Gender, Race and Class: A Study Guide

In “A Theory of Oppositional Consciousness,” Chela Sandoval wrote, “It is important to remember that the form of U.S. third world feminism it represents and enacts has been influenced not only by struggles against gender domination, but by the struggles against race, class, and cultural hierarchies which mark the twentieth century in the United States. It is a mapping of consciousness in opposition to the dominant social order which charts the white and hegemonic feminist histories of consciousness…while also making visible the different ground from which a specific U.S. third world feminism rises. It is important to understand that this typology is not necessarily ”feminist’ in nature, but is rather a history of oppositional consciousness.” In that spirit, the following study guide explores intersections in gender, race and class.

• “Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination” by Patricia Hill Collins
• “The Material Basis for the Special Oppression of Women” by the Organization for Revolutionary Unity
• “The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community” by Mariarosa Dalla Costa & Selma James
• “Gender Entrapment or the Problems of Race Loyalty” by Michelle S. Jacobs
• “Gender, Migration and Domestic Labor” By Prol-Position
• “Understanding Materialist Feminism” by Suzanne MacNevin
• “The Tyranny of Structurelessness” by Jo Freeman
• “A Black Feminist Statement” by the Combahee River Collective
• “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” by Chandra Talpade Mohanty [PDF]. An influential postcolonial feminist essay.
• Poor Black Women’s Study Papers [PDF]. Offered around 1969, Pat Robinson and group present articles on the status of Black women, politically and culturally.
• “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color” by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw [PDF]. Covering fundamentals on how women of color face oppression.
• “Lectures on Liberation” by Angela Davis [PDF]. Composed of her 1969 UCLA lectures, this pamphlet brings together Black liberation organizer Angela Davis’ important writings.
• “Can the Subaltern Speak?” by Gayatri Spivak [PDF]. An influential article on how “the other” must speak on its own terms.