ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the study of Black women and politics and Black gender politics is best pursued from a radical Black feminist frame of reference, utilizing concepts, methodological approaches, and methods drawn from Black feminist scholars, with a priority on social and epistemic justice. It elaborates further implications of a Black feminist frame of reference for the study of Black political women and Black gender politics. A Black feminist frame of reference incorporates radical Black feminists' priority on justice as a central political value and goal. The Combahee River Collective, for instance, was critical of the liberal feminist orientation of the National Black Feminist Organization from which it emerged. This commitment to justice informs questions of social change as well as epistemology. A key question for contemporary scholars of Black women and politics and Black gender politics is the extent to which our research questions are guided by a liberal feminist framework.
