Angela Y. Davis

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 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.

Women, race & class

“The war is not, as the South falsely pretends, a war of races, nor of sections, nor of political parties, but a war of Principles, a war upon the working classes, whether white or black …”

“… marriage robbed women of their property rights, making wives economically – as well as morally – dependent on their husbands. Demanding absolute obedience from wives, the institution of marriage gave husbands the right to punish their wives, and what is more, the laws of separation and divorce were almost entirely based on male supremacy. As a result of women’s inferior status within marriage, the Seneca Falls Declaration argued, they suffered inequalities in educational institutions as well as in the professions. ‘Profitable employments’ and ‘all avenues to wealth and distinction’ (such as medicine, law and theology) were absolutely inaccessible to women.”

“Setting down her ideas six years before the publication of Margaret Fuller’s well-known treatise on women, Sarah disputed the assumption that inequality between the sexes was commanded by God. ‘Men and women were created equal: they are both moral and accountable human beings.”

Rape was a weapon of domination, a weapon of repression

“The separation, through indiscriminate sales of husbands, wives and children, was a terrifying hallmark of the North American variety of slavery. But, as he points out, the bonds of love and affection, the cultural norms governing family relations, and the overpowering desire to remain together survived the devastating onslaught of slavery.”

“Rape, in fact, was an uncamouflaged expression of the slaveholder’s economic mastery and the overseer’s control over Black women as workers.

The special abuses inflicted on women thus facilitated the ruthless economic exploitation of their labor.”

“Ideological exaltation of motherhood – as popular as it was during the nineteenth century – did not extend to slaves. In fact, in the eyes of the slaveholders, slave women were not mothers at all; they were simply instruments guaranteeing the growth of the slave labor force. They were ‘breeders’ – animals, whose monetary value could be precisely calculated in terms of their ability to multiply their numbers.”

“But women suffered in different ways as well, for they were victims of sexual abuse and other barbarous mistreatment that could only be inflicted on women. Expediency governed the slaveholders’ posture toward female slaves: when it was profitable to exploit them as if they were men, they were regarded, in effect, as genderless, but when they could be exploited, punished and repressed in ways suited only for women, they were locked into their exclusively female roles.”

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Black women could hardly strive for weakness; they had to become strong, for their families and their communities needed their strength to survive.

Women also ran sawmills and gristmills, caned chairs and built furniture, operated slaughterhouses, printed cotton and other cloth, made lace, and owned and ran drygoods and clothing stores. They worked in tobacco shops, drug shops (where they sold concoctions they made themselves), and general stores that sold everything from pins to meat scales. Women ground eyeglasses, made netting and rope, cut and stitched leather goods, made cards for wool carding, and even were housepainters. Often they were the town undertakers […] Considering the subsequent exclusion of women from industrial production in general, it is one of the great ironies of this country’s economic history that the first industrial workers were women.

During Hitler’s Germany, incidentally, 250,000 sterilizations were carried out under the Nazis’ Hereditary Health Law.46 Is it possible that the record of the Nazis, throughout the years of their reign, may have been almost equaled by U.S. government-funded sterilizations in the space of a single year?

Why were self-imposed abortions and reluctant acts of infanticide such common occurrences during slavery? Not because Black women had discovered solutions to their predicament, but rather because they were desperate. Abortions and infanticides were acts of desperation, motivated not by the biological birth process but by the oppressive conditions of slavery. Most of these women, no doubt, would have expressed their deepest resentment had someone hailed their abortions as a stepping stone toward freedom.

The crisis dimensions of sexual violence constitute one of the facets of a deep and ongoing crisis of capitalism. As the violent face of sexism, the threat of rape will continue to exist as long as the overall oppression of women remains an essential crutch for capitalism. 

In a society where male supremacy was all-pervasive, men who were motivated by their duty to defend their women could be excused of any excesses they might commit. 

For once white men were persuaded that they could commit sexual assaults against Black women with impunity, their conduct toward women of their own race could not have remained unmarred. Racism has always served as a provocation to rape, and white women in the United States have necessarily su ered the ricochet re of these attacks. This is one of the many ways in which racism nourishes sexism, causing white women to be indirectly victimized by the special oppression aimed at their sisters of color.

Excessive sex urges, whether they existed among individual white men or not, had nothing to do with this virtual institutionalization of rape. Sexual coercion was, rather, an essential dimension of the social relations between slavemaster and slave. In other words, the right claimed by slaveowners and their agents over the bodies of female slaves was a direct expression of their presumed property rights over Black people as a whole. The license to rape emanated from and facilitated the ruthless economic domination that was the gruesome hallmark of slavery.

In the United States and other capitalist countries, rape laws as a rule were framed originally for the protection of men of the upper classes, whose daughters and wives might be assaulted. […] In the history of the United States, the fraudulent rape charge stands out as one of the most formidable artifices invented by racism.

I will be strong in our common faith, dear comrade, I will be self-sufficient, to our ideals firm and true, I will be strong to keep my mind and soul outside a prison, Encouraged and inspired by ever loving memories of you.

 As Mother Bloor and her Communist party comrades concluded, the working class cannot assume its historical role as a revolutionary force if workers do not struggle relentlessly against the social poison of racism.

While the chains of slavery had been broken, Black people still su ered the pain of economic deprivation and they faced the terrorist violence of racist mobs in a form whose intensity was unmatched even by slavery.

Sojourner Truth was spontaneously applauded as the hero of the day. She had not only dealt a crushing defeat to the men’s “weaker sex” argument, but had also refuted their thesis that male supremacy was a Christian principle, since Christ himself was a man: That little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, because Christ wasn’t a woman. Where did Christ come from?

Actually, woman’s place had always been in the home, but during the pre-industrial era, the economy itself had been centered in the home and its surrounding farmland. While men had tilled the land (often aided by their wives), the women had been manufacturers, producing fabric, clothing, candles, soap and practically all the other family necessities. Women’s place had indeed been in the home—but not simply because they bore and reared children or ministered to their husbands’ needs. They had been productive workers within the home economy and their labor had been no less respected than their men’s. When manufacturing moved out of the home and into the factory, the ideology of womanhood began to raise the wife and mother as ideals. As workers, women had at least enjoyed economic equality, but as wives, they were destined to become appendages to their men, servants to their husbands. As mothers, they would be de ned as passive vehicles for the replenishment of human life. The situation of the white housewife was full of contradictions. There was bound to be resistance.

He fails to understand that there could hardly be a basis for “delight, affection and love” as long as white men, by virtue of their economic position, had unlimited access to Black women’s bodies. 

This was one of the greatest ironies of the slave system, for in subjecting women to the most ruthless exploitation conceivable, exploitation which knew no sex distinctions, the groundwork was created not only for Black women to assert their equality through their social relations, but also to express it through their acts of resistance. 

Laura Layden

Isabella 

4.5 round up. a very informative book. very well written and well researched. highly recommend everyone to read it.

'Black women were equal to their men in the oppression they suffered; they were their men's social equals within the slave community; and they resisted slavery with a passion equal to their men's' Ranging from the age of slavery to contemporary injustices, this seminal history of race, gender and class inequality by the radical political activist Angela Davis offers an alternative view of female struggles for liberation. Tracing the intertwined histories of the abolitionist and women's suffrage movements, Davis examines the racism and class prejudice inherent in so much of white feminism, and in doing so brings to light new pioneering heroines, from field slaves to mill workers, who fought back and refused to accept the lives into which they were born.

Women, Race and Class

Jade Dufty

Angela Davis’ ‘Women, Race & Class’ should be compulsory reading for any woman who considers herself a feminist. This book provided an engaging and eye-opening examination of how the oppression of the working classes and people of colour functions alongside, and in combination with, the oppression of women. 

One of my favourite quotes is the following: “Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells and Rosa Parks are not exceptional Black women as much as they are epitomes of Black womanhood.”

This will absolutely be at the top of my recommendations list.

Ranging from the age of slavery to contemporary injustices, this groundbreaking history of race, gender and class inequality by the radical political activist Angela Davis offers an alternative view of female struggles for liberation. Tracing the intertwined histories of the abolitionist and women's suffrage movements, Davis examines the racism and class prejudice inherent in so much of white feminism, and in doing so brings to light new pioneering heroines, from field slaves to mill workers, who fought back and refused to accept the lives into which they were born. 'The power of her historical insights and the sweetness of her dream cannot be denied' The New York Times

Women, Race & Class

Despite all of the perfectly written chapter, as someone who concerns about education and women empowerment in education, I want to give a shout out to a chapter specially written for Black women's thoughts in education. They're working on freeing themselves struggling for their identity on their own communities, but this doesn't mean that education is not important. 

Black women is acknowledging about the importance of education for them and their children, while working on injustice and imbalance role. Also on another note, I really love about credits to another women who helped Black women to gaining their freedom as a human and a woman. 

The role of women are crucial at every stage in their freedom, whether at encouraging their power, helping them on a community, or fighting alongside their freedom. This makes me love being a woman and even more.

Alma

Despite all of the perfectly written chapter, as someone who concerns about education and women empowerment in education, I want to give a shout out to a chapter specially written for Black women's thoughts in education. They're working on freeing themselves struggling for their identity on their own communities, but this doesn't mean that education is not important. 

Black women is acknowledging about the importance of education for them and their children, while working on injustice and imbalance role. Also on another note, I really love about credits to another women who helped Black women to gaining their freedom as a human and a woman. 

The role of women are crucial at every stage in their freedom, whether at encouraging their power, helping them on a community, or fighting alongside their freedom. This makes me love being a woman and even more.

A definitely 100/100 book.

victoria

Brillant. I always say Angela Davis's didactics is easier to understand than most other thinkers and this book is proof of that, it talks about the main topic in a clear and very easy to understand way.

Despite being short, it took me a while to read because the topics are often heavy so I needed to take some time to reflect. It is an super accurate critic about society and everyone should read, especially people who are interested in feminist studies.

 Here the author exposes how black women – and women of color and lower class in general – have always been excluded from absolutely everything, even from social movements, as they were treated as sub-human and had their most basic rights denied. It can also be seen how white feminism often acted only in its own favor and even when confronted they refused to admit their hypocrisy.

One of the things that shocked me the most while reading was the chapters about alienation, for me it is so intriguing how political lies and manipulations are so easily inserted into society and sometimes centuries go by and the information continues to be propagated. Another thing is that prejudice and hate always seem to resurface from time to time, during the book you notice how racism always came back stronger from time to time, I don't want sound pessimistic but often the setback seems more common than progress.

Anyway, my review is already huge 😭 but it's an excellent book, if I could I would keep talking about it for much longer.

Imane

This book is an essential reading experience, one of those books that you should read at the very least once in your life despite the heavy topics of slavery, racism, misogyny, and sexism, or maybe especially because of them. Davis makes her a fundamental historical account of the links between racism, classism, and sexism and offers an excellent overview of the many battles fought and by whom, as well as the power of solidarity in advocating for common AND different causes that fall under the same umbrella. It is also a brilliant indictment of the racist and white supremacist roots of white - mainstream - feminism and the many occasions white bourgeois feminists disappointed the people they should have collaborated with, all in view of securing their own opportunistic and myopic victories, sliding further and further into essentialist white supremacist discourses. This book is an excellent reminder that racism is pervasive and omnipresent but also that gender, social and economic justice are deeply intertwined and rooted in the same struggles (and while this book doesn't talk about climate justice, it does cite capitalism as the root of many (if not all) evils, so you can easily extrapolate and "update" some information to form a modernised picture of these struggles within current configurations of late-stage capitalism). To put one aspect away in favour of securing another only adds insult to injury as this strategy has been proven time and time over to be utterly useless. Even though this book is 40 years old now, its teachings are very much still relevant to understand the current dynamics of feminism and how to counter certain discourses that put opportunism above justice. I highly recommend it.

A powerful study of the women's liberation movement in the U.S., from abolitionist days to the present, that demonstrates how it has always been hampered by the racist and classist biases of its leaders. From the widely revered and legendary political activist and scholar Angela Davis.

Women, Race, & Class

Caitlin

Angela Davis should be required reading for everyone. I took some time reading through this as I wanted to give it my full attention while reading and make sure to take notes and highlight important passages. It was such an in-depth, illuminating look at the history of feminism, racism, and the intersection of the two. Such an important piece of work to complement the constant work of antiracism.

Maxime van der Wal

4.5 stars
 The changes prompted by the Second World War provided only a hint of progress. After eight long decades of “emancipation,” the signs of freedom were shadows so vague and so distant that one strained and squinted to get a glimpse of them. 

 Women, Race & Class  cleverly outlines the phenomenon of what we'd call 'intersectional feminism' today. Davis' writing is concise and accessible, substantiated by relevant quotes and references, resulting in a highly educative read. The book starts off really strong, in my opinion, but falls a bit flat later on (aside from the chapter on the myth of the Black rapist). I also think I'd have liked to see a final chapter summing up Davis' main points, but that's mostly because it took me a while to finish this so I couldn't remember everything from the previous chapters.

The chapter on the rising influence of racism in particular blew my mind, but I've taken away important bits and pieces from every chapter. Davis clearly knows what she's talking about and provides plenty of proof. I learnt so much from this book and it solidified a lot of opinions I previously had but couldn't provide arguments for. My main takeaway from this book is that the fight for Black liberation and women's liberation have always been intrinsically linked, and past movements have failed to provide the united support required to truly bring forth real change. This book should be mandatory reading for everyone who considers themselves a feminist.

There are so many quotes I want to share, but I'll stick to just this: 
 Racism has always drawn strength from its ability to encourage sexual coercion. While Black women and their sisters of color have been the main targets of these racist-inspired attacks, white women have suffered as well. For once white men were persuaded that they could commit sexual assaults against Black women with impunity, their conduct toward women of their own race could not have remained unmarred. Racism has always served as a provocation to rape, and white women in the United States have necessarily suffered the ricochet fire of these attacks. This is one of the many ways in which racism nourishes sexism, causing white women to be indirectly victimized by the special oppression aimed at their sisters of color.

Laura Leila Marta

This should be required reading. Angela Davis is a genius! 🥺💐

Abeer Kayser 

Never met a book by Angela Davis that didn’t intrigue me. 

Jana Pashovska

Educational and incredibly eye-opening, it gave me a better understanding of the woman's struggle throughout the latter years of the 19th and 20th century and of the intersectionality of women’s suffrage and abolition, as well as sexism and racism as they relate to classism in the 20th century.

Clara

A powerful study of the women’s liberation movement in the U.S., from abolitionist days to the present, that demonstrates how it has always been hampered by the racist and classist biases of its leaders. From the widely revered and legendary political activist and scholar Angela Davis.--Publisher website.

Women, race & class

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