Summary Of The Chicano Movement

The separation of women of color activists and feminists of color from white women activists and feminists is one of the ways in which they were so easily removed from mainstream narratives on women’s activism. Additionally, many white feminists would argue that black feminists and other feminists of color did not agree on what should be an issue for women’s rights and were therefore lesser activists and such separations disrupted action. However, viewing women’s separation as inherently a destructive action allows for erasure of brown voices and histories. Deeper analysis of why and how activists of color, particularly women, separated from white activists allows us to assess how white activist’s actions were often the deterrent from coalition building and cumulative action. This essay explores the transition of separation among feminist
1970’s race relations were strenuous at best, and many people in the Chicano movement felt discouraged by their minority status. Organizing for workers’ rights, educational rights, and brown rights were at the forefront of Chicano activists struggles. Yet women in the movement felt that their voices were not being heard by the white feminists or the men in their own communities. Chicano’s were creating a sense of nationalism that mirror Eurocentric and colonial gender roles in their own culture and “Chicana feminism emerged not only from the gender contradictions of the movement…but also from how gendered movement discourses, based on idealized nationalist recovery of cultural ‘tradition,’ did not resonate with many Chicanas’ lived experiences” (Blackwell, 47). Chicana’s felt the need to create their own spaces and spend time reflecting on their own experiences. Yet, they still felt that helping their community collectively as Chicanos was important, and even a pressing need for