Black Power and Black Feminism

Power, Inequality and Conflict The two theorists used in this paper to explore the theme of “power, inequality and conflict” are W. E. B. Du Bois and Patricia Hill Collins. The theme is one that gets to the heart of the struggle within the American Experience. The great attraction of the American Dream has always been that people are created equal and are endowed with a natural right to pursue life, liberty and happiness.

For many minorities and marginalized persons in America, however, the Dream has a way of turning into a nightmare. Whether because of segregation, Jim Crow laws, gender pay gaps, or all manner of harassment (both sexual and racial), the theme of “power, inequality and conflict” has been a constant one throughout American history. While Du Bois explores this theme in “The Conversation of Races,” it is Patricia Hill Collins who is most helpful in providing understanding of this theme.

That is because Collins discusses the theme from the standpoint of the politics of empowerment. Du Bois discusses it more from an academic standpoint—i.e., the need for the American Negro to quit his own “slavish” ways and embrace the realization that he has something unique and helpful to offer to the American public. Du Bois appears to accept the law of segregation in so far as he embraces the differences among the races.

Collins firmly places the experiences of African-American women in the limelight to show how “power, inequality and conflict” can best be understood from the people themselves who have long had to deal with the struggle to be heard. Collins aims to “reconcile subjectivity and objectivity in producing scholarship” so as to create a “dialogue among people who have been silenced” (p. ix). By creating that dialogue, she illuminates the theme in a powerful way.

This paper will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of her approach and show why hers is most helpful in understanding the theme of “power, inequality and conflict.” What Collins (1990) shows is that there is a power struggle within the established order of American society. Others have likewise pointed this out. Angela Davis, for instance, has shown that America’s power structure is based on racist principles and that the American justice system is essentially an unjust means of controlling and enslaving (all over again) the African American.

Collins follows suit and adopts the method of the socio-political activist to draw attention to the struggles of the oppressed and the marginalized, as it is through their eyes that one can best understand what the idea of power really means. For one does not really begin to understand something until it is denied them.

Most readers who grow up benefitting from some sort of privilege cannot really understand the power they have—which is why they have to explore this concept through the lived and shared experiences of the disenfranchised. Collins allows the reader to do just that, which is why her approach is so powerful.

It is her main strength that she is able to put the reader into the shoes of African American women so that the reader can see the world from a new, wholly unique perspective and begin at last to understand what a life can feel like without opportunity, without privilege and without a sense of fairness. One of the main themes of American Transcendentalism was self-reliance. This was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s idea and one he wrote about often.

Collins begins her book Black Feminist Thought by examining the teachings of a black feminist who called on African American women to create their own sense of self-reliance.

Collins notes that Maria Stewart “urged Black women to forge self definitions of self reliance and independence” because there were too many “negative images of Black womanhood” in her own day: something had to be done to make Black women feel more empowered, and no one could do it for them—they had to do it on their own, which was why Stewart was so vociferous in her call for them to take control of their own lives and begin to create an authentic identity for themselves (p.

1). Stewart’s complaint was not unique. In fact, the negative images of African Americans had abounded following the end of slavery. Until The Negro Soldier debuted in cinemas during WWII, images of African Americans had largely been stereotypical, silly, and condescending: Hollywood routinely depicted African Americans as non-threatening, always “eating watermelons, loafing, singing and dancing” (German, 2017, p. 58).

By encouraging African American women to band together (much as Du Bois urges African American men to band together in his “Conversation of Races”), Stewart was able to become a voice for feminism, for community, for solidarity, and for “Black women’s activism and self-determination” (Collins, 1990, p. 2). Collins thus shows how power could be gained by the marginalized and oppressed through the application of the principle of self-reliance.

This principle is not very well explained by Du Bois and thus the concept of power never really feels to be fully explored or explained by Du Bois. Collins, on the other hand, gets right to the heart of the matter by setting the reader down in the shoes of one who made no bones about it: Stewart called for Black Womanhood to stand up, come together and empower themselves by embracing the spirit of self-determination. This was where the essence of power could be found.

Still, the power structure in the U.S. was fairly well determined already and it did not want competition. Thus, the African American continued to be marginalized and oppressed. Jim Crow laws were essentially upheld and justified by the Supreme Court in the 1896 Plessy v.

Ferguson decision, which promoted the idea of “separate but equal”—that is, that African Americans could consider themselves “equal” to whites but that they could not dare to share a train car with them or sit side by side one in the same restaurant. The concept of “equality” that the white power structure in America sought to advance was but a ruse—what it really expressed was inequality through and through, and Collins drives right to this point as well.

As Collins (1990) notes, “Black feminism remains important because U.S. Black women constitute an oppressed group” (p. 22). Their period of oppression has never ended and so they have never truly experience equality. Their struggle for equality has come because they refused to accept the place that the white power structure prepared for them—an invisible place like that of Ellison’s Invisible Man—a place where they were neither to be seen nor heard. Collins (1990) shows that the “overarching purpose of U.S.

Black feminist thought is to resist oppression”—i.e., to fight against the intolerance, racism, bigotry and inequality of the white power structure that seeks to keep them and their people down, impoverished, locked up, and disenfranchised (p. 22). By resisting this oppression through organized efforts, community groups, political action, protests, and education, African Americans take part in the conflict between justice and injustice, equality and inequality, power and powerlessness.

The strengths of Collins’ approach are that she is unafraid to boldly say what Du Bois had to dance around when he was writing. Du Bois had to be careful lest he upset the white power structure so badly that they never more publish a thing he had to say. But Collins is writing in a more modern time, when Black feminists and African Americans have indeed won more rights and the ability to be heard.

She is freer to say what she thinks without fear of losing her career as a writer. Thus, her strength comes from the strength that earlier generations of African Americans showed, allowing her to be stronger in voice than earlier generations before the Civil Rights Movement ever could have been. Another strength is her ability to interweave theory, personality, experience, and fact: for instance, she discusses the “humanist orientation within Black feminism” (p. 42) and uses the words of several Black feminists to explain what she means.

Collins is constantly giving the reader the words of scholars, activists, and leaders to cement her point and give more weight to her use of theory. She backs up theory with the human subjective experience, and layers this over with objective facts to document the successes, goals and conflict within the American system. One of Collins’ weaknesses, however, is that she illuminates the theme from so many angles that one begins to lose track of the different facets of the theme. For example, she describes U.S.

Black feminism in a transnational context, discusses Black feminist epistemology, provides words on the politics of empowerment, describes Black women’s love relationships, Black women and motherhood, the need to control images of matriarchy, and distinguishing features of Black Feminist thought.

There is obviously a great deal of scholarship and research that went into her work allowing her to explore and illuminate the theme of “power, inequality and conflict”—but she gives so much information from so many different directions that it is literally difficult to keep up with, register and process them all. However, if pouring so much information at the reader can be counted as a weakness, it is Collins’ only one.

Her approach to the theme is so full of interesting and vital information that the reader will surely recognize the need to read the book again and again to gain greater understanding of the topic. One read is just not enough. So while the theme could have perhaps been explored more tersely with fewer words and illustrations, Collins’ aim is not to be short-winded but rather to give a full depiction.