Name: Women, Race, & Class
Rating: 4.563380281690141 (71 reviews)
ISBN: 9780307798497

Angela Y. Davis

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

Alma

They did not, in any event, represent the accumulated experiences of all those women who toiled under the lash for their masters, worked for and protected their families, fought against slavery, and who were beaten and raped, but never subdued. It was those women who passed on to their nominally free female descendants a legacy of hard work, perseverance and self-reliance, a legacy of tenacity, resistance and insistence on sexual equality—in short, a legacy spelling out standards for a new womanhood.

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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 pro table 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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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?

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.

 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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?

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.

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

“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.”

“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.”

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.

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.

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

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.

Clara

Zack Dihel

'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, & Class

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