Black students have long viewed feminism as a white movement irrelevant to racial struggle.

Evidence

In those days, the students in my feminist classrooms were almost all black. They were fundamentally skeptical about the importance of feminist thinking or feminist movement to any discussion of race and racism, to any analysis of black experience and black liberation struggle. Over time, that skepticism has deepened. Black students, female and male, continually interrogate this issue. Whether in the classroom or while giving a public lecture, I am continually asked whether or not black concern with the struggle to end racism precludes involvement with feminist movement. “Don’t you think black women, as a race, are more oppressed than women?” “Isn’t the women’s movement really for white women?” or “Haven’t black women always been liberated?” tend to be the norm. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 208

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: White feminists dismissed black women’s attention to racial difference; White feminists resisted deconstructing ‘woman’ to include race — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 222; White feminists excluded black women by analogy rather than overt discrimination — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 420 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• The feminist appeal to sisterhood ignored racism’s history, alienating black women #corroborates (0.88) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 196
• White feminists dismissed black women’s attention to racial difference #expands (0.85)
• Racial alliances superseded feminist solidarity between black and white women #corroborates (0.85) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 507
• White feminists dismissed race talk to preserve a unified sisterhood #expands (0.85) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 16
• Early black feminists were isolated from both black communities and the white feminist movement #corroborates (0.82) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 17
• Feminism alone made substantial inroads into the Black academic community in this phase #complicates (0.82) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 352
• White feminists resisted deconstructing ‘woman’ to include race #expands (0.80) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 222
• Women of color can be marginalized by both feminist and civil rights movements. #corroborates (0.80) — Silke Roth, Intersectionality and coalitions in…, 89
• White dominance in feminism reflects racial imperialism, not black disinterest #contradicts (0.80) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 464
• White feminists excluded black women by analogy rather than overt discrimination #qualifies (0.78) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 420
• Black women scholars avoided declaring feminism for fear of losing black male patronage #expands (0.75) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 226
• Feminist theory offers disaffiliation from whiteness as a way out of the double bind. #complicates (0.72)
• Anti-intellectualism and academic exclusion silence Black women from both ends #expands (0.72)