black-feminist-though-by-patricia-hill-collins

PrefacetoSecondEditionI initially wrote Black FeministThought in order to help empower African-American women. I knew that whenan individual Black woman’s consciousness concerning how she understandsher everyday life undergoes change, she can become empowered. Such consciousnessmay stimulate her to embark on a path of personal freedom, even ifit exists initially primarily in her own mind. If she is lucky enough to meet otherswho are undergoing similar journeys, she and they can change the worldaround them. If ideas, knowledge, and consciousness can have such an impacton individual Black women, what effect might they have on Black women as agroup? I suspected that African-American women had created a collectiveknowledge that served a similar purpose in fostering Black women’s empowerment.Black Feminist Thought aimed to document the existence of such knowledgeand sketch out its contours.My goal of examining how knowledge can foster African-Americanwomen’s empowerment remains intact. What has changed, however, is myunderstanding of the meaning of empowerment and of the process needed for itto happen. I now recognize that empowerment for African-American womenwill never occur in a context characterized by oppression and social injustice. Agroup can gain power in such situations by dominating others, but this is not thetype of empowerment that I found within Black women’s thinking. ReadingBlack women’s intellectual work, I have come to see how it is possible to be bothcentered in one’s own experiences and engaged in coalitions with others. In thissense, Black feminist thought works on behalf of Black women, but does so inconjunction with other similar social justice projects.My deepening understanding of empowerment stimulated more complexarguments of several ideas introduced in the first edition. For one, throughoutthis revision, I emphasize Black feminist thought’s purpose, namely, fosteringboth Black women’s empowerment and conditions of social justice. Both of thesethemes were in the first edition, but neither was as fully developed as they arehere.This enhanced emphasis on empowerment and social justice permeates therevised volume and is especially evident in Chapter 2. There I replace my efforts