Black Women's Studies: From Theory to Transformative Practice

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Notes

1. Patriarchy locates oppression in male domination and control. Heteropatriarchy articulates itself as the hegemonic norm infused as it is with practices of male domination and the suppression and exclusion of the homosexual.

2. Anna Julia Cooper (1858–1964) understood quite clearly the co-mingling of race and sex. She articulated this understanding early on, though the term ‘black feminist’ was not in use (see Cooper 1988). The leading edge of black feminist thought came out of Black Radical Lesbian Feminists who organized in Boston in the mid-1970s in the wake of the murder of 13 Black women in the Boston area. They articulated the most sophisticated construction of intersectionality to date, rooted in the dismantling of imperalism, hetereosexism, racism and classism (Combahee River Collective Statement 1977).

3. Even the work being done at Spelman University (formerly Spelman College), noteworthy as it is, can be thought about, to some extent, in relation to what is going on in the white academy. A full Spelman case study is in order and should be high on the agenda of future research.

4. See Combahee River Collective Statement 1977; Burnham 2001; and Minnich 2004.