ABSTRACT
The Negro Problem. The Woman Question. Two phrases used to encompass the dilemmas progressive social movements historically grappled with as they attempted to deal with difference, or how to situate women and blacks within rubrics for social and economic revolution. For the old guard Left, Marx did not adequately deal with the race problem. How was the progressive Left to deal with African Americans, while completely ignoring the presence of African American radicals? Women were also left untheorized, although Engels broached the subject of the home as a reproductive sphere and women’s unpaid domestic labor. Still, women were a question, a conundrum, often set aside with a dismissive, “Women? What about them?”
