Black Feminist Movement

While I do believe there is still a need for black women to promote equality and fairness for themselves in the black community and in American society as a whole, I also believe that while the Black feminist Movement combined, with Affirmative Action, has advanced black women in the area of education and in the workplace, it has also caused considerable harm to the black family and to relationships between black men and women.

Black women have made significant gains in education and in the workplace. But I don't think it was because white America saw that black women faced triple oppression racially, sexually, and socio-economically, and wanted to lift them up. I believe that black women were educated, hired, and promoted to silence the Black Movement and the Women's Movement by "catering" to two oppressed groups in one person. This so-called acceptance into society was great for black women, because it meant that they were admitted in to more collages, entered into fields that had been closed to them, earned more money, and became more independent. Black men were left in the cold, and saw their places on college campuses, in the workplace, and eventually as breadwinners in the home decrease as compared to black women.
I believe this division has played a major part lead to what we see going on now in the black community and in black man/woman relationships. Staring in high school, more black girls/women are in the classrooms because black boys are not supported, encourage, or expected to excel in many public schools. At the college level, black men are practically non-existent as students and as instructors. In corporate and not so corporate America, more black women hold positions at every level. More and more women are owning and running businesses, buying homes, raising children alone, and cry out that they don't need or want a black man to live a successful life. Every time I hear a black women say that I cringe. I can't help but think that the Black Feminist Movement played a part in that. But I don't for one minute believe it was ever intended to weaken our community and families. Black feminists only wanted to have black men and white feminists to understand that they were oppressed too, and deserved to have their voice heard in the struggle. It's sad that it has been turned around and used as a tool of white America to keep black men and women from communicating and working together to better ourselves as a whole.