Defensive interventions diverted black women from building black-centered feminist scholarship

Evidence

Black discourse on feminism was often confined to endless debates about whether or not black women should involve our selves in “white feminist” movement. Were we black or women first? The few black women academics who were seeking to make critical interventions in the development of feminist theory were compelled to first “prove” to white feminists that we were on target when we called attention to racist biases that distorted feminist scholarship, that failed to consider the realities of women who were not white or from privileged classes. Though this strategy was necessary for us to gain a hearing, an audience, it meant that we were not concentrating our energies on creating a climate where we could focus intensively on creating a body of scholarship that would look at black experience from a feminist standpoint. … The vast majority of white feminists did not welcome our questioning of feminist paradigms that they were seeking to institutionalize; so too, many black people simply saw our involvement with feminist politics as a gesture of betrayal, and dismissed our work. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 223

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Black women scholars avoided declaring feminism for fear of losing black male patronage — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 226; Black women produced gender scholarship while declining to claim the feminist label — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 228; Feminist interventions framed as saving the victim keep racial hierarchies intact — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 338 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Feminist interventions framed as saving the victim keep racial hierarchies intact #corroborates (0.88) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 338
• Black women faced pressure from both whites and blacks to separate racism from sexism #expands (0.85) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 46
• Black women produced gender scholarship while declining to claim the feminist label #expands (0.82) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 228
• Scholars frame black women’s organizing as anti-racist, not feminist #exemplifies (0.80) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 466
• Anti-intellectualism and academic exclusion silence Black women from both ends #expands (0.78)
• Black women without formal theory provided practical blueprints for liberation #expands (0.74) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 20