Term
| Patricia Hill Collins: Controlling Images |
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Definition
- Mammies, matriarchs, welfare recipients and hot mamas is a way for US patriarchy to justify Black women's oppression and serves as punishment to these women for challenging racist norms
- Society is attempting to maintain its dominance over the group of people that has always been viewed as less than
- Black women are objectified as "the other" through binary thinking = black people are viewed as objects rather than subjects
- Schools, the news media, and government agencies constitute important sites for reproducing these controlling images
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Term
| Deborag Grayson: Is It Fake? |
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Definition
- Within the context of American beauty cultures, Black bodies are seen as the representation of the antithesis of white feminine beauty.
- American beauty culture is dependent upon a heirarchical system that devalues Black looks
- ARGUMENT: Hair, like skin color, supports a multiplicity of meanings and often to our detriment, these meanings have negative political, cultural and social consequences for Black women.
- When thinking about the visual, cultural, and political re/presentations of Black Women's hair it is important to consider the relations of power working obscurely and not so obscurely upon Black women's hair and hairstyles.
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Term
| Janell Hobson: The "Batty" Politic |
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Definition
- Assessment of the way Black women's buttocks are represented (usually they're depicted as gross or repulsive despite Black female artist's attempts to reverse that depiction by recognizing the Black body as beautiful and/or desirable)
- This began with the Hottentot Venus and ever since then, Black women have struggled with resisting against the vulgar treatment received bc of their bodies
- "Batty" = Jamaican vernacular term for butt which is usually taken very seriously within the Jamaican culture, so Hobson uses the term to represent a more liberatory and unashamed view of the body so that it functions as a site of resistance
- We need to recreate the circle of women who reaffirm their bodies as normal, capable and beautiful
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Term
| Cheryl Dunye: The Watermelon Woman |
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Definition
- In The Watermelon Woman, Dunye uses a role-reversal method where any viewer who is not a Black woman becomes the assumed other in order to combat and deconstruct the stereotypes of Black women.
- Bly placing white women on the outside, Dunye is able to use ideas of self-exploration, self-expression, and complex identity to resist white patriarchal power and the stereotypes that come with it, as well as to provide a space where Black women can finally be portrayed as the multifaceted beings that they are.
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Term
| Kimberle Crenshaw: Mapping the Margins |
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Definition
- There are various ways in which gender and race intersect in shaping the structural, political and representational aspects of violence against women of color
- Structural intersectionality in violence against women = crisis centers are funded in a way that is blind to the particular situations of women of color (unemployed, poor, childcare responsibilities)
- The narratives of gender are based on the experience of white, middle-class women, and the narratives of race are based on Black men. Black women are excluded and therefore left to be harmed.
- Intersectionality provides the opportunity to reconceptualize race as a coalition of men and women of color and it could also help people stand out against their exclusion.
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Term
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Definition
- 1974 trial for murder of white prison guard at Beaufort County Jail in Washington, NC (Joan was originally in jail for breaking and entering, she stabbed the prison guard Alligood to death in self-defense against sexual assault and escaped from jail, then turned herself in and was charged with first-degree murder, she went to trial and was found not guilty).
- Angela Davis viewpoint: even though she was a victim of rape, her rape was used against her to further her own and the entire black community's oppression. She wasn't only raped by Alligood, but by our exploitative society as well. We need unity.
- McNeil viewpoint: Little was proud to represent for Black women in terms of defending onesself against sexual assault
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Term
| The Combahee River Collective Statement |
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Definition
- A collective of Black feminists who have been meeting since 1974: "we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face."
- The genesis of contemporary Black feminism: the outgrowth of countless generations of personal sacrifice, militancy, and work by our mothers and sisters. Personal genesis comes from the oppressive experiences of black women in their day to day lives.
- What we Believe: Black women are inherently valuable, our liberation is a necessity and no other movement has ever considered our oppression or worked hard enough to end it. Lesbians, but reject the stance of lesbian seperatism because it leaves out far to many people.
- Problems in Organizing Black Feminists: Not just fighting oppression on one or two fronts, but instead from a whole range and we don't have racial, sexual or class privelege to rely on. Huge psychological toll for Black women when trying to reach political consciousness.
- Black Feminist Issues and Projects: Issues and projects that collective members have actually worked on are sterilization abuse, abortion rights, battered women, rape and health care. We have also done many workshops and educationals on Black feminism on college campuses, at women's conferences, and most recently for high school women.
- One issue that is of major concern to us and that we have begun topublicly address is racism in the white women's movement. As Black feminists we are made constantly and painfully aware of how little effort white women have made to understand and combat their racism, which requires among other things that they have a more than superficial comprehension of race, color, and Black history and culture. Eliminating racism in the white women's movement is by definition work for white women to do, but we will continue to speak to and demand accountability on this issue.
- The ends don't always justify the means but we are ready for the lifetime and work of struggle.
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Term
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Definition
- Esperanza's mom did time in prison for killing her lover in self defense and Esperanza did a year for gun possession in defense of Jesus, she thought he loved her (idea of putting up with bs to portray loyalty is prevalent in relationships)
- Isoke, Dulce and Maite represents a constant spiritually uplifting and guiding light in Esperanza's life as she makes her realize that the fight wasn't individualistic, it was communal and collective. They cause her to reshape her ideas about love and show her that it is not what she believes it to be.
- Esperanza's realization of the lack of love Jesus truly had for her was a coming of age experience (she didn't get physical with Priscilla which truly showed her growth and understanding about her misguided anger - it wasn't about Priscilla, it never was)
- Esperanza originally allowed Jesus to dictate her actions and she was easily brought down by her position in life.
- Esperanza learns to love herself and fight for the life that she deserves despite society's systematic attempts to criminalize her identity and her oppressive environment (poverty and abuse).
- Esperanza was looking for love in all the wrong places, she wanted Jesus to give up the game for her, but he had no desire to because he was far too invested in greed and money. Espe recognized the lack of love Jesus had for her when No No made advances at her without any response from Jesus at all.
- The tape that Maite sent her with the poem that read "I am a warrior, I am a queen, I own my own destiny, I own my own dream" provided her with the strength she needed to finally fight for herself and escape after the last drug deal bc she realized that Jesus wasn't the sole problem, but moreso a representation of a lifestyle and culture that was never going to allow her to live up to her actual capabilities.
- Escaping, shooting Jesus, No-No and Xavier, were huge move for her but she realized that by putting herself first and doing whatever it was that she felt she had to do, she would be exemplifying true self love and disrupting the things that held her back. "Esperanza realized that love and abuse could not coexist."
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Term
| Michael Awkward: A Black Man's Place |
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Definition
- What a black male feminist must strive for is to envision and enact the possibilities signaled by the differences feminism has exposed and created.
- It doesn't mean to attempt to invade another political body like a lascivious soul snatcher or striving to erase its essence in order to replace it with one's own myth of what the discourse should be. Such a position for black men means, above all else, an acknowledgment and celebration of the incontrovertible fact that "The Father's Law" is not the only law in the land anymore.
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Term
| Powell: Confessions of a recovering misogynsit |
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Definition
- The fact is, there was a blueprint handed to us in childhood telling us this is the way a man should be- have, and we unwittingly followed the scrip verbatim.
- What I will say is that I, like most Black men I know, have spent much of my life living in fear: fear of White racism, fear of the circumstances that gave birth to me, fear of walking out my door wondering what humiliation will be mine today. Fear of Black women—of their mouths, of their bodies, of their atti- tudes, of their hurts, of their fear of us Black men. I felt fragile, as fragile as a bird with clipped wings that day when my ex-girlfriend stepped up her game and spoke back to me. Nothing in my world, nothing in my self- definition prepared me for dealing with a woman as an equal. My world said women were inferior, that they must at all costs be put in their place, and my instant reaction was to do that.
- Every day I struggle within myself not to use the language of gender op- pression, to see the sexism inherent in every aspect of America, to challenge all injustices, not just those that are convenient for me. I am ashamed of my ridicu- lously sexist life, of raising my hand to my girlfriend, and of two other ugly and hateful moments in college, one where I hit a female student in the head with a sta- pler during the course of an argument, and the other where I got into a punch-throwing exchange with a fe- male student I had sexed then discarded like an old pair of shoes. I am also ashamed of all the lies and manip- ulations, the verbal abuse and reckless disregard for the views and lives of women. But with that shame has come a consciousness and, as the activists said during the Civil Rights Movement, this consciousness, this knowing, is a river of no return.
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Term
| Ziegler: How my past as a black woman... |
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Definition
- In my brief experience of living as a black male, I’ve learned that it is difficult to challenge misogyny in male dominated spaces. I have found myself in a number of uncomfortable situations with men who openly insult and humiliate women and I feel silenced. Not because of the fear of being outed as trans but I fear being perceived as a failed version of black masculinity–a fear that I believe imprisons all black men–adding to the reproduction of a violent patriarchal society.
- I am not a perfect man. I am not immune to the assumptions that are expected of me and sometimes, I act them out. However, my transition journey has allowed me to begin the process of forgiving my absent father, my alcoholic uncle, and the cat-calling homophobe on the corner.
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Because black feminism allows me to love myself, I have learned to love black men.
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Term
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Definition
- In my conquest to find a functional feminism for myself and my sisters, one that seeks empowerment on spiritual, material, physical, and emotional levels - I draw heavily on the cultural movement that defines my generation.
- We're the first generation to grow up with all of the benefits of the Civil Rights Movement and the first to lose them. We need a feminism committed to keeping it real.
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Term
| Veronica Chambers: Betrayal Feminism |
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Definition
- To be a young, black, feminist today I think means to be unsure whether or not your needs and interests can be met in any one camp and we often have to choose sides between gender or skin color
- It was assumed that during feminist movements that when white women spoke on equality, that they were including that of black women, but instead they were still very low on the list of priorities
- Racism is too big of a beast for black women to conquer alone, which is obvious based on the minimal progress made since the sixties and seventies
- White women must look within themselves and their issues to question why more women of color do not stand on their side, only then will we be any closer to actually being sisters
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Term
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Definition
- Being mixed made it hard to understand what authenticity actually was because I did not fit in a neat cultural box like everyone else
- Was I being in touch with my femininity and portrayal of myself as beautiful for me or because I wanted the attention of men?
- Free of identity politics made me very aware of the power relations that we must transform
- To be a feminist is to be engaged actively in the dismantling of all oppressive relationships
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