For the clarity of argument, I believe it is important to set a background to understand the cultural and theoretical arena from which black feminism was born. The early feminist agreement of feminism, revolved around the mainstream notion, that feminism was a movement organized exclusively around gender, without thinking about other oppressions (Roth, 2012).
A large number of scholars about the second wave of feminist agree that the mainstream feminist movement was white and privileged (Roth, 2012); Crenshaw explains further, by adding that when feminism theory described women’s experiences about patriarchy, sexuality or other issues, “white women” were speaking “for and as women” (Crenshaw, 1989, pg 154) overlooking “how their own race functions
…show more content…
And by that I mean I refuse to choose between being black and being a woman. Men don't have to choose. I don't know why women have to choose. I am both equally, and I'm proud to be both. I wake up, and I don't like what they're doing to Black people, and I'm mad; I wake up, and I don't like what they're doing to women, and I'm mad” (King, February 2000)
The historical momentum of black feminism can be said to be the speech ‘Ain’t I a woman’ delivered by Sojourner Truth in 1851 at Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio; Truth vividly contrast the character of oppression faced by black women contrasted to the white women’s; the white woman as delicate, emotional, and submissive to the white man contrasted to the black woman who is denigrated and abused by the racist society of the slavery era, confined to heavy work (Smith, 2008).
Intersectionality is so important in the black feminist discourse, because it captures the daily experience of the black woman based on double-discrimination of race and sex, they both serve equally in this interplay of structures and identities that places the black woman in various systems of social control (Crenshaw,