/ Published May 29, 2015
Black feminism has been captured in a unique intellectual movement whose voices need to be heard rather than silenced.
The book that has most impacted both my research and teaching is Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins. This book introduced me to Black women’s studies as a field in its own right and as a discipline that could be undertaken by social scientists.
When I was introduced to this groundbreaking book—first published in 1990 and now a Routledge classic—I was an undergraduate political science major and philosophy minor with the goal of becoming an attorney. The book literally changed my life. It set me on an inquisitorial course, and since then it has been the book that keeps on giving. When I was an undergraduate, it introduced me to feminism, and Black feminism in particular, and later, when I began my own research as a graduate student, it gave me the foundation for understanding the contours of Black women’s lives as married professionals with children. Finally, this book serves as a manual of sorts for Black women scholars in the academy.
Collins gives us the tools for centering Black women’s experiences through what she identifies as their standpoint. She shows us that a rich intellectual tradition of and by Black women exists but has remained virtually invisible. She uses the words and voices of Black women intellectuals as early as 1832, when Maria Stewart gave a public lecture in Boston, and continues through the 19th and 20th centuries, chronicling the intellectual work of Anna Julia Cooper, Sojourner Truth, Mary McLeod Bethune, Toni Morrison, Toni Cade Bambara, Barbara Smith and Audre Lorde, to name a few.
Beyond that, Collins explains that Black women’s intellectual tradition is largely unknown even to Black women themselves, because it is easier for dominant groups to rule when there seems to be no independent consciousness of the oppressed. In other words, if it seems as if Black women haven’t been saying anything, then it’s assumed that they must agree with the dominant view. By situating Black women’s experiences, Collins asserts that they are not willing collaborators in their victimization; on the contrary, their everyday experiences in resistance, survival and activism are what drive their intellectual and theoretical work against oppression of all forms.
Collins further explains how the focus on Black women’s standpoint is important for advancing scholarship in diverse disciplines and theoretical traditions. While she concentrates on her own discipline of sociology and critiques women’s and Black studies, she extends her critique to every discipline, with the understanding that Black women’s perspectives have been silenced throughout. And while she would like all scholars to take up the mantle, she is talking specifically to Black women.
Collins lays the foundation for a methodology that acknowledges Black women’s praxis—participation in the every day—as theory producing. Ultimately, Collins sees the main issue as the matrix of domination, which affects all subordinated groups who are intended to assume the ways of knowing upheld by the dominant group. Embracing the dominant view results in the silencing, objectification and dehumanization of the people who are not “like” the dominant group and whose subjugation has been structural. Conversely, when oppressed people’s position and agency in everyday life is centered, says Collins, we are better able to see their humanity and take steps toward eradicating their oppression.
Black Feminist Thought continues to inform and challenge my thinking about what it means to be a Black woman in society and what it means to make theoretical contributions to the scholarship on Black women. My research takes up the mantle Collins expressed in the book when she states, “Middle-class Black women have a decision to make. The question is, will they join in solidarity with their working-class and poor sisters or will they become the ‘mammies’ of the corporate structure who know their place and maintain the class structure?”
In my forthcoming book, Raising the Race: Black Career Women Redefine Marriage, Motherhood and Community (Rutgers University Press, 2015), I focused my research on Black middle-class, married women with children. And I expanded the question to explore if and when Black women will challenge patriarchy even within the Black familial model or embrace it in an attempt to gain the male protections so many have not had. A Black feminist standpoint asks how our cultural models will change to ensure our collective survival.
When I talk with my students about the themes articulated in Black Feminist Thought, particularly in my Black Activist Autobiography course, we center Black women’s voices through our readings and through research in the Smith Archives. I ask students to focus on the silences, understanding that Black women are and have been talking, as Collins reminds us, but not everyone has been or is listening.
“Why not?” my students ask. And why, even though Black women have been talking, have they not been heard? Acknowledging that all missing voices should be heard recognizes the humanity in every person, and it is the crucial beginning step to eradicating oppression. Actively listening to all voices demonstrates a universal truth: that we are all human, and thus we all deserve our humanity.
Riché Barnes is an assistant professor of Afro-American studies.
