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Feminist Argument Analysis

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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,

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In the book Ar’n’t I a women the author, Deborah Gray White, explains how the life was for the slave women in the Southern plantations. She reveals to us how the slave women had to deal with difficulties of racism as well as dealing with sexism. Slave women in these plantations assumed roles within the family as well as the community; these roles were completely different to the roles given to a traditional white female. Deborah Gray White shows us how black women had a different experience from the black men and the struggle they had to maintain their sense of womanhood against all odds, resist sexual oppression, and keep their families together. In the book the author describes two different types of women, “Jezebel” and “Mammy” they

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In attendance were delegates from around the world, many Caucasians, African Americans, leaders and activists, all to listen to the focal problem impregnating the world at the time. Giving her speech, Cooper calls on those to recognize the problems going on back in the US. “What Cooper has in mind is not the obliteration of one race by another, but the progress that is achievable when we embrace difference and change” (Gines, 2015). Others voiced the situation of African Americans in the work place, those who lack rights equal to the white persons, and the overall oppression as a group. Angered and fed up with how the US continues to ignore the rights of the black woman, allowing the black man to vote, but further oppressing the rights of the woman, she delivers a speech calling on the audience and others to recognize the eroding problem of intersectionality now.

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In September of 1979, Audre Lorde, poet, spoke about the impossibility of dismantling the patriarchy through oppressive means. The black feminist woman, Lorde, who has cancer at the point of this speech, uses ethos, pathos, and logos in order to guilt the audience into making a change of how black feminists are represented. Ethos is the building of the author's credibility in order to become more persuasive because people tend to believe people who they deem likable or respectable. “I agreed to take part in a New York University Institute for the Humanities conference a year ago, with the understanding that I would be commenting upon papers dealing with the role of difference within the lives of American women: difference of race, sexuality, class, and age. The absence of these considerations weakens any feminist discussion of the personal and the political.”

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King stated that the black community has waited long enough. “We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights” (King 5). These are rights that everyone should have yet people had been neglected of them just because of their skin color. Other countries were making progress while they were stuck on an unnecessary issue. King uses a great analogy to explain this “The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter” (King 6).

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201 Words | 1 Pages

In the article The Politics of Black Women’s Studies by Akasha Hull and Barbara Smith, Hull and Smith studiously literate the politics and controversy around the fundamentals of black women’s studies in the past and modern day. Furthermore, the ideology of the article falls under the premise that racism and prejudice are still current and prominent factors that affect the development of black women’s studies in the way it is taught in universities, and the role it takes upon the lives of black women. To begin, it is evident that the premise of the article is solely based on the pros and cons that derive from black women attempting to exist in a white man’s world by making a name for themselves in society. Hull and Smith state that “the necessity

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One of the most outstanding figures of the Black Feminism, Anna Julia Cooper, fought irresistibly for the black women`s rights. Because of her stance, she was often called “the voice of the South” (Rosser-Mims, 2010). She argued that a black woman “is confronted by both a woman question and a race problem, and is as yet an unknown or an unacknowledged factor in both” (Cooper, 1969). African American women have to struggle with discrimination against their race and, at the same time, they have to fight for recognition in their workplaces where leadership positions are usually occupied by men. Cooper wanted to prove that women can succeed in every spheres of life and should be treated equally with men.

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488 Words | 2 Pages

In the speech “Ain’t I A Woman” by Sojourner Truth, Truth discusses how she does not hold the same rights as white people. Truth addresses the audience at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio in 1851. Truth responds to a minister’s statement that women are inferior to men. Truth capitalizes on low diction and utilizes many rhetorical strategies, such as pathos and repetition, to describe her struggles to the public.

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Sojourner Truth, a runaway slave, became an influential figure in both women’s societies and the abolitionist movement. In her famous speech, “Ain’t I a women?”, Truth argues that she is more oppressed as a woman than as a slave (Doc 7). While she campaigned publicly for women’s civil rights, others attempted to reform society from within their religious

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In “Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement”, author Jennifer Nelson takes the readers back to the Unites States in the mid to late nineteenth century, where the feminist movement began to focus on the reproductive rights of women. Feminists argued that abortion was the decision of the woman who was with child, and her alone. However, several politicians disagreed with the ideology of these women. The author meticulously analyzes the rise of reproductive rights, the feminist movement, and reveals to her readers the essential involvement of women of color in these former issues between the years 1960 and 1980. Nelson begins her book by introducing a feminist organization called the “Redstockings”, who believed that it was wrong

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This quote exemplifies how blacks have been put down and beat upon for years without the ability to fight back. King detailing the constitutional and god given rights shows that blacks have been denied basic rights that our country has been structured around. The American ideology that “all men are created equal” has not applied to the black race, illustrating their denial of God-given and constitutional rights. The stinging darts of segregation is an example of blacks continuous enduring of

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1225 Words | 5 Pages

As black women always conform under patriarchal principles, women are generally silenced and deprived of rights because men are entitled to control everything. Women are silenced in a way that they lose their confidence and hesitate to speak up due to the norms present in the society they live in. Hence, even if women have the confidence to try to speak, men wouldn’t bother to listen since men ought to believe that they are superior to women. In addition to that, women often live in a life cycle of repetitions due to patriarchal principles since women are established to fulfill the roles the society had given them. It is evidenced by Celie as she struggles to survive and to define oneself apart from the controlling, manipulative, and abusive men in her life.

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According to Victorian standards, women are expected to be domestic, submissive, pious, and pure. Men believed that women were too delicate and frail to handle the responsibilities of making decisions. Furthermore, due to the events of slavery, African American women not only had to challenge patriarchy but also demonstrate their equality with white women during the 1860s. Sojourner Truth, a women’s rights activist and abolitionist who escaped from slavery, delivered a speech at the Women’s Convention titled "Ain't I a Woman?" to draw attention to the injustices that women, specifically African Americans, faced in the country's white, male-dominated culture. The speech underscores the importance of the intersectionality of gender and race.

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We live in a world with currently many conflicts from the racial disparity in high incarceration rates to gun violence and the war over gun rights. In his letter, King describes that Black Americans have no identity and that the oppressed cannot remain oppressed forever. King implies that they cannot be told to “wait for justice” because if they simply

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Character traits are a person's personality and how they respond to different situations. In the epic poem The Odyssey, by Homer, the hero Odysseus endured many obstacles to return to his home in Ithaca. The way he reacted to these obstacles showed his character traits and who he really was. The hero Odysseus is known to be a strong man that shows cleverness, bravery and leadership which lead to his successes and failures throughout his journey. Cleverness is gathered with age and wisdom.

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It either includes all women, or it’s not feminism” (Makers). She frequently reminds individuals that it was disproportionately women of color, especially black women, who created the feminist movement. She contends that erasing black women’s integral contributions disgraces the founders of the movement and eradicates the efforts of feminism’s true founding

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