Further To Fly: Black Women and the Politics of Empowerment

146 Pages·2000·1.473 MB·English

by  Sheila Radford-Hill

Further to Fly
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Further to Fly
Black Women and
the Politics of Empowerment
Sheila Radford-Hill
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis • London
Copyright 2000 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint lyrics from
Further to Fly,by Paul Simon. Copyright 1990 Paul Simon. Used by permission of the publisher,
Paul Simon Music.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system,or
transmitted,in any form or by any means,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording,or
otherwise,without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South,Suite 290
Minneapolis,MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Radford-Hill,Sheila,1949–
Further to fly :Black women and the politics of empowerment / Sheila
Radford-Hill.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8166-3474-2 (HC :alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8166-3475-0 (PB :alk.
paper)
1. Afro-American women—Political activity. 2. Afro-American
women—Economic conditions. 3. Afro-American women—Social conditions.
4. Feminist theory—United States. 5. Feminism—United States.
I. Title.
E185.86.R26 2000
305.48'896073—dc21 00-009073
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
There may come a time
When you’ll be tired
As tired as a dream that wants to die
And further to fly
Further to fly
Further to fly
Further to fly.
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Contents
Preface ix
Introduction xv
1. Toward an Authentic Feminism 1
2. Uses and Limits of Black Feminist Theory and
the Decline of Black Women’s Empowerment 11
3. Gender and Community:The Power of Transcendence 25
4. The Crisis of Black Womanhood 39
5. The Economic Context of Black Women’s Activism 55
6. The Particulars of Un-Negation 69
7. Feminist Leadership for the New Century 81
8. Feminism,Black Women,and the Politics of Empowerment 95
Epilogue:Suffer but Never Silently 103
Notes 105
Selected Bibliography 111
Index 117
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Preface
I read Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex ([1953] 1974) in 1971. My friend
Alix Mitchell lent me the book and insisted that I read it. Although the length of
the book was forbidding and much of it was decidedly over my twenty-two-
year-old head,I remember being struck by its cogent and unrelenting analysis of
the second-class status of women. Much of de Beauvoir’s theory connected with
and seemed to explain many of my own experiences in the peace, civil rights,
and black nationalist movements. Although I did not understand it all,the book
definitely left me with a new lens through which to view the social order. The
idea that gender consciousness could lead to a new understanding of the power
relations in society and culture transformed my thinking. Although I could not
have foreseen this in 1971, I have spent the last twenty-eight years thinking
about the implications of gender consciousness for social change. During those
years,feminist theory has significantly contributed to our knowledge of how the
world is or should be organized. Its promise of gender liberation through collec-
tive struggle has not,however,been fully realized.
Like many of us,I was a 1970s political activist whose experience with the
gender hierarchies of radical protest movements was up close and painful. My
campus peace activities, for example, provided me with numerous occasions to
see and experience the marginal status of women in radical politics. My partici-
pation in the black nationalist movement directly exposed me to the gender dilem-
masresulting from the inherent contradictions of black power politics. Because
the politics of the liberation movements of the 1960s failed to include any sub-
stantive discussion of gender issues, some of us thought that feminist writing
about sexual politics could in some way be applied to our situation. In those days,
there was contentious interest in whether feminism offered an intellectual frame-
workthat could engender social change. I remember many and occasionally heated
conversations about the utility of feminism both as a framework for challenging
black women’s positions in political movements and as a strategy for improving
the social condition of black people.
ix