I was asked to speak about identity politics and the history of the Combahee River Collective. I\u2019m also going to discuss where the concept of intersectionality actually came from, because most people do not know that.<\/p>\n
The Combahee River Collective was a small group of Black feminists. Usually we were about ten or less, who came together in the mid 1970s in We named ourselves the Combahee River Collective after the river in We were founded in 1974. In 1977 we wrote the Combahee River Collective Statement, and that statement is still read, taught, talked about and used. It was in the statement that the term \u201cidentity politics\u201d first appeared, as far as we know. There were three co-authors of the Combahee River Collective Statement: my sister Beverly Smith, Demita Frazier and me.<\/p>\n The following section of the Combahee River Collective Statement talks about identity politics:<\/p>\n This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else\u2019s oppression. In the case of Black women this is a particularly repugnant, dangerous, threatening, and therefore revolutionary concept because it is obvious from looking at all the political movements that have preceded us that anyone is more worthy of liberation than ourselves. We reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind. To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.<\/em><\/i><\/p>\n The reason we asserted that was because we were writing during a period when Black power and Black nationalism were dominant political perspectives. This was also a legacy of the politics of the Civil Rights movement. Although Black women were central to the success of the Civil Rights movement, we got very little credit. During this period of Black nationalism going into the late \u201960s and early \u201970s, Black women\u2019s roles were more proscribed and constricted. Kwame Ture, whose birth names was Stokeley Carmichael, was asked, \u201cWhat is the position of the Black woman in the political Black movement?\u201d His response was, \u201cThe position of the Black woman is to be prone.\u201d Now he actually meant supine. But either way you\u2019re on the ground, right?<\/p>\n The reason we asserted that identity politics were so important was because we thought it was critical for us as Black women and women of color to define a political agenda based upon our actual experiences\u2014not just being female, that is, female and white, or being Black and having no gender\u2014we thought it was important to bring all of that to the table and that\u2019s exactly what we did.<\/p>\n We considered ourselves to be revolutionary then and I think some of us still see our politics that way. You can\u2019t really say that you\u2019re a revolutionary\u2014someone else has to say it about you. Somebody has to agree besides you.<\/p>\n One of the things that made the Combahee River Collective unique was that we were part of the left. We had been involved in other movements. We had a lot of experience before we began to build our version of Black feminism. We had been involved in the movement to end the war in What we meant by \u2018\u2019identity politics\u201d was not to be exclusionary. We believed in coalition. We were committed to coalition, and we actually worked in coalition with various kinds of people in How identity politics is being used now has been reduced at times to a desire only to connect with people who share your exact identity and not necessarily for the purpose of doing political organizing. The right wing has also taken to defining it too. What we had meant was that it was legitimate for us as women of African heritage living in the For example, the issues of sexual assault, rape and violence were not going to be taken up, at least at that time period, by Black political movements, because those issues were just beginning to be defined and were generally not understood to be the result of gender oppression. When we looked at sexual assault, domestic violence and violence against women we didn\u2019t look at it the same way white women did. Our first thought was not, \u201cLet\u2019s call the police. The police will make everything all right,\u201d because we knew that by and large that was never the case. Our communities had never relied on the police for safety. In fact, we had often been targeted by the police in very violent ways.<\/p>\n So how do you build a movement to address interpersonal violence? And violent rape? Rape is violence, not sex, but violence. How do you build a movement in communities of color that takes that into account? Those are the kind of subtleties, fine tuning, that we pushed to bear in mind. We were very, very committed to coalition-building work, but were also completely committed to toppling white supremacy.<\/p>\n People think that people like us didn\u2019t exist. We were stereotyped and called all kinds of names like \u201cman haters,\u201d \u201crace traitors,\u201d etc. But the thing is, those people didn\u2019t realize that you could actually hold an understanding of all these interlocking oppressions together and build off of that. We defined ourselves as socialists and anti-capitalists.<\/p>\n What has happened with identity politics is that it is seen as, \u201cIf you\u2019re not just like me, if you don\u2019t have the same experiences that I do, then I don\u2019t want anything to do with you; and if you say something that I find oppositional, then we have nothing to talk about further.\u201d No one should have to go anywhere and have their humanity decimated and destroyed. If the basis on which you decimate people\u2019s identity is to decimate their value based on their various identities, then you have to bring identity into the conversation. On the other hand, we work with people whose politics we share. So there are white, cis-gendered, heterosexual men who I may have more in common with politically than with some idealized lesbians of color. We work with people whose politics we share, and that makes for a wonderful and incredibly strong possibility for making deep change.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The politics of intersectionality demonstrates how people with multiple identities are simultaneously targeted by various forms of systemic oppression and that the complexity of interlocking identities and oppressions must be taken into account to develop effective strategies for challenging injustice. In response to the #MeToo movement, for example, women of color, poor and working class women have pointed out how sexual harassment and sexual assault play out quite differently for women working in factories and in fields than it does for Hollywood actors. Some in the movement have listened and are finding strategies for eradicating sexual abuse that do not leave out the majority of women.<\/p>\n In this time of political crisis the commitment to solidarity and to building inclusive coalitions which characterizes the organizing of feminists of color can provide useful models for bringing about much needed change.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/i><\/p>\n Barbara is this year\u2019s speaker at the Peace Council\u2019s 82nd<\/sup> Birthday Dinner on March 24. See page __ to learn more about her and the dinner.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was asked to speak about identity politics and the history of the Combahee River Collective. I\u2019m also going to discuss where the concept of intersectionality actually came from, because most people do not know that. The Combahee River Collective was a small group of Black feminists. Usually we were…<\/p>\nThe