Summary Of The Combahee River Collective Statement

The first and second waves of feminism failed to address the needs and experiences of Black women, they failed to view intersectionality in their agenda. Black women were being marginalized, many understood the term “black” with black men and “women” with only white women, excluding black women. Their experiences were worthless during these periods, no one addressed their oppression. The third wave of feminism focuses on intersectionality, the idea that someone can face multiple oppressions due to their overlapping identities. In the Combahee River Collective Statement we read about why Black feminist are necessary for ending oppression, “The fact that racial politics and indeed racism are pervasive factors in our lives did not allow us, and
If Black feminist thoughts were being expressed more constantly, then Black women will view themselves more powerful but this exactly is what the powerful groups don’t want. Collins states that “Scholars, publishers, and other experts represent specific interests and credentialing processes, and their knowledge claims must satisfy the epistemological and political criteria of the contexts in which they reside” (751). Since Black feminists’ thoughts do not reflect the specific interests of the publishers, there standpoints never get acknowledge and appreciated by the rest of our society. Collins states two influences that affect the knowledge-validation, these influences work to suppress the Black feminist thought in scholarly sources. The first influence is that “knowledge claims must be evaluated by a community of experts whose members represent the standpoints of the groups from which they originate” (752). The community of experts that Collins speaks about accept Black and female inferiority, so when Black feminist begin to use their experiences to become more powerful and end their oppression the community of experts view their knowledge/experience as “anomalies” (752). The second influence is that “each community of experts must maintain its credibility as defined by the larger group in which it is situated from” (752). Since white males are the larger group, they control the credibility and knowledge process and it have been obvious that any white male academic community would never publish anything in association with Black feminist thought. The only way a Black feminist can have some type of power in a white academic community is to have them accept their inferiority, to have them accept that they don’t