According to his concepts, black men were “‘supermasculine menials’ who, during slavery, were stripped of their mental abilities”5 while black women were merely “characterized as ‘subfeminine’…”5 Cleaver would go on to state that black men and white men essentially fight over respective sexual and reproductive control over white and black women. Such statements degraded black women’s position in society and were attempts towards moving away from a supposed matriarchal black society that had castrated black …show more content…
NBFO’s Toni Cade would in her essay, The Black Women, form a “critique of both the women’s movement and male-led black politics...[where] gender, race, and class worked together to oppress everyone.”8 The vast reach of oppression was even present in black feminist organizations. The Combahee River Collective consisted of black feminists who broke with the NBFO because “it failed to address the needs of the poor and spoke exclusively to heterosexual women.” The black feminists understood that any form of oppression would not lead to the necessary social changes in society. Its ideology was “fundamental to any truly revolutionary ideology” because it included all those who were