Soul On Ice Feminist Analysis

The troubles faced by black women had largely been ignored by groups and organizations they supported. Often was the case that black women’s place in organizations such as the Black Panther Party (BPP) was strictly seen as servile where “black women could change themselves to better aid the struggle” But black women played critical roles in the BPP regardless of the masculinist rhetoric that embodied much of the organization. Gender roles would be judged within the BPP as the ideologies of its members clashed. Furthermore, black women were not only misplaced within black organizations. Their interests were neglected amongst feminist organizations mostly led by middleclass white women. These neglected interests were not small by any means where
According to his concepts, black men were “‘supermasculine menials’ who, during slavery, were stripped of their mental abilities”5 while black women were merely “characterized as ‘subfeminine’…”5 Cleaver would go on to state that black men and white men essentially fight over respective sexual and reproductive control over white and black women. Such statements degraded black women’s position in society and were attempts towards moving away from a supposed matriarchal black society that had castrated black
NBFO’s Toni Cade would in her essay, The Black Women, form a “critique of both the women’s movement and male-led black politics...[where] gender, race, and class worked together to oppress everyone.”8 The vast reach of oppression was even present in black feminist organizations. The Combahee River Collective consisted of black feminists who broke with the NBFO because “it failed to address the needs of the poor and spoke exclusively to heterosexual women.” The black feminists understood that any form of oppression would not lead to the necessary social changes in society. Its ideology was “fundamental to any truly revolutionary ideology” because it included all those who were