“Is There (Really) A Black Feminist Movement?” is a four-part online series that serves as a political provocation to discuss the convergences and divergences of Black feminist movements and politics.
This series comes out of a question –– “Is there really a Black feminist movement?” –– that was posed by Black Women Radicals’ executive director and founder, Jaimee A. Swift, during our Black Feminism Lives! Summit in August of last year. The question was met with much conversation from panelists and audience members alike, with some believing that there is a movement and others vehemently expressing that there is not one.
Rooted in bell hooks’ critique of Black feminist essentialism in the chapter, “Revolutionary Black Women: Making Ourselves Subject” in Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992) and Audre Lorde’s essay, “Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger” (1984), the mission of the series is to learn and embrace Black feminist difference; analyze the power of Black feminist organizing, both past and present; and to discuss the ruptures, silences, betrayals, hurt, and even harm that are perpetuated in our work to ensure the strength, sustainability, and possibilities of our Black feminist movement building.