Standard reasons for black women’s nonparticipation fail historical scrutiny.

Evidence

The first is that the 60s black movement encouraged black women to assume a subservient role and caused them to reject feminism. The second is that black women were, as one white woman liberationist put it, “repelled by the racial and class composition of the women’s movement.” Taken at face value these reasons seem adequate. Examined in a historical context in which black women have rallied in support of women’s rights despite pressure from black men to assume a subordinate position, and despite the fact that white middle and upper class women have dominated every women’s movement in the U.S., they seem inadequate. While they do provide justification for the anti-feminist black female position, they do not explain why black women who support feminist ideology refuse to participate fully in the contemporary women’s movement. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 547

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Black women rejected the movement’s execution, not feminism’s ideology. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 440; Scarcity of evidence on African women philosophers reflects neglect, not absence of contribution; Women’s failed bid to be included in the black suffrage amendment forged American feminisms

Related

• Black women rejected the movement’s execution, not feminism’s ideology. (similarity 0.88)
• Scarcity of evidence on African women philosophers reflects neglect, not absence of contribution (similarity 0.87)
• Both white and black patriarchies framed feminism as opposition to black liberation. (similarity 0.86)
• Black women needed a separate feminist intellectual tradition (similarity 0.85)
• Black women supported feminism more strongly than white women in 1972 (similarity 0.84)
• The women’s movement failed to analyze black women’s sexist oppression (similarity 0.84)
• Women’s failed bid to be included in the black suffrage amendment forged American feminisms (similarity 0.84)
• The 60s women’s movement structurally repeated the earlier movement’s racism. (similarity 0.84)
• Black women’s workforce participation did not produce feminist consciousness (similarity 0.84)
• Historians have excluded black women from accounts of the women’s rights movement (similarity 0.83)
• The mainstream women’s movement was deliberately structured around white middle-class interests. (similarity 0.83)
• Most black women chose the black patriarchy over the feminist movement. (similarity 0.83)
• Scholars frame black women’s organizing as anti-racist, not feminist (similarity 0.82)
• 60s black liberation codified sexist role separation within the movement (similarity 0.81)
• In the 1930s black and white women pursued divergent political priorities (similarity 0.81)