Article by Lamara Perry.
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For the past six weeks I have developed a close relationship with the topic of oppression through race, gende, and economic disenfranchisement, specifically within the framework of the United States.
Although the exploitation of black women is not a newly discovered reality, this course was quite unique given the exploration of this focus through the narrowed scope of Black Feminist thought.
Before denouncing the child of white bourgeois idealists, it became necessary, as an African woman, to understand this matter that I have been informed, through this particular stream of thought, speaks solely to my experience as a black woman.
Black women continue to be impacted through several intersections of oppression, which have been accompanied with severe acts of violence.
Black Feminists struggle against this reality by placing black women at the center of discussion in hopes that by freeing what they attribute to be the most oppressed group within the black nation that all will ultimately share in this liberation.
While this expression may seem tempting, I have found various contradictions within this professed road to freedom.
As an African Internationalist, I align myself with the oppressed people of the world who continue to be assaulted by imperialism and subsequently, another western construction; capitalism.
This system, which operates solely provided the disenfranchisement of a given group, historically has utilized African people to literally pump blood, sweat, and resources into the building of European empires.
As white feminist have failed to acknowledge these contradictions due to their allegiance to a structure that privileges their whiteness above all else, black feminist indeed tackle questions of imperialism and capitalism, but they do so as other examples of oppression.
