ABSTRACT
Teaching women’s studies classes for more than ten years, I’ve seen exciting changes. Right now teachers and students face new challenges in the feminist classroom. Our students are no longer necessarily already committed to or interested in feminist politics (which means we are not just sharing the “good news” with the converted). They are no longer predominantly white or female. They are no longer solely citizens of the United States. When I was a young graduate student teaching feminist courses, I taught them in Black Studies. At that time, women’s studies programs were not ready to accept a focus on race and gender. Any curriculum focusing specifically on black women was seen as “suspect,” and no one was yet using the catch-all phrase “women of color.” In those days, the students in my feminist classrooms were almost all black. They were fundamentally skeptical about the importance of feminist thinking or feminist movement to any discussion of race and racism, to any 112analysis of black experience and black liberation struggle. Over time, that skepticism has deepened. Black students, female and male, continually interrogate this issue. Whether in the classroom or while giving a public lecture, I am continually asked whether or not black concern with the struggle to end racism precludes involvement with feminist movement. “Don’t you think black women, as a race, are more oppressed than women?” “Isn’t the women’s movement really for white women?” or “Haven’t black women always been liberated?” tend to be the norm. Striving to answer questions like these has led to shifts in my ways of thinking and writing. As a feminist teacher, theorist, and activist, I am deeply committed to black liberation struggle and want to play a major role in re-articulating the theoretical politics of this movement so that the issue of gender will be addressed, and feminist struggle to end sexism will be considered a necessary component of our revolutionary agenda.
