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

12 BLACK FEMINIST THOUGHTthe angle of vision created by being deemed devalued workers and failed motherscould easily be turned inward, leading to internalized oppression. But thelegacy of struggle among U.S. Black women suggests that a collectively shared,Black women’s oppositional knowledge has long existed.This collective wisdomin turn has spurred U.S. Black women to generate a more specialized knowledge,namely, Black feminist thought as critical social theory. Just as fighting injusticelay at the heart of U.S. Black women’s experiences, so did analyzing and creatingimaginative responses to injustice characterize the core of Black feministthought.Historically, while they often disagreed on its expression—some U.S. Blackwomen were profoundly reformist while more radical thinkers bordered on therevolutionary—African-American women intellectuals who were nurtured insocial conditions of racial segregation strove to develop Black feminist thought ascritical social theory. Regardless of social class and other differences among U.S.Black women, all were in some way affected by intersecting oppressions of race,gender, and class. The economic, political, and ideological dimensions of U.S.Black women’s oppression suppressed the intellectual production of individualBlack feminist thinkers. At the same time, these same social conditions simultaneouslystimulated distinctive patterns of U.S. Black women’s activism that alsoinfluenced and was influenced by individual Black women thinkers. Thus, thedialectic of oppression and activism characterizing U.S. Black women’s experienceswith intersecting oppressions also influenced the ideas and actions of Blackwomen intellectuals.The exclusion of Black women’s ideas from mainstream academic discourseand the curious placement of African-American women intellectuals in feministthinking, Black social and political theories, and in other important thought suchas U.S. labor studies has meant that U.S. Black women intellectuals have foundthemselves in outsider-within positions in many academic endeavors (Hull et al.1982; Christian 1989). The assumptions on which full group membership arebased—Whiteness for feminist thought, maleness for Black social and politicalthought, and the combination for mainstream scholarship—all negate Blackwomen’s realities. Prevented from becoming full insiders in any of these areas ofinquiry, Black women remained in outsider-within locations, individuals whosemarginality provided a distinctive angle of vision on these intellectual and politicalentities.Alice Walker’s work exemplifies these fundamental influences within Blackwomen’s intellectual traditions. Walker describes how her outsider-within locationinfluenced her thinking: “I believe . . . that it was from this period—frommy solitary, lonely position, the position of an outcast—that I began really tosee people and things, really to notice relationships” (Walker 1983, 244).Walker realizes that “the gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of societyor one’s people that has not previously been taken into account” (p. 264).And yet marginality is not the only influence on her work. By reclaiming the