The mainstream women’s movement was deliberately structured around white middle-class interests.

Evidence

Few, if any, white women liberationists are willing to acknowledge that the women’s movement was consciously and deliberately structured to exclude black and other non-white women and to serve primarily the interests of middle and upper class college-educated white women seeking social equality with middle and upper class white men. While they may agree that white women involved with women’s liberationist groups are racist and classist they tend to feel that this in no way undermines the movement. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 435

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to hooks’ earlier critique in Ain’t I a Woman that the movement excluded Black women, and to second-wave feminism critiques by the Combahee River Collective. — connects to: White middle-class women are less oppressed than poor or black women — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 427; White women appropriated feminism to gain entry into American capitalism. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 442; Early second-wave feminism was dominated by white women who excluded black women — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 405 (+2 more)

Related

• The 60s women’s movement structurally repeated the earlier movement’s racism. (similarity 0.90)
• Early second-wave feminism was dominated by white women who excluded black women (similarity 0.87)
• White middle-class women are less oppressed than poor or black women (similarity 0.87)
• Black women rejected the movement’s execution, not feminism’s ideology. (similarity 0.87)
• The women’s movement equated liberation with capitalist economic success (similarity 0.87)
• Both white and black patriarchies framed feminism as opposition to black liberation. (similarity 0.87)
• White dominance in feminism reflects racial imperialism, not black disinterest (similarity 0.86)
• Black women needed a separate feminist intellectual tradition (similarity 0.86)
• A racist and classist feminism merely perpetuates women’s bondage to patriarchy. (similarity 0.86)
• Early black feminists were isolated from both black communities and the white feminist movement (similarity 0.85)
• The women’s movement failed to analyze black women’s sexist oppression (similarity 0.85)
• Feminist ideals were resignified to serve neoliberal market individualism (similarity 0.84)
• Historians have excluded black women from accounts of the women’s rights movement (similarity 0.84)
• White women appropriated feminism to gain entry into American capitalism. (similarity 0.84)
• White feminists appropriated feminism while hooks reclaims it for all people (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Early second-wave feminism was dominated by white women who excluded black women #corroborates (0.75) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 405
• The 60s women’s movement structurally repeated the earlier movement’s racism. #corroborates (0.60) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 404
• White women appropriated feminism to gain entry into American capitalism. #complicates (0.55) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 442