Research Paper on Black Feminists

Bibliography: Compiled by Sherri L. Barnes) For black feminists it was a fight based on black women’s living experiences, the commitment for those who were against race and gender, to show about their own voice, stability, and action in their nation. All following with the differences between class, age, and sexual orientation in the black women society. Erzulie Danto spoke on how black feminism was not really used until there was a movement in 1970 from the contemporary black women. (http://www.rastafarispeaks.com/cgi-bin/forum/archive1/config.pl?read=43728) It was used to describe their independence and courage to implement their own equality. Starting in the nineteenth century, where it was most concerned, most women in the eighteen hundreds were slaves. While others were against it, they brought other people together to create a change. Some women, such as Sojourner Truth illustrate what it feels like to live under racism, slavery, and other conflicts which made black women stand up for themselves. With the Fifteenth Amendment being such a hassle to pass, segregation between blacks and whites had risen. Voting became a major aspect to their cause as well. With someone as far as Fredrick Douglass, many black women agreed to suffer the consequences that they were going through just so they could bring the black population more into society. Further along down the nineteenth century many activists were born. Black women activist like Ida B. Wells-Barnett battled through women suffrage. They were more into the political and social causes which was brought to the nation’s attention based on the negative acts that were brought to them. Around the twentieth century black women became more focused on demoralization than racism. As Danto spoke in his research gender issues were still at rise. Things got more crucial between the fifties and sixties even those few were recognized. Male dominance was more in the presence of the civil right and Black Nationalist movements. There was more of a disagreement and dissatisfaction among the gender oppression to why the black women confronted the nation about their rights. The black feminist movement was inspired from the two other movements. “The Black feminist movement grew out of, and in response to, the Black Liberations movement and the Women’s Movement,” as stated in But some of Us are Brave. (http://www.mit.edu/activities/thistle/v9/9.01/6blackf.html) There were many reasons that black females wanted to produce their own movement, one of these reasons “In an effort to meet the needs of black women who felt they were being racially oppressed in the Women’s Movement and sexually oppressed in the Black Liberation Movement, the Black Feminist Movement was formed.” (http://www.mit.edu/activities/thistle/v9/9.01/6blackf.html) In feeling as people in the middle of the movements and not being recognized or even noticed in a positive way can be a hard way of life. Even though they could be part of either of the other movements they were still discriminated and belittled against. “Black women who participated in the Black Liberation Movement were often discriminated against sexually and racially.” (http://findarticles.com/articles/mi_go2877/is_3_29/ai_n29241051/) The groups, even though they were for a certain sex or race, the pressure of which black women felt was difficulty and unwelcome. These groups were very different, even though they sought out for the same purpose, the purpose of equality. This was very perpetuating due to the fact that many people seek for the same things, yet in very different ways. Then feminist movement even though was very similar to the Black feminist movement, they tended to have a lack of collaboration between the two. The women feminist movement did reflect greatly on the black feminist movement, but they weren’t accepting as the black feminist women had thought, instead of fighting one battle they had to fight two. As spoken in the web blog “The Feminism Movement has been around since the 1880s when the word “Feminism” appeared in the French language.” The web blog also spoke on how the media came into play by the use of its language, social, political agenda, and goals. Black women who were apart of the movement taught the others to take demand, and show a presences to the nation as who they truly are to society, and not what they wanted them to be. From the a different sources point of view on how black women were not out there just for their own, but for everyone without the case of judgment based on race, gender, and class, which is most of the reasons why some organization are here today. Many black women brought attention to the world to what their side of the story was really about. The suffrage and oppression among the black feminist society brought many eyes and ears based on their demand of change. More so, the effects that the feminist movement brought so much attraction to equality for not only black women as a whole, but the nation as a whole. In black women perspective towards sex, racial, and political oppression in the nineteenth century were crucial. That is what it was only based on. They were discriminated to a tolerance as if they were nothing to the world but to bare children. The male dominance was all that mattered in the world, until those who were apart of the black feminist movement got tired of being victimized. They thought, were if they could bring such an approach, a way to put their issues out there and persuade not only their own, but even the white audiences then maybe there could be a way that their issues, at hand, could be dealt with. Some, like Anna Julia Cooper were feminists back in the 1840s and 1850s where other black feminist abolitionists fought for antislavery, anti-lynching were amongst them. ( Lipscomb-Burnett, Drema. 1989. "Women, Rhetoric, and Public Policy: A Black Feminist Perspective." NWSA Journal 1, no. 4: 753. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed May 1, 2011).) Most spoke in many powerful speeches on how black women are not helpless, and can make a difference like any other black or white male. It was based on their own judgment. Black women had to make it up themselves whether if they wanted to fight for their own right, or if they wanted to sit back in the quiet and let the oppression and racism keep happening.