Feminism and Intersectionality: ‘women, Race, and Class’

Angela Y. Davis is an activist, author and professor. She is an outspoken spokeswoman for the ones who are being treated cruel by authority, writing on Black freedom, and the intersections of race, gender, and class. She is the author of several books, including Women, Race, and Class.

She uncovers a side of the fight for suffrage many of us have not heard. Davis shows how the racist and classist bias of some in the women's movement have divided its own membership.Using a historical lens, Davis outlines the efforts of primarily white, bourgeois ladies to assist win enfranchisement. Davis introduced the ways in which race, class, and gender worked along to form difference.The book is split into many chapters. The author examines a distinct facet of feminist struggles for equality throughout history, although they're united by one vital theme: the notion that racism has interfered with the power of the women's rights movement to really win equality. Basically, Davis argued that the white effort didn't perceive the requirements of the black community. Davis writes extensively regarding the ways in which black women, free of slavery, were still oppressed. For an example, black women were typically confined to the worst operating conditions, that weren't abundant of associate degree improvement over additional undisguised styles of slavery. They were conjointly confined to domestic labor wherever they typically went through violence at the hands of male employers.Throughout her book she tries to give us the message “If we ever want equality, we're gonna have to fight for it together.”

Angela Davis writes about divisions in the feminist movements. Davis chronologically unfolds the position of a black woman in America. Most women will be apart of the labour force. Her main historical movements start off from the transition from slavery to freedom. There was a number of issues raised at during this time period such as women’s suffrage, avoiding rapist, and the right to birth control and abortion and lastly housework.

While reading Angela Davis book I learned a lot. Angela Davis honors this original conception of intersectionality by examining how the feminist movement has largely failed black women, lower class women, lower class black women, and women in general who fall outside of the upper to middle class white women bubble. Davis discusses a range of historical and feminist topics such as how the anti-rape movement excluded black women, how capitalism’s devaluing of housework has disadvantaged poor women, and reproductive rights and the cruel, forced sterilization of black women. I also appreciate this book because Davis also pays homage to fought for racism such as Ida B.Wells who we also learned about in class.

It is not much that I did not appreciate about the book. The only thing that I did not like was that it was so much information to take in all at once and sometimes throughout the book the language would get hard to understand. I had to really sit down and take time to understand what Davis was explaining in the book.

I would recommend this book for middle class women who may struggle to understand intersectionality. I would also recommend this book to feminist who believe women should work together for equality.  

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