What Revolution? Incorporating Intersectionality in Women and Politics

Abstract

Right around the time Jeane Kirkpatrick's Political Woman (1974) appeared in print, a different uprising was taking shape. That very year, a group of radical black feminists began to meet, later calling themselves the Combahee River Collective. The group's name was inspired by the actions of Harriet Tubman, the former slave who freed nearly 800 slaves during the Civil War at the Combahee River in South Carolina. Black feminism or womanism grew out of black women's dissatisfaction with the women's movement and the black nationalist movement. In 1977, the Combahee River Collective issued a historic and powerful call to recognize the intersectional position of women of color: 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 major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the condition 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…. We believe that sexual politics under patriarchy is as pervasive in black women's lives as are the politics of class and race. We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. (The Combahee River Collective Statement, April 1977)

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