We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We must also question whether Lesbian separatism is an adequate and progressive political analysis and strategy, even for those who practice it, since it so completely denies any but the sexual sources of womens oppression, negating the facts of class and race. Black feminists often talk about their feelings of craziness before becoming conscious of the concepts of sexual politics, patriarchal rule, and most importantly, feminism, the political analysis and practice that we women use to struggle against our oppression. Still, hundreds of women have been active at different times during the three-year existence of our group. Match. We have tried to think about the reasons for our difficulties, particularly since the white womens movement continues to be strong and to grow in many directions. When I came back to the Combahee Statement, in the aftermath of the Ferguson uprising, I saw that its politics had the potential to make a way out of what felt like no way. They fared no better in organizations led by white women, who, for the most part, could not understand how racism compounded the experiences of Black women, creating a new dimension of oppression. 6-7. Solidarity was the bridge by which different groups of people could connect on the basis of mutual understanding, respect, and the old socialist edict that an injury to one was an injury to all. Flashcards. It leaves out far too much and far too many people, particularly Black men, women, and children. Many Black women have a good understanding of both sexism and racism, but because of the everyday constrictions of their lives, cannot risk struggling against them both. Join our new membership program on Patreon today. The Combahee River Collective was a Black feminist lesbian organization active in Boston from 1974 to 1980. We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us. If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression. [3]. [1] During that time we have been involved in the process of defining and clarifying our politics, while at the same time doing political work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and movements. The Black women of the C.R.C. The reaction of Black men to feminism has been notoriously negative. Black feminists and many more Black women who do not define themselves as feminists have all experienced sexual oppression as a constant factor in our day-to-day existence. Identity politics originated from the need to reshape movements that had until then prioritized the monotony of sameness over the strategic value of difference. We had been reading about divisions within the feminist movement in the late nineteen-sixties and early nineteen-seventies, and the emergence of a body of thought captured in the framework of Black feminism. The Combahee River Collective was a small organization, but it involved some of the luminaries of Black feminism: Barbara Smith and her twin sister, Beverly Smith, as well as Demita Frazier, Cheryl Clarke, Akasha Hull, Margo Okazawa-Rey, Chirlane McCray, and Audre Lorde. gave us the political tools to understand the difference between bottom-up and top-down politics, and their distorted manifestation in the identity politics of today. 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. The inclusiveness of our politics makes us concerned with any situation that impinges upon the lives of women, Third World and working people. 271-280, The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, By: Review by: Liz Kennedy , June Lapidus, Feminist Studies, Vol. Illustration by Palesa Monareng; Source photograph by Vivien Killilea / MAKERS / Getty. The Combahee River Collective formed in Boston, in 1974, during a period that regularly produced organizations that claimed the mantle of radical or revolutionary struggle. But they were not only reacting to the deficits they found in organizations led by white women and Black men. We do not have racial, sexual, heterosexual, or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the minimal access to resources and power that groups who possess anyone of these types of privilege have. connected the exploitative tendency of capitalism to a range of oppressions that kept apart those with the most interest in coming together. Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create these resources. [2]. http://circuitous.org/scraps/combahee.html. BlackPast.org is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and our EIN is 26-1625373. We might use our position at the bottom, however, to make a clear leap into revolutionary action. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work. Equality of men and women is something that cannot happen even in the abstract world. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work. The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that 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 the major systems of oppression are interlocking. A political contribution which we feel we have already made is the expansion of the feminist principle that the personal is political. In this section we will discuss some of the general reasons for the organizing problems we face and also talk specifically about the stages in organizing our own collective. As an early group member once said, We are all damaged people merely by virtue of being Black women. We are dispossessed psychologically and on every other level, and yet we feel the necessity to struggle to change the condition of all Black women. When we first started meeting early in 1974 after the NBFO first eastern regional conference, we did not have a strategy for organizing, or even a focus. 100, No. We reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind. The psychological toll of being a Black woman and the difficulties this presents in reaching political consciousness and doing political work can never be underestimated. from those groups was the explanatory power of their statement, which was first collected in Zillah Eisensteins anthology Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, in 1978. We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy. 350-354, Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Meridians, Vol. Many things have changed since the publication of the document, but many have not, and therein lies the problem that continues to pull people into the streets. JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. I first encountered the Combahee River Collective Statement in a women's-studies class, my second year of college at SUNY Buffalo. We also were contacted at that time by socialist feminists, with whom we had worked on abortion rights activities, who wanted to encourage us to attend the National Socialist Feminist Conference in Yellow Springs. Demita Frazier had been a member of the Black Panther Party in Chicago, right up until the Chicago police helped to assassinate the Panther leader Fred Hampton, in 1969. We can obviously create a politics that is absolutely aligned with our own experiences as Black womenin other words, with our identities. It made sense of her senseless death, just shy of the twenty-first century. 3 (2017), pp. Match. We began functioning as a study group and also began discussing the possibility of starting a Black feminist publication. 22, No. We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us. We are socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses. It was mind-blowing! The work to be done and the countless issues that this work represents merely reflect the pervasiveness of our oppression. [3]. Above all else, Our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that Black women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody elses may because of our need as human persons for autonomy. The Combahee River Ferry, also called the Combahee River Raid, was a military operation that took place over the River Combahee, South Carolina, in 1863. To Jeanne Manford, it was just part of being a parent. 1 / 2.