Black Female Activists Quotes

[W]hat is historically new is the alliance with the cultural left. Back in the 1960s, many economically minded New Deal liberals and even socialists wanted nothing to do with the cultural warriors of the New Left, thinking them shallow and feckless. No more. There is today not much distance between the postmodern cultural leftists and the democratic socialists like [Bernie] Sanders who want to focus mainly on economics. The two sides can run afoul of each other, as Sanders did at a Netroots Nation conference in July 2015 when black activists shouted him off the stage. But these disputes have more to do with different priorities than with ideological divisions. Philosophically there is not much daylight between Sanders and the hard-core cultural warriors of the post-modern left. The same is true for Hillary Clinton. She, in fact, tries to appeal to both sides at the same time. She sells herself not only as a postmodernist feminist candidate who will be the first female president of the United States, but as a classic fighter for the economically downtrodden. The fusion has been the strength of her candidacy, because is represents the broadest appeal to all the constituents of the Democratic Party.

No individual or single organization can speak for nonwhite people, women, the world's colonized populations, workers, or any demographic category as a whole--although nonwhite, female and queer, and labor activists from the Global North routinely and arrogantly claim this right. Black liberation, civil rights, feminist, labor, and decolonization struggles clearly reveal that if resistance is even slightly effective, THE PEOPLE WHO STRUGGLE ARE IN DANGER. The choice is not between danger and safety but rather between the uncertain dangers of revolt and the certainty of a world with no future. Original pamphlet: Who is Oakland. April 2012. Quoted in: Dangerous Allies. Taking Sides.

her imperative to “think dialectically”—a maxim drawn from her study of the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. Because reality is constantly changing, we must constantly detect and analyze the emerging contradictions that are driving this change. And if reality is changing around us, we cannot expect good ideas to hatch within an ivory tower. They instead emerge and develop through daily life and struggle, through collective study and debate among diverse entities, and through trial and error within multiple contexts. Grace often attributes her “having been born female and Chinese” to her sense of being an outsider to mainstream society. Over the past decade she has sharpened this analysis considerably. Reflecting on the limits of her prior encounters with radicalism, Grace fully embraces the feminist critique not only of gender discrimination and inequality but also of the masculinist tendencies that too often come to define a certain brand of movement organizing—one driven by militant posturing, a charismatic form of hierarchical leadership, and a static notion of power seen as a scarce commodity to be acquired and possessed. Grace has struck up a whole new dialogue and built relationships with Asian American activists and intellectuals since the 1998 release of her autobiography, Living for Change. Her reflections on these encounters have reinforced her repeated observation that marginalization serves as a form of liberation. Thus, she has come away impressed with the particular ability of movement-oriented Asian Americans to dissect U.S. society in new ways that transcend the mind-sets of blacks and whites, to draw on their transnational experiences to rethink the nature of the global order, and to enact new propositions free of the constraints and baggage weighing down those embedded in the status quo. Still, Grace’s practical connection to a constantly changing reality for most of her adult life has stemmed from an intimate relationship with the African American community—so much so that informants from the Cointelpro days surmised she was probably Afro-Chinese.3 This connection to black America (and to a lesser degree the pan-African world) has made her a source of intrigue for younger generations grappling with the rising complexities of race and diversity. It has been sustained through both political commitments and personal relationships. Living in Detroit for more than a half century, Grace has developed a stature as one of Motown’s most cherished citizens: penning a weekly column for the city’s largest-circulation black community newspaper; regularly profiled in the mainstream and independent media; frequently receiving awards and honors through no solicitation of her own; constantly visited by students, intellectuals, and activists from around the world; and even speaking on behalf of her friend Rosa Parks after the civil rights icon became too frail for public appearances.

It didn’t help when Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael made his notorious comment to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee: “The position of women in SNCC is prone.

Oh, I’m a female and I believe that everybody should definitely have their rights,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re Black, white, straight, gay, women, men, whatever. I think everybody that has something to offer should be allowed to give it and be paid for it. But, no, I don’t consider myself a feminist, not in the term that some people do, because I just think we all should be treated with respect.” Her answer might break your heart if, like me, you speak the language of college-educated activists. But I speak another language, too —poor country— and can attest that as an independent teenager in small-town Kansas who believed women and men should receive equal treatment, I might have given a similar answer. So much of what ails our country now, politically, is that we do not share a common set of definitions. In the context of her native class, Parton’s gift to young women is not a statement but an example. One wishes for both from a hero. But, if I could only have one of the two, I’d pick the latter.

A Labour party that fails to connect with its traditional working-class base is unlikely to find itself in power again. Nor has the problem been limited to occupants of Labour’s front bench. In February 2018, it was reported that the Young Labour equalities conference would exclude anyone who did not identify as either BAME [black, Asian and minority ethnic], disabled, LGBT or female. The organisers explained their reasoning in an article for the Guardian: ‘In theory, the only people “excluded” are the most over-represented in politics; anyone who is straight, white, male and able-bodied. Luckily for them, they are not oppressed in politics. They do not need to attend a conference about liberation and under-representation. We do not believe this to be a controversial statement’. Once again, activists were busy undertaking their opponents’ work for them.