Collins

BackgrouND

BackgrouND

• Collins is interested in the experiences of Black women both inside and outside of academia
• Collins is a professor of Sociology at University of Maryland

• Collins work provides framework for the work of prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde

Reconceptualizing Race, Class, and Gender

Race, Class and Gender

• Black feminist thought fosters a fundamental paradigmatic shift that rejects additive approaches to oppression

• Black feminist thought sees these distinctive systems of oppression as being part of one overarching structure of domination

• Black feminist notions of family reflect this reconceptualization process
• Bloodmothers
• Othermothers

Matrix of Domination

Matrix of Domination

• The significance of seeing race, class, and gender as interlocking systems of oppression is that such an approach fosters a paradigmatic shift of thinking inclusively about other oppressions, such as age, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity

• Race, class, and gender represent the three systems of oppression that most heavily affect Black women
• Racial oppression has fostered historically concrete communities among Black and other racial/ethnic groups

• The Matrix of Domination looks at social

structures and their interlocking systems of privilege and discriminaiton. Gender does not operate the same way for everyone.

Resisting Matrix of Domination

Resisting Matrix of Domination

• Matrix of domination operates by seducing, pressuring, or forcing Black women to replace individual and cultural ways of knowing with the dominant group's specialized thought

• Race, gender, and class for Black women reveal that different systems of oppression may rely in varying degrees on systemic versus interpersonal mechanisms of domination

Black Women as Agents of Knowledge

• An ongoing tension exists for Black women as agents of knowledge, a tension rooted in conflicting demands of Afrocentricity and feminism

• Black feminists are critical of how Black culture(s) may oppress women

• These same women have a parallel desire as members of an oppressed racial group to affirm the value of culture and traditions 

Black women as agents of knowledge

Dialogue and Empathy

Dialogue and Empathy

• Afrocentric feminist thought allows African-American women to bring a Black women's standpoint to larger epistemological dialogues concerning the nature of the matrix of domination

• African-American women have been victimized by race, gender, and class oppression
• Portraying Black women as solely as passive, recipients of racial and sexual abuse stifles notions that Black women can actively work to change circumstances and bring about changes
• Presenting Black women solely as heroic figures who engage in resisting oppression on all fronts minimizes the very real costs of oppression

• The existence of Black feminist thought suggests that there is always choice and power to act