White feminists excluded black women by analogy rather than overt discrimination

Evidence

If white women in the women’s movement needed to make use of a black experience to emphasize woman’s oppression, it would seem only logical that they focus on the black female experience—but they did not. They chose to deny the existence of black women and to exclude them from the women’s movement. When I use the word “exclude” I do not mean that they overtly discriminated against black women on the basis of race. There are other ways to exclude and alienate people. Many black women felt excluded from the movement whenever they heard white women draw analogies between “women” and “blacks.” For by making such analogies white women were in effect saying to black women: “We don’t acknowledge your presence as women in American society.” — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 420

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to earlier chapters on the sex-race analogy and white feminism’s erasure of black women. — connects to: White women’s clubs excluded black women even from token recognition — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 379; White feminists pursued work rights only for white women workers — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 387; Early second-wave feminism was dominated by white women who excluded black women — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 405 (+11 more)

Related

• The women-blacks analogy depends on erasing black women’s existence. (similarity 0.91)
• White feminists dismissed race talk to preserve a unified sisterhood (similarity 0.89)
• White feminists dismissed black women’s attention to racial difference (similarity 0.88)
• The women-and-blacks analogy erased black women by equating women with whites (similarity 0.88)
• White women’s linguistic erasure of black women served their own political interests (similarity 0.87)
• Early second-wave feminism was dominated by white women who excluded black women (similarity 0.87)
• White women’s clubs excluded black women even from token recognition (similarity 0.87)
• Black women organized separately after white women’s racism barred them (similarity 0.87)
• Early black feminists were isolated from both black communities and the white feminist movement (similarity 0.86)
• White dominance in feminism reflects racial imperialism, not black disinterest (similarity 0.86)
• Adopting feminist rhetoric did not free white feminists from sexist-racist attitudes. (similarity 0.85)
• White feminists appropriated feminism while hooks reclaims it for all people (similarity 0.85)
• White feminists pursued work rights only for white women workers (similarity 0.85)
• Black women rejected the movement’s execution, not feminism’s ideology. (similarity 0.85)
• Historians have excluded black women from accounts of the women’s rights movement (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• The women-and-blacks analogy erased black women by equating women with whites #expands (0.80)
• White feminists dismissed black women’s attention to racial difference #corroborates (0.60)
• White feminists dismissed race talk to preserve a unified sisterhood #corroborates (0.60) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 16