ABSTRACT
Placing African-American women’s experiences in a transnational context simultaneously provides a new angle of vision on US Black feminism as a social justice project and decenters the White/Black binary that has long plagued US feminism. Race, class, gender, and sexuality all remain closely intertwined with nation. In exploring these connections, it is important to distinguish among the terms nation, nation-state, and nationalism. Nationalism is a political ideology that is expressed by any group that self-defines as a distinctive people or nation. Patterns of common differences among US Black women and women within and from Black diasporic societies speak to the saliency of one form of oppression over another across different social settings. Black women’s poverty across diverse societies remains associated with their responsibility for children, often without sufficient male support. The rapid increase in US Black mother-child families in the 1960s and 1970s reflects industrial policies, labor market reorganization, and government policies.
