{"id":68,"date":"2019-08-30T06:32:13","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T06:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hrdp05.epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/?post_type=chapter&p=68"},"modified":"2019-08-30T07:07:05","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T07:07:05","slug":"feminist-legal-theory-and-generation-of-rights-part-ii-b-black-feminism","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/hrdp05\/chapter\/feminist-legal-theory-and-generation-of-rights-part-ii-b-black-feminism\/","title":{"rendered":"Feminist Legal Theory and Generation of Rights part II – Black Feminism"},"content":{"raw":"
\"epgp<\/a>\r\n<\/span><\/div>\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n

Introduction<\/strong>:<\/p>\r\n

By the end of this chapter the reader will be more familiar with the historical oppression that women of colour have experienced in the USA from slavery until the present day. The reader will be introduced to three figures who have come to represent the Black American feminist movements and what their efforts aim to achieve. By way of an example the reader will also be introduced to a case that went to court in America in the 1970s and how the court, as an organ of the state failed to recognise the discrimination that women of colour experienced and thus also failed to provide a solution. Efforts to ensure the lived social, political, economic and cultural rights of Black American women remain alive today and the reader will also be introduced to how these efforts are now being lead.<\/p>\r\n

Black Feminism<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

The status of women in society has overwhelmingly always been less than that of men. The status of people of colour in the West has overwhelmingly always been less than that of Caucasian people. The combination of prevalent racism and sexism within society has led to women of colour experiencing double discrimination. These double (or more) co-existing forms of discrimination lead Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw to coin the term intersectionality (see previous module) in 1989 to reflect the experiences of black American women specifically, and women of colour generally, in the USA.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n\"\"\r\n

Historical perspectives of discrimination on the basis of race and against women<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

The combination of racism and male domination of women during slavery within the US was enacted into legislation in 1664. The Anti-Amalgamation law (Maryland) declared that any \u201cfreeborn woman [who] shall intermarry with any slave\u2026 shall serve the masters of such slaves during the life of her husband; and that all the issue [children] of such free born women, so married shall be slaves as their fathers were.\u201d The power to legally change a woman\u2019s status from free to slave, to \u2018serve the masters of such slaves\u2019 demonstrates how women were not seen as full, equal humans, equal to that of white men, but as property to be controlled, coerced and enslaved. That their status as slaves was determined by that of their husband\u2019s legal status, and not that the husband should become free upon marriage to a free born woman, reinforced women\u2019s lesser status to men with their legal identity being dependent upon their husband\u2019s status.<\/p>\r\n

Fighting Slavery and Patriarchy<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

The basis of black feminism is rooted in the movement for the abolition of slavery. Sojourner Truth, a black woman born into slavery, became one of the most famous 19th-century reformers in the black feminist movement. Her speech delivered in 1851 Ain\u2019t I A Woman<\/em> asserts that \u201cslave status denied Black women motherhood, protection from exploitation, and feminine qualities, calling attention to the intersection of race and gender.\u201d Truth highlighted the specific experience of black women in America: she claimed she bore children but they were sold into slavery by the slave owner; she compared the treatment given to white women where they are carried over ditches and helped into carriages and notes that she receives none of this attention because of her race; further she argues that she has been worked \u2018as much as a man\u2019 because her skin colour reduced her status to property to be worked for profit and rendered her gender invisible. During slavery black women were not only made to work out in the fields and do as much manual labour as the men, they were also subjected to sexual violence by both the white slave owners and their black male counterparts.<\/p>\r\n\"\"\r\n

By the end of World War II slavery had long been legally abolished but in parts of America the separate but equal doctrine remained. With a united community participating in the economy more than ever before the black American community were better able to collectively make demands and have them heard. \u201cThe post World War II generation of black youth was the first to be able to minimally partake of certain educational and employment options, previously closed completely to black people. Although our economic position is still at the very bottom of the American capitalist economy, a handful of us have been able to gain certain tools as a result of tokenism in education and employment which potentially enable us to more effectively fight our oppression.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

In the 1950s when the mainstream feminist movement became more organized and articulated common demands of women these demands were often the needs of middle class, heterosexual, white women. The dominant demands for women therefore did not encapsulate or represent the needs of black women. In the 1960s when the Black American Civil Rights movement became significant it mostly articulated the needs of black men. Women\u2019s voices were side-lined and in some cases black women\u2019s rights activists were encouraged to quieten their demands \u2013 black women were told first we will get rights for black people then we will get rights for black women. Therefore, although \u201csexism looms as large as racism as an oppressive force in the lives of black women\u201d black women were often asked to choose between fighting for sex or race equality and not both\u00a0concurrently. In some cases, there was even pressure for black women to not fight for the rights of black women from other black women as peer pressure and dominant voices had stressed that racial equality was the larger need and that the gender equality campaign was \u201ca white woman thing.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

As black women their needs were not prioritized in either the feminist or the black American civil rights movement. Their needs and specific lived reality received the least attention and subsequent support. In terms of a social hierarchy of privilege in the West this meant white men were (and arguably still are) the most privileged, white women are\/were second, black men third and black women last. bell hooks has argued that \u201c[n]o other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women\u2026 When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women\u201d hooks further argues that black women\u2019s and white women\u2019s lived experiences have never been the same as although both groups of women \u201cwere both subject to sexist victimization, as victims of racism black women were subjected to oppressions no white woman was forced to endure.\u201d The different forms of oppression that black women experienced was also voiced by The Combahee River Collective in 1977. They stated: \u201cWe believe that sexual politics under patriarchy is as pervasive in black women\u2019s lives as are the politics of class and race. We also find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We know that there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely racial nor solely sexual, e.g., the history of rape of black women by white [men] on as a weapon of political repression.\u201d<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n\"\"\r\n

As radical feminism wants the entire legal system to be re-built to accommodate and therefore be representative of women\u2019s difference to the \u2018male norm\u2019 leading black feminist legal theorists want the analytical structures of feminist theory and anti-racist discourse to be \u201crethought and recast.\u201d19 Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw believes that due to the double discrimination of both sex and race \u201cthe intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, and analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner on which Black women are subordinated.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

\u201cWhen I say I am a Black feminist, I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my Blackness as well as my womanness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n

Black feminism is based on the principle that women of colour experience at least two forms of co-existing disadvantage, that of being a woman and of belonging to a minority race. Combining these two distinguishing characteristics often results in black women experiencing sexism and racism in their pursuit to engage with social institutions and structures are they are therefore more likely to experience a larger number of barriers in their pursuit of equal rights. These barriers which form obstacles to black women\u2019s full and equal participation within society compound one another resulting in coloured women\u2019s marginalized position within society, unequal to the position of either white women, or coloured men.<\/p>\r\n

In 1989 Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw wrote a seminal article titled: \u2018Demarginalising the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.\u2019 Within this Crenshaw suggests that when disadvantage is examined using a \u201csingle-axis framework\u201d for example that women are unequal to men on the basis of sex alone, it \u201cerases Black women in the conceptualization, identification and remediation of race and sex discrimination by limiting inquiry to the experiences of otherwise-privileged members of the group.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Crenshaw argues that if an analytical structure to examine sexism within society exists we must question who created this structure. If white, middle-class women devised the structure to explore and critique white men\u2019s oppression against them then the structure will only be able to understand the position of women of colour to the extent that they can conform or become similar to white women socially and economically. Their race therefore is not fully recognized as a ground upon which they may also experience discrimination. Further this analytical framework will not be able to recognize the discrimination women of colour experience as a separate, multi-dimensional lens is needed. Without recognition of intersectional forms of discrimination co-existing and reinforcing one another, eg to be discriminated against because of a person\u2019s sex, and race, and potentially religion, level of physical\/psychological ability, sexual orientation and more, the framework \u201cmarginalizes those who are multiply-burdened and obscures claims that cannot be understood as resulting from discrete sources of discrimination.\u201d A solution is then to adopt an intersectional framework that examines intersectionality and hopes to then be able to recognize harm and propose solutions.<\/p>\r\n

Martha Chammallas in her work Introduction to Feminist Legal Theory shows how intersectionality actually functions. \u201c..theorists tried to explain how race , class, sex and other factors intersected in<\/em> multiple ways to create distinctive forms of discrimination for specific subgroups of people. Intersectional feminists insist that traditional focus of anti-discrimination law on discrete mutually exclusive kinds of discrimination must be re-examined. For example, if the situation of African-American women has to be fully addressed the habit of thinking about \u201cwomen and minorities\u201d has to\u00a0<\/em>be broken. Such conceptual dichotomies tend to focus attention on white women and black men, subsequently erasing black women from the equation<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

This concept of intersectionality when applied specifically to black women may also be understood through Patricia Hill Collins\u2019 use of the concept of the matrix of domination,<\/em> to show how two different societal features, male domination as well as the idea of white supremacy, overlap to create situations in which black women face extreme oppression, which are at times far more unequal and discriminatory than the prejudicial treatment which white women experience.<\/p>\r\n

Emma DeGraffenreid et al. v General Motors Assembly Division<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

The Emma DeGraffenreid et al. v General Motors Assembly Division, St. Louis case that went to the District Court in Missouri, USA in 1976 is a good example of both intersectional discrimination and how law, as a social institution, marginalised the experiences of black women by not giving them recognition. This case was filed by Emma DeGraffenreid and four other black American women as plaintiffs against their former employer General Motors. The plaintiffs sought a determination from the court that the termination of their employment contracts, as part of a \"last hired-first fired\" policy was discriminatory. Their central argument was that the termination of their employment, resulting in them, black women, losing their jobs more than white women, or black men perpetuated the effect of General Motors's past race and sex discrimination. They therefore alleged that this action was a violation of Title VII of the US Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal law proscribing discrimination in employment on, amongst other factors race or sex.<\/p>\r\n

Before 1970, General Motors employed only one black female; she served as a janitor. GM conceded that until May 1, 1970, it excluded all women from assembly line work at its St. Louis plant except in areas where the women could always be sent home after a nine-hour shift without disrupting production when the plant worked longer hours. Pursuant to 1970, GM did employ some women in the cushion room, where automobile seats and upholstery are produced. However, no black females served as employees in the cushion room. In justification for the almost complete exclusion of women from its production facilities, General Motors stated in its brief: Until shortly before<\/em> employment was opened to females in all departments at GMAD St. Louis, state laws and regulations prohibited the employment of females for more than nine hours per day, and prohibited an employer from allowing women to work around moving machinery. <\/em>General Motors had placed restrictions on the height and weight of its production employees, which also may have reduced the employment of females. GM began disregarding these state protective laws on or about May 1, 1970. These protective laws rather than a corrective approach failed to enable women to fully enjoy human rights on an equal basis with men, for example the ability to: work at times convenient to the individual; access different employment positions within the workforce regardless of their race or sex; and to seek and be rewarded with financial remuneration within different categories of work with different values accorded to them.<\/p>\r\n

GM employed one black female employee, as a janitor. GM hired 6 black female hourly production workers in 1970, 11 in 1971, none in 1972, and 137 in 1973. In late 1973, GM employed 155 black women out of approximately 8,500 employees. Immediately before the January 1974 layoffs, the GM St. Louis plant employed 8,561 workers; after the layoff, only 6,378 remained. Layoffs affected workers with dates of hired after May 24, 1968, including all of GM's black women production employees, save the one janitor. The population statistics disclose that black women represent nearly 22% of the population of metropolitan St. Louis and yet they only represented 1.8% of the workforce at General Motors. DeGraffenreid argued that she applied for employment with GM in St. Louis in 1968, and again on June 5, 1973 when she was subsequently hired.<\/p>\r\n

When hearing the case, the District Court wanted to decide whether the plaintiffs were claiming that they had been discriminated against on the basis of race or sex.<\/p>\r\n

The court noted that:<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

\u201cThe plaintiff[s] allege that they are suing on behalf of black women, and that therefore this lawsuit attempts to combine two causes of action into a new special sub-category, namely, a combination of racial and sex-based discrimination. The Court notes that plaintiff have failed to cite any decisions\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>which have stated that black women are a special class <\/em><\/strong>to be protected from discrimination. The Court's own research has failed to disclose such a decision. The plaintiffs are clearly entitled to a remedy if they have been discriminated against. However, they should not be allowed to combine<\/strong> statutory remedies to create a new \u2018super-remedy\u2019 which would give them relief beyond what the drafters of the relevant statutes intended<\/strong>. Thus, this lawsuit must be examined to see if it states a cause of action for race discrimination, sex discrimination, or alternatively either, but not a\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>combination of both<\/em><\/strong>.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Emphasis added.<\/em><\/p>\r\n

The above excerpt from the case demonstrates that the court chose to interpret the intent of the Title VII non-discrimination provisions and that even if two or more grounds listed as grounds which discrimination may not be perpetrated because of exists, eg race and sex, a \u2018super-remedy\u2019 could not be applied, if it is more than the drafters intended to provide. The court therefore fails to recognise that intersecting forms of discrimination that may disproportionately affect women of colour may exist. But not providing recognition of the both\/and approach that the third generation of feminist legal theory adopts the court plays a role in narrowing and reducing the legal protection available to the plaintiffs. Second, by stating that the plaintiffs should have cited decisions to substantiate their claim that they are a special class of people the court places a burden upon the plaintiffs which doesn\u2019t recognize that the Title VII law is relatively new and such case law may not to exist. The evidentiary burden is therefore a further obstacle for the plaintiffs in their pursuit of justice.<\/p>\r\n

When the court continues its consideration of the \u2018special class\u2019 identity of black women the court states: \u201cThe legislative history surrounding Title VII does not indicate that the goal of the statute<\/strong> was to create a new classification of \u2018black women\u2019 who would have greater standing than, for example, a black male<\/strong>. The prospect of the creation of new classes of protected minorities, governed only by the mathematical principles of permutation and combination, clearly raises the prospect of opening the hackneyed Pandora's box.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

The court\u2019s resistance to the recognition of the specific situation of black women as opposed to black people where men and women are equal demonstrates a lack of gender sensitive, rights based justice. By referring to the principle of Title VII provisions, if read expansively, as being a \u201chackneyed Pandora's box\u201d as opposed to broad legal protection the court demonstrates its active resistance to recognise their disadvantage and how could have served as a tool to further their equality. This also demonstrates that the court has more interest in \u2018judicial economy\u2019 and continuing the status quo than in recognising the lived reality and situation of the black women and providing justice to them.<\/p>\r\n

Patricia Hill Collins, a leading American feminist sociologist follows Crenshaw\u2019s theory of intersectionality and argues that \u201calthough all African-American women encounter racism, social class differences among African-American women influence how racism is experienced.\u201d Hill Collins also references homophobia within the black community to be an added form of discrimination for black-American non-heterosexual conforming peoples and that \u201c[o]ther factors such as ethnicity, region of the country, urbanisation and age\u201d will all differently affect a woman\u2019s lived reality. Hill Collins also cites Gwaltney\u2019s writing that although a man and woman\u2019s mind is the same the \u201cbusiness of living makes women use their minds in ways that men don\u2019t even have to think about.\u201d Hill Collins therefore claims that as black women will all experience differing forms of discrimination at differing or variable levels there can be no one \u201cBlack woman\u2019s standpoint\u201d<\/em> but a Black women\u2019s<\/em> standpoint.<\/p>\r\n

To deepen a contextual understanding of Black women\u2019s experiences Hill Collins developed four core themes within black feminist ideology. These are:<\/p>\r\n\r\n

    \r\n \t
  1. \u201cBlack women empower themselves by creating self-definitions and self-valuations that enable them to establish positive, multiple images and to repel negative controlling representations of black womanhood.\u201d<\/li>\r\n \t
  2. \u201cBlack women confront and dismantle the \u2018overarching\u2019 and \u2018interlocking\u2019 structure of domination in terms of race, class and gender opposition.\u201d<\/li>\r\n \t
  3. \u201cBlack women intertwine intellectual thought and political activism\u201d and,<\/li>\r\n \t
  4. \u201cBlack women recognize a distinct cultural heritage that gives them energy and skills to resist and transform daily discrimination.\u201d<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

    The feminist movement in the West from its inception failed to accommodate and represent the different experiences of Black women living in the West. From the suffrage movements where the white suffrage lobby aligned themselves with the Black women\u2019s lobby only to then claim racial homogeneity with white men after it was clear that the dominant voice in Black suffrage was the men\u2019s movement that wasn\u2019t accommodating women\u2019s demands, to other generations of feminism that failed to represent Black women\u2019s different, intersecting forms of discrimination black women have historically been the most socially disadvantaged group in the West.<\/p>\r\n

    Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

    Today women like Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw, who co-founded the African American Policy Forum, who in addition to lecturing in universities and at public events and seek to achieve \u201cactive intervention in the political arena\u201d to ensure race and women\u2019s issues are represented and heard are hoping that claims that society is moving towards a post-racial society will one day become a reality.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
    you can view video on Feminist Legal Theory and Generation of Rights part II - Black Feminism<\/strong><\/td>\r\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\nReference<\/strong>\r\n
      \r\n \t
    1. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice<\/em> Harvard University Press, USA, (1993)<\/li>\r\n \t
    2. Karen J. Maschke (Editor), Gender and American Law (Routledge, Third Avenue, New York, 1997), Catharine A. Mackinnon, On Difference and Dominance: Sex Discrimination (1984)<\/li>\r\n \t
    3. Jahnvi Andharia, The Dalit Women\u2019s Movement in India: Dalit Mahila Samiti<\/li>\r\n \t
    4. Human Rights Watch, Indian Government Tries to Block Caste Discussion (22 Feb. 2001), available at http:\/\/hrw.org\/english\/docs\/2001\/02\/22\/india270.htm<\/li>\r\n \t
    5. CERD Concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination: INDIA 2007, Doc no: CERD\/C\/IND\/CO\/19 - 5 May 2007<\/li>\r\n \t
    6. Uma Chakravarti, 'Conceptualising Brahmanical Patriarchy in Early India: Gender, Caste, Class and State', in Economic and Political Weekly,<\/em> April 3, 1993, 579.<\/li>\r\n \t
    7. \u2018Hidden Apartheid: Caste Discrimination against India\u2019s \u201cUntouchables\u201d Shadow Report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination\u2019 The Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice, NYU School of Law and Human Rights Watch, February 2007, Vol.19, No.3<\/li>\r\n \t
    8. National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights<\/li>\r\n \t
    9. Varsha Chitnis, Gender and Caste in India: Some Implications for the Feminist Movement<\/em>, as in, Searching for New Paradigms: Understanding Class and Caste within a World of Global Inequalities (2007)<\/li>\r\n \t
    10. We should all be Feminists: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, April 12, 2013.https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc<\/li>\r\n \t
    11. Different Voices and Experience: Women\u2019s Status, Men\u2019s States: Catherine A. Mackinnon, October 22, 2008. http:\/\/www.lse.ac.uk\/newsAndMedia\/videoAndAudio\/channels\/publicLecturesAndEvents\/pla yer.aspx?id=134<\/li>\r\n \t
    12. Sharmila Rege, Dalit Women Talk Differently: A Critique of 'Difference' and Towards a Dalit<\/em> Feminist Standpoint Position<\/em>, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 33 (1998) http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/4407323<\/li>\r\n \t
    13. \u2018The Killing of Thangjam Manorama Devi\u2019 Human Rights Watch Report 2008 India. Available at: http:\/\/www.hrw.org\/reports\/2008\/india0908\/3.htm<\/li>\r\n \t
    14. Gendering the Arab Spring: Nadje Al Ali http:\/\/www.soas.ac.uk\/staff\/staff37137.php<\/li>\r\n \t
    15. Intersectional Feminism for Beginners: A basic breakdown of third-wave feminism concepts for the genuinely curious and the terribly ignorant. http:\/\/intersectionalfeminism101.tumblr.com\/<\/li>\r\n \t
    16. Female Iraqi Academics in Post-Invasion Iraq: Roles Challenges and Capacities: Nadje Al Ali http:\/\/www.soas.ac.uk\/staff\/staff37137.php<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>","rendered":"
      \"epgp<\/a>
      \n<\/span><\/div>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      Introduction<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

      By the end of this chapter the reader will be more familiar with the historical oppression that women of colour have experienced in the USA from slavery until the present day. The reader will be introduced to three figures who have come to represent the Black American feminist movements and what their efforts aim to achieve. By way of an example the reader will also be introduced to a case that went to court in America in the 1970s and how the court, as an organ of the state failed to recognise the discrimination that women of colour experienced and thus also failed to provide a solution. Efforts to ensure the lived social, political, economic and cultural rights of Black American women remain alive today and the reader will also be introduced to how these efforts are now being lead.<\/p>\n

      Black Feminism<\/strong><\/p>\n

      The status of women in society has overwhelmingly always been less than that of men. The status of people of colour in the West has overwhelmingly always been less than that of Caucasian people. The combination of prevalent racism and sexism within society has led to women of colour experiencing double discrimination. These double (or more) co-existing forms of discrimination lead Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw to coin the term intersectionality (see previous module) in 1989 to reflect the experiences of black American women specifically, and women of colour generally, in the USA.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      \"\"<\/p>\n

      Historical perspectives of discrimination on the basis of race and against women<\/strong><\/p>\n

      The combination of racism and male domination of women during slavery within the US was enacted into legislation in 1664. The Anti-Amalgamation law (Maryland) declared that any \u201cfreeborn woman [who] shall intermarry with any slave\u2026 shall serve the masters of such slaves during the life of her husband; and that all the issue [children] of such free born women, so married shall be slaves as their fathers were.\u201d The power to legally change a woman\u2019s status from free to slave, to \u2018serve the masters of such slaves\u2019 demonstrates how women were not seen as full, equal humans, equal to that of white men, but as property to be controlled, coerced and enslaved. That their status as slaves was determined by that of their husband\u2019s legal status, and not that the husband should become free upon marriage to a free born woman, reinforced women\u2019s lesser status to men with their legal identity being dependent upon their husband\u2019s status.<\/p>\n

      Fighting Slavery and Patriarchy<\/strong><\/p>\n

      The basis of black feminism is rooted in the movement for the abolition of slavery. Sojourner Truth, a black woman born into slavery, became one of the most famous 19th-century reformers in the black feminist movement. Her speech delivered in 1851 Ain\u2019t I A Woman<\/em> asserts that \u201cslave status denied Black women motherhood, protection from exploitation, and feminine qualities, calling attention to the intersection of race and gender.\u201d Truth highlighted the specific experience of black women in America: she claimed she bore children but they were sold into slavery by the slave owner; she compared the treatment given to white women where they are carried over ditches and helped into carriages and notes that she receives none of this attention because of her race; further she argues that she has been worked \u2018as much as a man\u2019 because her skin colour reduced her status to property to be worked for profit and rendered her gender invisible. During slavery black women were not only made to work out in the fields and do as much manual labour as the men, they were also subjected to sexual violence by both the white slave owners and their black male counterparts.<\/p>\n

      \"\"<\/p>\n

      By the end of World War II slavery had long been legally abolished but in parts of America the separate but equal doctrine remained. With a united community participating in the economy more than ever before the black American community were better able to collectively make demands and have them heard. \u201cThe post World War II generation of black youth was the first to be able to minimally partake of certain educational and employment options, previously closed completely to black people. Although our economic position is still at the very bottom of the American capitalist economy, a handful of us have been able to gain certain tools as a result of tokenism in education and employment which potentially enable us to more effectively fight our oppression.\u201d<\/p>\n

      In the 1950s when the mainstream feminist movement became more organized and articulated common demands of women these demands were often the needs of middle class, heterosexual, white women. The dominant demands for women therefore did not encapsulate or represent the needs of black women. In the 1960s when the Black American Civil Rights movement became significant it mostly articulated the needs of black men. Women\u2019s voices were side-lined and in some cases black women\u2019s rights activists were encouraged to quieten their demands \u2013 black women were told first we will get rights for black people then we will get rights for black women. Therefore, although \u201csexism looms as large as racism as an oppressive force in the lives of black women\u201d black women were often asked to choose between fighting for sex or race equality and not both\u00a0concurrently. In some cases, there was even pressure for black women to not fight for the rights of black women from other black women as peer pressure and dominant voices had stressed that racial equality was the larger need and that the gender equality campaign was \u201ca white woman thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

      As black women their needs were not prioritized in either the feminist or the black American civil rights movement. Their needs and specific lived reality received the least attention and subsequent support. In terms of a social hierarchy of privilege in the West this meant white men were (and arguably still are) the most privileged, white women are\/were second, black men third and black women last. bell hooks has argued that \u201c[n]o other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women\u2026 When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women\u201d hooks further argues that black women\u2019s and white women\u2019s lived experiences have never been the same as although both groups of women \u201cwere both subject to sexist victimization, as victims of racism black women were subjected to oppressions no white woman was forced to endure.\u201d The different forms of oppression that black women experienced was also voiced by The Combahee River Collective in 1977. They stated: \u201cWe believe that sexual politics under patriarchy is as pervasive in black women\u2019s lives as are the politics of class and race. We also find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We know that there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely racial nor solely sexual, e.g., the history of rape of black women by white [men] on as a weapon of political repression.\u201d<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      \"\"<\/p>\n

      As radical feminism wants the entire legal system to be re-built to accommodate and therefore be representative of women\u2019s difference to the \u2018male norm\u2019 leading black feminist legal theorists want the analytical structures of feminist theory and anti-racist discourse to be \u201crethought and recast.\u201d19 Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw believes that due to the double discrimination of both sex and race \u201cthe intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, and analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner on which Black women are subordinated.\u201d<\/p>\n

      \u201cWhen I say I am a Black feminist, I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my Blackness as well as my womanness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

      Black feminism is based on the principle that women of colour experience at least two forms of co-existing disadvantage, that of being a woman and of belonging to a minority race. Combining these two distinguishing characteristics often results in black women experiencing sexism and racism in their pursuit to engage with social institutions and structures are they are therefore more likely to experience a larger number of barriers in their pursuit of equal rights. These barriers which form obstacles to black women\u2019s full and equal participation within society compound one another resulting in coloured women\u2019s marginalized position within society, unequal to the position of either white women, or coloured men.<\/p>\n

      In 1989 Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw wrote a seminal article titled: \u2018Demarginalising the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.\u2019 Within this Crenshaw suggests that when disadvantage is examined using a \u201csingle-axis framework\u201d for example that women are unequal to men on the basis of sex alone, it \u201cerases Black women in the conceptualization, identification and remediation of race and sex discrimination by limiting inquiry to the experiences of otherwise-privileged members of the group.\u201d<\/p>\n

      Crenshaw argues that if an analytical structure to examine sexism within society exists we must question who created this structure. If white, middle-class women devised the structure to explore and critique white men\u2019s oppression against them then the structure will only be able to understand the position of women of colour to the extent that they can conform or become similar to white women socially and economically. Their race therefore is not fully recognized as a ground upon which they may also experience discrimination. Further this analytical framework will not be able to recognize the discrimination women of colour experience as a separate, multi-dimensional lens is needed. Without recognition of intersectional forms of discrimination co-existing and reinforcing one another, eg to be discriminated against because of a person\u2019s sex, and race, and potentially religion, level of physical\/psychological ability, sexual orientation and more, the framework \u201cmarginalizes those who are multiply-burdened and obscures claims that cannot be understood as resulting from discrete sources of discrimination.\u201d A solution is then to adopt an intersectional framework that examines intersectionality and hopes to then be able to recognize harm and propose solutions.<\/p>\n

      Martha Chammallas in her work Introduction to Feminist Legal Theory shows how intersectionality actually functions. \u201c..theorists tried to explain how race , class, sex and other factors intersected in<\/em> multiple ways to create distinctive forms of discrimination for specific subgroups of people. Intersectional feminists insist that traditional focus of anti-discrimination law on discrete mutually exclusive kinds of discrimination must be re-examined. For example, if the situation of African-American women has to be fully addressed the habit of thinking about \u201cwomen and minorities\u201d has to\u00a0<\/em>be broken. Such conceptual dichotomies tend to focus attention on white women and black men, subsequently erasing black women from the equation<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

      This concept of intersectionality when applied specifically to black women may also be understood through Patricia Hill Collins\u2019 use of the concept of the matrix of domination,<\/em> to show how two different societal features, male domination as well as the idea of white supremacy, overlap to create situations in which black women face extreme oppression, which are at times far more unequal and discriminatory than the prejudicial treatment which white women experience.<\/p>\n

      Emma DeGraffenreid et al. v General Motors Assembly Division<\/strong><\/p>\n

      The Emma DeGraffenreid et al. v General Motors Assembly Division, St. Louis case that went to the District Court in Missouri, USA in 1976 is a good example of both intersectional discrimination and how law, as a social institution, marginalised the experiences of black women by not giving them recognition. This case was filed by Emma DeGraffenreid and four other black American women as plaintiffs against their former employer General Motors. The plaintiffs sought a determination from the court that the termination of their employment contracts, as part of a “last hired-first fired” policy was discriminatory. Their central argument was that the termination of their employment, resulting in them, black women, losing their jobs more than white women, or black men perpetuated the effect of General Motors’s past race and sex discrimination. They therefore alleged that this action was a violation of Title VII of the US Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal law proscribing discrimination in employment on, amongst other factors race or sex.<\/p>\n

      Before 1970, General Motors employed only one black female; she served as a janitor. GM conceded that until May 1, 1970, it excluded all women from assembly line work at its St. Louis plant except in areas where the women could always be sent home after a nine-hour shift without disrupting production when the plant worked longer hours. Pursuant to 1970, GM did employ some women in the cushion room, where automobile seats and upholstery are produced. However, no black females served as employees in the cushion room. In justification for the almost complete exclusion of women from its production facilities, General Motors stated in its brief: Until shortly before<\/em> employment was opened to females in all departments at GMAD St. Louis, state laws and regulations prohibited the employment of females for more than nine hours per day, and prohibited an employer from allowing women to work around moving machinery. <\/em>General Motors had placed restrictions on the height and weight of its production employees, which also may have reduced the employment of females. GM began disregarding these state protective laws on or about May 1, 1970. These protective laws rather than a corrective approach failed to enable women to fully enjoy human rights on an equal basis with men, for example the ability to: work at times convenient to the individual; access different employment positions within the workforce regardless of their race or sex; and to seek and be rewarded with financial remuneration within different categories of work with different values accorded to them.<\/p>\n

      GM employed one black female employee, as a janitor. GM hired 6 black female hourly production workers in 1970, 11 in 1971, none in 1972, and 137 in 1973. In late 1973, GM employed 155 black women out of approximately 8,500 employees. Immediately before the January 1974 layoffs, the GM St. Louis plant employed 8,561 workers; after the layoff, only 6,378 remained. Layoffs affected workers with dates of hired after May 24, 1968, including all of GM’s black women production employees, save the one janitor. The population statistics disclose that black women represent nearly 22% of the population of metropolitan St. Louis and yet they only represented 1.8% of the workforce at General Motors. DeGraffenreid argued that she applied for employment with GM in St. Louis in 1968, and again on June 5, 1973 when she was subsequently hired.<\/p>\n

      When hearing the case, the District Court wanted to decide whether the plaintiffs were claiming that they had been discriminated against on the basis of race or sex.<\/p>\n

      The court noted that:<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \u201cThe plaintiff[s] allege that they are suing on behalf of black women, and that therefore this lawsuit attempts to combine two causes of action into a new special sub-category, namely, a combination of racial and sex-based discrimination. The Court notes that plaintiff have failed to cite any decisions\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>which have stated that black women are a special class <\/em><\/strong>to be protected from discrimination. The Court’s own research has failed to disclose such a decision. The plaintiffs are clearly entitled to a remedy if they have been discriminated against. However, they should not be allowed to combine<\/strong> statutory remedies to create a new \u2018super-remedy\u2019 which would give them relief beyond what the drafters of the relevant statutes intended<\/strong>. Thus, this lawsuit must be examined to see if it states a cause of action for race discrimination, sex discrimination, or alternatively either, but not a\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>combination of both<\/em><\/strong>.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Emphasis added.<\/em><\/p>\n

      The above excerpt from the case demonstrates that the court chose to interpret the intent of the Title VII non-discrimination provisions and that even if two or more grounds listed as grounds which discrimination may not be perpetrated because of exists, eg race and sex, a \u2018super-remedy\u2019 could not be applied, if it is more than the drafters intended to provide. The court therefore fails to recognise that intersecting forms of discrimination that may disproportionately affect women of colour may exist. But not providing recognition of the both\/and approach that the third generation of feminist legal theory adopts the court plays a role in narrowing and reducing the legal protection available to the plaintiffs. Second, by stating that the plaintiffs should have cited decisions to substantiate their claim that they are a special class of people the court places a burden upon the plaintiffs which doesn\u2019t recognize that the Title VII law is relatively new and such case law may not to exist. The evidentiary burden is therefore a further obstacle for the plaintiffs in their pursuit of justice.<\/p>\n

      When the court continues its consideration of the \u2018special class\u2019 identity of black women the court states: \u201cThe legislative history surrounding Title VII does not indicate that the goal of the statute<\/strong> was to create a new classification of \u2018black women\u2019 who would have greater standing than, for example, a black male<\/strong>. The prospect of the creation of new classes of protected minorities, governed only by the mathematical principles of permutation and combination, clearly raises the prospect of opening the hackneyed Pandora’s box.\u201d<\/p>\n

      The court\u2019s resistance to the recognition of the specific situation of black women as opposed to black people where men and women are equal demonstrates a lack of gender sensitive, rights based justice. By referring to the principle of Title VII provisions, if read expansively, as being a \u201chackneyed Pandora’s box\u201d as opposed to broad legal protection the court demonstrates its active resistance to recognise their disadvantage and how could have served as a tool to further their equality. This also demonstrates that the court has more interest in \u2018judicial economy\u2019 and continuing the status quo than in recognising the lived reality and situation of the black women and providing justice to them.<\/p>\n

      Patricia Hill Collins, a leading American feminist sociologist follows Crenshaw\u2019s theory of intersectionality and argues that \u201calthough all African-American women encounter racism, social class differences among African-American women influence how racism is experienced.\u201d Hill Collins also references homophobia within the black community to be an added form of discrimination for black-American non-heterosexual conforming peoples and that \u201c[o]ther factors such as ethnicity, region of the country, urbanisation and age\u201d will all differently affect a woman\u2019s lived reality. Hill Collins also cites Gwaltney\u2019s writing that although a man and woman\u2019s mind is the same the \u201cbusiness of living makes women use their minds in ways that men don\u2019t even have to think about.\u201d Hill Collins therefore claims that as black women will all experience differing forms of discrimination at differing or variable levels there can be no one \u201cBlack woman\u2019s standpoint\u201d<\/em> but a Black women\u2019s<\/em> standpoint.<\/p>\n

      To deepen a contextual understanding of Black women\u2019s experiences Hill Collins developed four core themes within black feminist ideology. These are:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. \u201cBlack women empower themselves by creating self-definitions and self-valuations that enable them to establish positive, multiple images and to repel negative controlling representations of black womanhood.\u201d<\/li>\n
      2. \u201cBlack women confront and dismantle the \u2018overarching\u2019 and \u2018interlocking\u2019 structure of domination in terms of race, class and gender opposition.\u201d<\/li>\n
      3. \u201cBlack women intertwine intellectual thought and political activism\u201d and,<\/li>\n
      4. \u201cBlack women recognize a distinct cultural heritage that gives them energy and skills to resist and transform daily discrimination.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        The feminist movement in the West from its inception failed to accommodate and represent the different experiences of Black women living in the West. From the suffrage movements where the white suffrage lobby aligned themselves with the Black women\u2019s lobby only to then claim racial homogeneity with white men after it was clear that the dominant voice in Black suffrage was the men\u2019s movement that wasn\u2019t accommodating women\u2019s demands, to other generations of feminism that failed to represent Black women\u2019s different, intersecting forms of discrimination black women have historically been the most socially disadvantaged group in the West.<\/p>\n

        Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

        Today women like Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw, who co-founded the African American Policy Forum, who in addition to lecturing in universities and at public events and seek to achieve \u201cactive intervention in the political arena\u201d to ensure race and women\u2019s issues are represented and heard are hoping that claims that society is moving towards a post-racial society will one day become a reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
        you can view video on Feminist Legal Theory and Generation of Rights part II – Black Feminism<\/strong><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

        Reference<\/strong><\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice<\/em> Harvard University Press, USA, (1993)<\/li>\n
        2. Karen J. Maschke (Editor), Gender and American Law (Routledge, Third Avenue, New York, 1997), Catharine A. Mackinnon, On Difference and Dominance: Sex Discrimination (1984)<\/li>\n
        3. Jahnvi Andharia, The Dalit Women\u2019s Movement in India: Dalit Mahila Samiti<\/li>\n
        4. Human Rights Watch, Indian Government Tries to Block Caste Discussion (22 Feb. 2001), available at http:\/\/hrw.org\/english\/docs\/2001\/02\/22\/india270.htm<\/li>\n
        5. CERD Concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination: INDIA 2007, Doc no: CERD\/C\/IND\/CO\/19 – 5 May 2007<\/li>\n
        6. Uma Chakravarti, ‘Conceptualising Brahmanical Patriarchy in Early India: Gender, Caste, Class and State’, in Economic and Political Weekly,<\/em> April 3, 1993, 579.<\/li>\n
        7. \u2018Hidden Apartheid: Caste Discrimination against India\u2019s \u201cUntouchables\u201d Shadow Report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination\u2019 The Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice, NYU School of Law and Human Rights Watch, February 2007, Vol.19, No.3<\/li>\n
        8. National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights<\/li>\n
        9. Varsha Chitnis, Gender and Caste in India: Some Implications for the Feminist Movement<\/em>, as in, Searching for New Paradigms: Understanding Class and Caste within a World of Global Inequalities (2007)<\/li>\n
        10. We should all be Feminists: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, April 12, 2013.https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc<\/li>\n
        11. Different Voices and Experience: Women\u2019s Status, Men\u2019s States: Catherine A. Mackinnon, October 22, 2008. http:\/\/www.lse.ac.uk\/newsAndMedia\/videoAndAudio\/channels\/publicLecturesAndEvents\/pla yer.aspx?id=134<\/li>\n
        12. Sharmila Rege, Dalit Women Talk Differently: A Critique of ‘Difference’ and Towards a Dalit<\/em> Feminist Standpoint Position<\/em>, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 33 (1998) http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/4407323<\/li>\n
        13. \u2018The Killing of Thangjam Manorama Devi\u2019 Human Rights Watch Report 2008 India. Available at: http:\/\/www.hrw.org\/reports\/2008\/india0908\/3.htm<\/li>\n
        14. Gendering the Arab Spring: Nadje Al Ali http:\/\/www.soas.ac.uk\/staff\/staff37137.php<\/li>\n
        15. Intersectional Feminism for Beginners: A basic breakdown of third-wave feminism concepts for the genuinely curious and the terribly ignorant. http:\/\/intersectionalfeminism101.tumblr.com\/<\/li>\n
        16. Female Iraqi Academics in Post-Invasion Iraq: Roles Challenges and Capacities: Nadje Al Ali http:\/\/www.soas.ac.uk\/staff\/staff37137.php<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"menu_order":6,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":["severyna-magill"],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[58],"license":[],"class_list":["post-68","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","contributor-severyna-magill"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/hrdp05\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/hrdp05\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/hrdp05\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/hrdp05\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/hrdp05\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":537,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/hrdp05\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/68\/revisions\/537"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/hrdp05\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/hrdp05\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/68\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/hrdp05\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/hrdp05\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/hrdp05\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/hrdp05\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}