Column: Woman as Reason
July 1999

New generation of Black feminists discusses women's liberation

Maya Jhansi

On June 9th, I attended an important conference of Black feminist scholars and activists at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The conference, titled "Exploring the Frontiers of Black Feminism: Critical Conversations on Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the African-American Experience," covered a wide array of topics such as welfare rights, transnational Black feminism, queer theory and politics, and violence against women.

For me what was noteworthy was that a new generation of feminists was taking responsibility for the idea of Black feminism, by looking at the legacy of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, and by confronting the realities of today. One young Black woman told me she was "impressed by the obvious dedication the speakers had to Black feminism, and that they were open to questions and criticisms of Black feminism, which is hard because of how many want to invalidate it." She also also appreciated the inclusiveness of the conference-that a non-African woman, Premilla Nadasen, as well as a man were speakers, and that sexuality was discussed and not just as a token gesture.

The day-long discussion began with a panel called "Digging up the Root: Patterns of Resistance in Black Women's History," which raised very profound questions about the global dimensions of Black feminism and on the role of Black women in the social movements of the 1960s. All of the speakers were young women trying to assess the legacy of past social movements for Black feminist perspectives today. Tracye Matthews, a young scholar and activist, spoke about the invisiblity of Black women's history, and the fact that there was not just one gender experience for Black women involved in social movements of the 1960s. Premilla Nadasen, a professor of history at Queens College, spoke about the Welfare Rights Movement of the 1960s, a movement organized and led by Black and minority women, while Lynette Jackson, a feminist scholar from Barnard College in New York, talked about women's struggles in Zimbabwe.

In looking back into the history of Black struggles in the U.S. and globally, this panel challenged the audience to rethink, broaden and deepen our idea of what feminism means. Premilla Nadasen, for example, asked whether the welfare rights movement could be considered a feminist movement though it didn't identify itself as such. Doing so would require, she argued, deepening our often limited idea of feminism.

This challenge was reiterated by other speakers in different contexts as well. For example, Dorothy Roberts, author of the important book KILLING THE BLACK BODY: RACE, REPRODUCTION, AND THE MEANING OF LIBERTY, spoke about the incomplete concept of reproductive rights that dominates the feminist movement, while Cathy Cohen, author of THE BOUNDARIES OF BLACKNESS: AIDS AND THE BREAKDOWN OF BLACK POLITICS, challenged the static notions of sexuality that limit even the most progressive Black feminist thinking.

Although many important speakers and participants made the conference one of the most engaging and serious ones I have been to in a while, I did miss hearing the voices of non-academic, grassroots women organizers and activists, a fact which highlighted the persistant gap between analysis and movement, between intellectuals and working-class Black women that many of the speakers and the audience spoke about.

If any one theme emerged out of the conference, it was the need for a total outlook, informed by the multiple realities of class, race, sexuality, and gender that shape Black women's lives. It is precisely this total outlook that makes Black feminism so indispensible for creating a revolutionary alternative today, something implicit throughout the day's discussion, but never explicitly stated.

At the end of the conference, Urvashi Vaid, author of the book VIRTUAL EQUALITY: THE MAINSTREAMING OF GAY AND LESBIAN LIBERATION, raised a question that related to this when she observed the gap between Black feminist scholarship/activism and the mainstream Black movement which continues to ignore or sometimes to reject Black feminism as integral to Black politics. Noting the hostility that Black feminism has inspired even within the Black Radical Congress, Vaid asked why this gap persists .

One thing that characterized the conference was that an explicitly anti-capitalist perspective was not discussed (though many talked about economic injustice). Where is the idea of total social transformation? What happened to the idea that we can create a whole new society? It is certainly implicit in the depth and total outlook of the Black feminist perspective, but it is something that needs explicit articulation, by Black feminists and others interested in putting revolution back on the political agenda. Until such an Idea becomes the driving force of the movement, the gap between Black feminism and mainstream politics, between intellectuals and working class women, between theory and practice will continue to divide and thwart those of us who want a new human society.

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