The Trouble Between Us

The Trouble Between Us
Author: Winifred Breines
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2006-04-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198039808

Inspired by the idealism of the civil rights movement, the women who launched the radical second wave of the feminist movement believed, as a bedrock principle, in universal sisterhood and color-blind democracy. Their hopes, however, were soon dashed. To this day, the failure to create an integrated movement remains a sensitive and contested issue. In The Trouble Between Us, Winifred Breines explores why a racially integrated women's liberation movement did not develop in the United States. Drawing on flyers, letters, newspapers, journals, institutional records, and oral histories, Breines dissects how white and black women's participation in the movements of the 1960s led to the development of separate feminisms. Herself a participant in these events, Breines attempts to reconcile the explicit professions of anti-racism by white feminists with the accusations of mistreatment, ignorance, and neglect by African American feminists. Many radical white women, unable to see beyond their own experiences and idealism, often behaved in unconsciously or abstractly racist ways, despite their passionately anti-racist stance and hard work to develop an interracial movement. As Breines argues, however, white feminists' racism is not the only reason for the absence of an interracial feminist movement. Segregation, black women's interest in the Black Power movement, class differences, and the development of identity politics with an emphasis on "difference" were all powerful factors that divided white and black women. By the late 1970s and early 1980s white feminists began to understand black feminism's call to include race and class in gender analyses, and black feminists began to give white feminists some credit for their political work. Despite early setbacks, white and black radical feminists eventually developed cross-racial feminist political projects. Their struggle to bridge the racial divide provides a model for all Americans in a multiracial society.

Reasoning from Race

Reasoning from Race
Author: Serena Mayeri
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2011-05-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674061101

"Informed in 1944 that she was 'not of the sex' entitled to be admitted to Harvard Law School, African American activist Pauli Murray confronted the injustice she called 'Jane Crow.' In the 1960s and 1970s, the analogies between sex and race discrimination pioneered by Murray became potent weapons in the battle for women's rights, as feminists borrowed rhetoric and legal arguments from the civil rights movement. Serena Mayeri's Reasoning from Race is the first book to explore the development and consequences of this key feminist strategy. Mayeri uncovers the history of an often misunderstood connection at the heart of American antidiscrimination law. Her study details how a tumultuous political and legal climate transformed the links between race and sex equality, civil rights and feminism. Battles over employment discrimination, school segregation, reproductive freedom, affirmative action, and constitutional change reveal the promise and peril of reasoning from race--and offer a vivid picture of Pauli Murray, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and others who defined feminists' agenda. Looking beneath the surface of Supreme Court opinions to the deliberations of feminist advocates, their opponents, and the legal decisionmakers who heard--or chose not to hear--their claims, Reasoning from Race showcases previously hidden struggles that continue to shape the scope and meaning of equality under the law"--Publisher description

States of Race

States of Race
Author: Sherene Razack
Publisher: Between the Lines
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2010-07-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1926662385

What is a Canadian critical race feminism? As the contributors to this book note, the interventions of Canadian critical race feminists work to explicitly engage the Canadian state as a white settler society. The collection examines Indigenous peoples within the Canadian settler state and Indigenous women within feminism; the challenges posed by the settler state for women of colour and Indigenous women; and the possibilities and limits of an anti-colonial praxis. Critical race feminism, like critical race theory more broadly, interrogates questions about race and gender through an emancipatory lens, posing fundamental questions about the persistence if not magnification of race and the “colour line” in the twenty-first century. The writers of these articles whether exploring campus politics around issues of equity, the media’s circulation of ideas about a tolerant multicultural and feminist Canada, security practices that confine people of colour to spaces of exception, Indigenous women’s navigation of both nationalism and feminism, Western feminist responses to the War on Terror, or the new forms of whiteness that persist in ideas about a post-racial world or in transnational movements for social justice insist that we must study racialized power in all its gender and class dimensions. The contributors are all members of Researchers and Academics of Colour for Equity.

White Women's Rights

White Women's Rights
Author: Louise Michele Newman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 1999-02-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198028865

This study reinterprets a crucial period (1870s-1920s) in the history of women's rights, focusing attention on a core contradiction at the heart of early feminist theory. At a time when white elites were concerned with imperialist projects and civilizing missions, progressive white women developed an explicit racial ideology to promote their cause, defending patriarchy for "primitives" while calling for its elimination among the "civilized." By exploring how progressive white women at the turn of the century laid the intellectual groundwork for the feminist social movements that followed, Louise Michele Newman speaks directly to contemporary debates about the effect of race on current feminist scholarship. "White Women's Rights is an important book. It is a fascinating and informative account of the numerous and complex ties which bound feminist thought to the practices and ideas which shaped and gave meaning to America as a racialized society. A compelling read, it moves very gracefully between the general history of the feminist movement and the particular histories of individual women."--Hazel Carby, Yale University

Feminism and "race"

Feminism and
Author: Kum-Kum Bhavnani
Publisher:
Total Pages: 576
Release: 2001
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0198782365

The past two decades have seen the incursion of feminist thought into many academic areas. Within the academy, feminist approaches have gained some legitimacy and yet, simultaneous with these disciplinary advances, there have been charges of racism directed at feminist scholarship and practice. These charges have resulted in feminist work continuously reshaping itself. This volume represents the strength as well as diversity of writings which discuss 'race' and feminism showing how these two areas, usually considered to be distinct and therefore discrete from each other, have developed. Feminism and Race includes articles spanning a number of disciplinary areas, such as history, literary analysis, sociology, and psychology and provides a history of how second wave feminisms have negotiated 'race' as well as suggesting what future directions these debates may take.

Women, Race, & Class

Women, Race, & Class
Author: Angela Y. Davis
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2011-06-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0307798496

From one of our most important scholars and civil rights activist icon, a powerful study of the women’s liberation movement and the tangled knot of oppression facing Black women. “Angela Davis is herself a woman of undeniable courage. She should be heard.”—The New York Times Angela Davis provides a powerful history of the social and political influence of whiteness and elitism in feminism, from abolitionist days to the present, and demonstrates how the racist and classist biases of its leaders inevitably hampered any collective ambitions. While Black women were aided by some activists like Sarah and Angelina Grimke and the suffrage cause found unwavering support in Frederick Douglass, many women played on the fears of white supremacists for political gain rather than take an intersectional approach to liberation. Here, Davis not only contextualizes the legacy and pitfalls of civil and women’s rights activists, but also discusses Communist women, the murder of Emmitt Till, and Margaret Sanger’s racism. Davis shows readers how the inequalities between Black and white women influence the contemporary issues of rape, reproductive freedom, housework and child care in this bold and indispensable work.

Hood Feminism

Hood Feminism
Author: Mikki Kendall
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2020-02-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0525560556

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “The fights against hunger, homelessness, poverty, health disparities, poor schools, homophobia, transphobia, and domestic violence are feminist fights. Kendall offers a feminism rooted in the livelihood of everyday women.” —Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist, in The Atlantic “One of the most important books of the current moment.”—Time “A rousing call to action... It should be required reading for everyone.”—Gabrielle Union, author of We’re Going to Need More Wine A potent and electrifying critique of today’s feminist movement announcing a fresh new voice in black feminism Today's feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women. Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. All too often, however, the focus is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. That feminists refuse to prioritize these issues has only exacerbated the age-old problem of both internecine discord and women who rebuff at carrying the title. Moreover, prominent white feminists broadly suffer from their own myopia with regard to how things like race, class, sexual orientation, and ability intersect with gender. How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others? In her searing collection of essays, Mikki Kendall takes aim at the legitimacy of the modern feminist movement, arguing that it has chronically failed to address the needs of all but a few women. Drawing on her own experiences with hunger, violence, and hypersexualization, along with incisive commentary on reproductive rights, politics, pop culture, the stigma of mental health, and more, Hood Feminism delivers an irrefutable indictment of a movement in flux. An unforgettable debut, Kendall has written a ferocious clarion call to all would-be feminists to live out the true mandate of the movement in thought and in deed.

The Wombs of Women

The Wombs of Women
Author: Françoise Vergès
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 105
Release: 2020-07-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1478008865

In the 1960s thousands of poor women of color on the (post)colonial French island of Reunion had their pregnancies forcefully terminated by white doctors; the doctors operated under the pretext of performing benign surgeries, for which they sought government compensation. When the scandal broke in 1970, the doctors claimed to have been encouraged to perform these abortions by French politicians who sought to curtail reproduction on the island, even though abortion was illegal in France. In The Wombs of Women—first published in French and appearing here in English for the first time—Françoise Vergès traces the long history of colonial state intervention in black women’s wombs during the slave trade and postslavery imperialism as well as in current birth control politics. She examines the women’s liberation movement in France in the 1960s and 1970s, showing that by choosing to ignore the history of the racialization of women’s wombs, French feminists inevitably ended up defending the rights of white women at the expense of women of color. Ultimately, Vergès demonstrates how the forced abortions on Reunion were manifestations of the legacies of the racialized violence of slavery and colonialism.

Global Critical Race Feminism

Global Critical Race Feminism
Author: Adrien Katherine Wing
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2000-05
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0814793371

An anthology containing some 30 essays which focus on topics including a critique of American feminist legal scholarship; motherhood and work in cultural context; Josephine Baker and the Cold War; the campaign against female circumcision; violence against Aboriginal women in Australia; and "marketization" and the status of women in China. Includes a foreword by social justice activist and professor at the U. of California-Santa Cruz, Angela Y. Davis. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR