishing a false hierarchy of oppression, we must school ourselves to recognize that any attack against Blacks, any attack against women, is an attack against all of us who recognize that our interests are not being served by the systems we support. Each one of us here is a link in the connection between anti-poor legislation, gay shootings, the burning of synagogues, street harassment, attacks against women, and resurgent violence against Black people. I ask myself as well as each one of you, exactly what alteration in the particular fabric of my everyday life does this connection call for? Survival is not a theory. In what way do I contribute to the subjugation of any part of those who I define as my people? Insight must illuminate the particulars of our lives: who labors to make the read we waste, or the energy it takes to make nuclear poisons which will not biodegrade for one thousand years; or who goes blind assembling the microtransistors in our inexpensive calculators?
We are women trying to knit a future in a country where an Equal Rights Amendment was defeated as subversive legislation. We are Lesbians and gay men who, as the most obvious target of the New Right, are threatened with castration, imprisonment, and death in the streets. And we know that our erasure only paves the way for erasure of other people of Color, of the old, of the poor, of all of those who do not fit that mythic dehumanizing norm.
Can we really still afford to be fighting each other?”
Extract 5: ‘Rosalie’ by Angelina Weld Grimke
This extract is part of our Series 1 Topic 2 Podcast on ‘Roots of Intersectionality.’ Find the podcast here.
Context
Angelina Weld Grimke was a teacher, poet and playwright, working in the first half of the 20th century. She is far less well known than the other authors we have explored in these podcasts, and there is limited information about her life. However, we know she was mixed race, and race was an important theme in her work, especially as she was one of the first women of colour to have her play performed in America. Her work also explores her suppressed sexual identity, and our extract is taken from the poem Rosalie (or Rosabella), one of her lesbian love poems.
Lived between: 1880-1958
Extract
I
Leaves that whisper whisper ever,
Listen, listen, pray;
Birds, that twitter, twitter softly,
Do not say me nay;
Winds, that breathe about, upon her,
(Words I do not dare)
Whisper, twitter, breathe unto her
That I find her fair.
II
Rose whose soul unfolds white petaled
Touch her soul rose-white;
Rose whose thoughts unfold gold petaled
Blossom in her sight;
Rose whose heart unfolds red petaled
Quick her slow heart's stir;
Tell her white, gold, red my love is;
And for her, -- for her.
Extract 4: ‘Your Silence Will Not Protect You’ by Audre Lorde
This extract is part of our Series 1 Topic 2 Podcast on ‘Roots of Intersectionality.’ Find the podcast here.
Context
Audre Lorde was an academic and activist, but is perhaps most well known as a poet who tackled issues of racism, sexism, ableism and homophobia in her work. She described herself as "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet”. The podcast looks at one of her prose works, ‘Sister Outsider’ which is a collection of essays and speeches from her activism, published in 1984. The extract is taken from ‘Your silence will not protect you’ which argues for the importance of marginalised and oppressed communities to speak out.
‘Your Silence Will Not Protect You’ is a speech that appears in the book, ‘Sister Outsider’ which is a collection of speeches and essays by Lorde.
Year published: 1984 (Sister, Outsider)
Author: Audre Lorde
Extract
“I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempted I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences. And it was the concern and caring of all those women which gave me strength and enabled me to scrutinize the essentials of my living.
The women who sustained me through that period were Black and white, old and young, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual, and we all shared a war against the tyrannies of silence. They all gave me a strength and concern without which I could not have survived intact. Within those weeks of acute fear came the knowledge —within the war we are all waging with the forces of death, subtle and otherwise, conscious or not — I am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior.
What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am women, because I am Black, because I am lesbian, because I am myself — a Black woman warrior poet doing my work — come to ask you, are you doing yours?
And of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger. But my daughter, when I told her of our topic and my difficulty with it, said “Tell them about how you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.”
In the cause of silence, each of us draws the face of her own fear — fear of contempt, of censure, or some judgment, or recognition, of challenge, of annihilation. But most of all, I think, we fear the visibility without which we cannot truly live. Within this country, where racial difference created a constant, if unspoken, distortion of vision, Black women have on one hand always been highly visible, and so, on the other hand, have been rendered invisible through the depersonlization of racism. Even within the women’s movement, we have had to fight, and still do, for that very visibility which also renders us most vulnerable, our Blackness. For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we call america, we have had to learn this first and most vital lesson — that we were never meant to survive. Not as human beings. And neither were most of you here today, Black or not. And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength. Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid.”
Extract 3: ‘Ain’t I A Woman’ by bell hooks
This extract is part of our Series 1 Topic 2 Podcast on ‘Roots of Intersectionality.’ Find the podcast here.
Context
bell hooks is the pen name for Gloria Watkins, who was an American academic and social activist. She was prolific writer, and most of her works looked at the intersecting oppression caused by systems of race, gender and capitalism. ‘Ain’t i a woman?’ is a history of racism and sexism against black women, focusing on the specific misogyny faced by enslaved black women, and the historical legacy this left on black womanhood. The extract in the podcast reflects on why black woman did not get involved in the white feminist movement.
Year Published: 1981
Author: bell hooks, also known as Gloria Watkins
Gloria Watkins doesn’t capitalise her alias, ‘bell hooks.’ This book is named after a speech that a woman called Sojourner Truth made in the 1800s.
Extract
‘Most women involved in the recent move toward a feminist revolution assume that white women have initiated all feminist resistance to male chauvinism in American society, and further assume that black women are not interested in women’s liberation. While it is true that white women have led every movement toward feminist revolution in American society, their dominance is less a sign of black female disinterest in feminist struggle than an indication that the politics of colonization and racial imperialism have made it historically impossible for black women in the United States to lead a women’s movement.
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Initially, black feminists approached the women’s movement white women had organized eager to join the struggle to end sexist oppression. We were disappointed and disillusioned when we discovered that white women in the movement had little knowledge of or concern for the problems of lower class and poor women or the particular problems of non-white women from all classes. Those of us who were active in women’s groups found that white feminists lamented the absence of large numbers of non-white participants but were unwilling to change the movement’s focus so that it would better address the needs of women from all classes and races. Some white women even argued that groups not represented by a numerical majority could not expect their concerns to be given attention. Such a position reinforced the black female participants’ suspicion that white participants wanted the movement to concentrate on the concerns not of women as a collective group, but on the individual concerns of the small minority who had organized the movement. Black feminists found that sisterhood for most white women did not mean surrendering allegiance to race, class, and sexual preference, to bond on the basis of the shared political belief that a feminist revolution was necessary so that all people, especially women, could reclaim their rightful citizenship in the world. From our peripheral position in the movement we saw that the potential radicalism of feminist ideology was being undermined by women who, while paying lip service to revolutionary goals, were primarily concerned with gaining entrance into the capitalist patriarchal power structure. Although white feminists denounced the white male, calling him an imperialist, capitalist, sexist, racist pig, they made women’s liberation synonymous with women obtaining theright to fully participate in the very system they identified as oppressive. Their anger was not merely a response to sexist oppression. It was an expression of their jealousy and envy of white men who held positions of power in the system while they were denied access to those positions. Individual black feminists despaired as we witnessed the appropriation of feminist ideology by elitist, racist white women. We were unable to usurp leadership positions within the movement so that we could spread an authentic message of feminist revolution. We could not even get a hearing at women’s groups because they were organized and controlled by white women. Along with politically aware white women, we, black feminists, began to feel that no organized feminist struggle really existed. We dropped out of groups, weary of hearing talk about women as a force that could change the world when we had not changed ourselves. Some black women formed "black feminist” groups which resembled in almost every way the groups they had left. Others struggled alone. Some of us continued to go to organizations, women’s studies classes, or conferences, but were not fully participating.’
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Although the contemporary feminist movement was initially motivated by the sincere desire of women to eliminate sexist oppression, it takes place within the framework of a larger, more powerful cultural system that encourages women and men to place the fulfillment of individual aspirations above their desire for collective change. Given this framework, it is not surprising that feminism has been undermined by the narcissism, greed, and individual opportunism of its leading exponents. A feminist ideology that mouths radical rhetoric about resistance and revolution while actively seeking to establish itself within the capitalist patriarchal system is essentially corrupt. While the contemporary feminist movement has successfully stimulated an awareness of the impact of sexist discrimination on the social status of women in the U.S., it has done little to eliminate sexist oppression. Teaching women how to defend themselves against male rapists is not the same as working to change society so that men will not rape. Establishing houses for battered women does not change the psyches of the men who batter them, nor does it change the culture that promotes and condones their brutality. Attacking heterosexuality does little to strengthen the self-concept of the masses of women who desire to be with men. Denouncing housework as menial labor does not restore to the woman houseworker the pride and dignity in her labor she is stripped of by patriarchal devaluation. Demanding an end to institutionalized sexism does not ensure an end to sexist oppression.’
Extract 2: ‘Women, Race and Class’ by Angela Davis
This extract is part of our Series 1 Topic 2 Podcast on ‘Roots of Intersectionality.’ Find the podcast here.
Context
Angela Davis is a radical African American academic and activist, who has been engaged in fighting racial injustice since the 1960s. She has written ten books, but our extract is taken from her first work, which is a history of the racial inequality in the feminist movement and women’s experiences from the abolition of slavery to the 1980s. The extract in the podcast examines the gendered roles that emerged for enslaved women as a result of white oppression and violence.
Year Published:
Author: Angela Davis
Extract
“When the abolition of the international slave trade began to threaten the expansion of the young cotton-growing industry, the slaveholding class was forced to rely on natural reproduction as the surest method of replenishing and increasing the domestic slave population. Thus a premium was placed on the slave woman’s reproductive capacity. During the decades preceding the Civil War, Black women came to be increasingly appraised for their fertility (or for the lack of it): she who was potentially the mother of ten, twelve, fourteen or more became a coveted treasure indeed. This did not mean, however, that as mothers, Black women enjoyed a more respected status than they enjoyed as workers. Ideological exaltation of motherhood—as popular as it was during the nineteenth century—did not extend to slaves. In fact, in the eyes of the slaveholders, slave women were not mothers at all; they were simply instruments guaranteeing the growth of the slave labor force. They were “breeders”—animals, whose monetary value could be precisely calculated in terms of their ability to multiply their numbers.
Since slave women were classified as “breeders” as opposed to “mothers,” their infant children could be sold away from them like calves from cows. One year after the importation of Africans was halted, a South Carolina court ruled that female slaves had no legal claims whatever on their children. Consequently, according to this ruling, children could be sold away from their mothers at any age because “the young of slaves … stand on the same footing as other animals.” As females, slave women were inherently vulnerable to all forms of sexual coercion. If the most violent punishments of men consisted in floggings and mutilations, women were flogged and mutilated, as well as raped. Rape, in fact, was an uncamouflaged expression of the slaveholder’s economic mastery and the overseer’s control over Black women as workers. The special abuses inflicted on women thus facilitated the ruthless economic exploitation of their labor. The demands of this exploitation caused slaveowners to cast aside their orthodox sexist attitudes except for purposes of repression. If Black women were hardly “women” in the accepted sense, the slave system also discouraged male supremacy in Black men. Because husbands and wives, fathers and daughters were equally subjected to the slavemasters’ absolute authority, the promotion of male supremacy among the slaves might have prompted a dangerous rupture in the chain of command. Moreover, since Black women as workers could not be treated as the “weaker sex” or the “housewife,” Black men could not be candidates for the figure of “family head” and certainly not for “family provider.”
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Women were not too “feminine” to work in coal mines, in iron foundries or to be lumberjacks and ditchdiggers. When the Santee Canal was constructed in North Carolina, slave women were a full fifty percent of the labor force. 21 Women also worked on the Louisiana levees, and many of the Southern railroads still in use today were constructed, in part, by female slave labor
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Required by the masters’ demands to be as “masculine” in the performance of their work as their men, Black women must have been profoundly affected by their experiences during slavery. Some, no doubt, were broken and destroyed, yet the majority survived and, in the process, acquired qualities considered taboo by the nineteenth-century ideology of womanhood
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While it is hardly likely that these women were expressing pride in the work they performed under the ever-present threat of the whip, they must have been aware nonetheless of their enormous power—their ability to produce and create. For, as Marx put it, “labor is the living, shaping fire; it represents the impermanence of things, their temporality.”
Extract 1: Combahee River Collective Statement
This extract is part of our Series 1 Topic 2 Podcast on ‘Roots of Intersectionality.’ Find the podcast here.
Context
The Combahee River Collective were a Black feminist lesbian collective, with socialist roots, who were active in Boston in the 1970s. They were vital in pushing the white feminist movement, and the Civil Right Movement, to recognise the specific needs of Black women, especially Black lesbians. The extract in the podcast grapples with the idea of multiple identities leading to multiple oppressions.
Year published: 1977
Writers: The Combahee River Collective (some members include: Barbara Smith, )
Extract
We are a collective of Black feminists who have been meeting together since 1974. [1] During that time we have been involved in the process of defining and clarifying our politics, while at the same time doing political work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and movements. 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.
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we would like to affirm that we find our origins in the historical reality of AfroAmerican 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. As Angela Davis points out in "Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves," Black women have always embodied, if only in their physical manifestation, an adversary stance to white male rule and have actively resisted its inroads upon them and their communities in both dramatic and subtle ways. There have always been Black women activists—some known, like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frances E. W. Harper, Ida B. Wells Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell, and thousands upon thousands unknown—who have had a shared awareness of how their sexual identity combined with their racial identity to make their whole life situation and the focus of their political struggles unique.