What is Womanism?

Black Feminism essentially argues that sexism and racism are inextricable from one another. Forms of feminism that strive to overcome sexism and class oppression but ignore or minimize race can perpetuate racism and thereby contribute to the oppression of many people, including women. Black feminists argue that the liberation of Black women entails freedom for all people, since it would require the end of racism, sexism, and class oppression.

The current incarnation of Black Feminism is a political/social movement that grew out of a sense of feelings of discontent with both the Civil Rights Movement and the Feminist Movement of the 1970s. Not only did the Civil Rights Movement primarily focus only on the oppression of black men, but many black women faced severe sexism within Civil Rights groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The Feminist Movement focused on the problems faced by white women. For instance, earning the power to work outside of the home was not an accomplishment for black feminists; they had been working all along.This feminist agenda ignored the fact that many women were not housewives and had been working all their lives to help support their families. In particular, African American women were already working women, but not out of choice, and not as a matter of personal fulfillment. Also, many first-wave white feminists had purposefully excluded women of color in their movement. Neither movement confronted the issues that concerned black women specifically. Because of their intersectional position, black women were being systematically disappeared by both movements. Black women began creating theory and developing a new movement which spoke to the combination of problems, sexism, racism, classism, etc., that they had been battling.

The word womanism was first used in 1863, with much the same meaning as "feminism" (source: Oxford English Dictionary). Later, it was revived by feminist author Alice Walker and became a commonly used term that indicated specifically African American feminism (also known as Black feminism). It has since reverted to a more encompassing version of feminism that crosses lines of race and class.

Walker first used the term in context in her collection of essays In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose.

Walker created the womanist movement out of these two separate movements. With the increasing use of the term, both African American Studies and Women's Studies programs began to incorporate womanism into university courses, and historians are regarded as womanist historians if they have incorporated the views and experiences of African American women in their accounts of history.

Alice Walker's Black Feminism
One of the theories that evolved out of this movement was Alice Walker's Womanism. Angela Davis was one of the first people who formed an argument centered on intersectionality; she did this in her book, "Women, Race, and Class." Kimberle Crenshaw, prominent feminist law theorist, gave the idea a name while discussing Identity Politics in her essay, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Color." Another Feminist theorist is Patricia Hill Collins; much of her work concerns the politics of black feminist thought and oppression. While many of these theorists were beginning their writing, Black Feminist groups were forming. One of these groups is The Combahee River Collective, founded by Barbara Smith; this group's primary goal was "the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking."

In the 1980s, Dr. Clenora Hudson-Weems created the term "African Womanism" and an accompaning paradigm to describe the unique viewpoint of those women formerly referred to as Womanists.

Click here for a great list of books on womanism and black feminist identity.

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