Double the Oppression

Age, Race, Class, and Sex

Being black and being a woman is no joke. My everyday life consists of having to fight for rights to my body and to go home safely without being shamed for my skin tone. Today’s readings hit the nail completely on the head. It gives everyone an insight on the things that black women have to go through just because they are women and black. In the text, Age, Race, Class, and Sex, Lorde stated, “For in order to survive, those of us for whom oppression is as American as apple pie…”. My colleague told me one day that, “Racism is so American culture, that when you fight against it, citizens feel as though you are fighting against America. Also reading this text I feel as though, educating someone can be tiring because of the simple fact that it has been decades and centuries trying to educate and fight for the equality that we are still fighting this day. This reading gave a look at stereotypes that are common being in the black feminist and of the LGBTQ community. I find it most interesting when Lorde talks about the similarities between the oppressions of being black, being a woman, and part of the LGBTQ community.

The Combahee River Collective Statement

This text really put some insight on the struggles of being liberated as a woman and a black woman. Often times we hide our struggles, so we don’t be seen as the “bitter” woman or too masculine when we are talking about what our everyday struggles are and this text really shared some insight on that! That I enjoyed reading and learn things that even I, not so much as didn’t know, but didn’t too much recognize or kind of brush it off. A quote that kind of put it in a simple context for me was ” We exists as women who are Black who are feminists, each stranded for the moment, working independently because there is not yet an environment in this society remotely congenial to our struggle—because, being on the bottom, we would have to do what no one else has done: we would have to fight the world.” This was also such an amazing read as well. Touching basis on black lesbian feminist in comparison to “Age, Race, Class, and Sex.”

Femininity-Love- Race

The songs for this week were ones that have always been on my playlist and have been with me in times where oppressions were taking over. Or when I just want to feel like the black woman I am. Honestly, I think that every reading was in correlation with all the songs, so it was very difficult to choose texts to link together because they all come from one message and one message and that is how we live day by day with our struggles as black women and feminists in a predominately white male society. Nina Simone and Solange have some of the same concepts and approaches when it comes to boundaries black women have set for us, such as phrases like “Don’t touch my hair, when it’s the feelings I wear” and “my hair is woolly, my back is strong, strong enough to take the pain.”