The Women Suffrage And The Civil Rights Movement

As we begin to study historical social movements that fought against a specific oppression or movements that fought for a sense of equality, we encounter with movements such as the Women Suffrage Movement and the Civil Rights Movement. The Women Suffrage movement agenda was based on the idea of gender equality as well as fighting against gender oppression. The members of the Women Suffrage Movement consisted entirely of White, middle class women. The Civil Rights Movement goal was racial equality and fighting against discrimination and racism in society. The Civil Rights Movement members consisted of Black men. While these movements were successful in achieving their goals, they failed to fight for the people who are oppressed by more than
Our society has existed by giving and receiving different treatments to others based on the constructed binary groups you are in. Capitalism is our main political and economic system, we constantly engage ourselves with this system whether we notice it or not. Capitalism throughout the years has constructed these binary groups. It’s a system that created classism and heterosexism, it’s a system that could not exist without racism and unfortunately, it’s a system that created sexism. These are all systems of oppressions for the “other” groups such as the poor, the gays, the blacks and the
Black feminist standpoints are not being acknowledge in scholarly sources in comparison to a white feminist. An issue with this as Patricia H. Collins discussed is that “their tenuous status in academic institutions led them to adhere to Eurocentric masculinist epistemologies so that their work would be accepted as scholarly” (Collins, 228) Intersectionality in social movements has been more progressive than intersectionality in the academy. Black Feminist are agents of knowledge, knowledge that no other woman has which makes it unique. By having Black feminists adjust their experience to match that of a dominant group, Black feminist would become “two persons” just as they were during women suffrage movement and civil rights movement and that’s not what intersectionality for a Black Feminist is about.
Intersectionality for Black Feminist became a source of knowledge for those who have multiple and overlapping identities. Black feminist writings have increasingly become more visible to the public and their writings have a narrative structure, focusing on the idea of hybridity. Black feminist experiences can show many other oppressed groups the universe of domination that has existed in society and their institutions. Intersectionality works together with Black feminism to resist such dominations