How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

the inclusion of Black women on their own terms is not a concession to “political correctness” or “identity politics”; it is necessary to validate the particular experiences of Black women in our society while also measuring exactly the levels of oppression, inequality, and exploitation experienced in African American communities.

That is to say, if you could free the most oppressed people in society, then you would have to free everyone.

The radicalization of African Americans over the course of the 1960s brought many of them to revolutionary conclusions. They came to believe that Black liberation could not actually be achieved within the confines of capitalist society.

The first was that oppression on the basis of identity—whether it was racial, gender, class, or sexual orientation identity—was a source of political radicalization.

Black women’s social positions made them disproportionately susceptible to the ravages of capitalism, including poverty, illness, violence, sexual assault, and inadequate healthcare and housing, to name only the most obvious. These vulnerabilities also made Black women more skeptical of the political status quo and, in many cases, of capitalism itself. In other words, Black women’s oppression made them more open to the possibilities of radical politics and activism.

But “identity politics” was not just about who you were; it was also about what you could do to confront the oppression you were facing.

never been measured or determined by the wealthiest and most powerful—even in those few instances when those people are Black or Brown. A more accurate view of the United States comes from the ground, not the perch of the White House. When we judge this country by the life of Charleena Lyles, a thirty-year-old, single Black mother, who was shot seven times and killed by Seattle police officers in June

Solidarity did not mean subsuming your struggles to help someone else; it was intended to strengthen the political commitments from other groups by getting them to recognize how the different struggles were related to each other and connected under capitalism. It called for greater awareness and understanding, not less.

Their analysis, “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression,” captures the dialectic connecting the struggle for Black liberation to the struggle for a liberated United States and, ultimately, the world.

Black women saw themselves not as isolated within the United States but as part of a global movement of Black and Brown people united in struggle against the colonial, imperialist, and capitalist domination of the West, led by the United States.

the point of talking about Combahee is not to be nostalgic; rather, we talk about it because Black women are still not free.

Above all else, our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that Black women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else’s but because of our need as human persons for autonomy.

We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us.

We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously.

We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy.

The major source of difficulty in our political work is that we are not just trying to fight oppression on one front or even two, but instead to address a whole range of oppressions. We do not have racial, sexual, heterosexual, or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the minimal access to resources and power that groups who possess any one of these types of privilege have. The psychological toll of being a Black woman and the difficulties this presents in reaching political consciousness and doing political work can never be underestimated.

“We exist as women who are Black who are feminists, each stranded for the moment, working independently because there is not yet an environment in this society remotely congenial to our struggle—because, being on the bottom, we would have to do what no one else has done: we would have to fight the world.”¶¶

If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.

Many Black women have a good understanding of both sexism and racism, but, because of the everyday constrictions of their lives, cannot risk struggling against them both.

Accusations that Black feminism divides the Black struggle are powerful deterrents to the growth of an autonomous Black women’s movement.

We considered ourselves to be third world women. We saw ourselves in solidarity and in struggle with all third world people around the globe. And we also saw ourselves as being internally colonized. We were internally colonized within the United States.

But of all the feminists, of the varieties of feminists that I just described, socialist feminists were best aligned, as far as I’m concerned, with the work of Combahee. Because they had a race and class analysis that was actually a solid race and class analysis as opposed to, “Oh, I don’t really care if people are different.”

We were very serious. And it was great. It’s like I got my education in college and in grad school, but I got another kind of education just being in the movement.

Black people, as I have observed us over the decades, are always interested in cultural practices and cultural expression. That’s why most of US culture that’s worth anything was created by us. As Beverly, my sister says, if it wasn’t for Black people, the only thing you would be able to listen to on the radio is news.

The only way that we can win—and before winning, the only way we can survive is by working with each other, and not seeing each other as enemies. There’s far too much of the perspective of: “You’re not like me. I’m not like you. I’m not a transgender person. I don’t give a damn whether you can go to a bathroom or not. And the fact that you’re being murdered summarily, and that your income levels keep you in poverty far more likely than somebody who is cisgender—that’s not my problem!” Those are bad politics. Really, really bad politics. And the reason it’s important, as I said, is because that’s how we win, and that’s how we survive in the meantime. There are ethical principles of struggle that you can see in any significant political intervention in history. You will see—one of the things that you should see in positive movements forward toward justice—not toward power—because there are many interventions that were just about the accrual of power, where you didn’t really have that mentality and that principle of “We must all be in this together.” But if it’s a forward movement toward justice, you will see that people of different backgrounds and different places in a social structure actually at times come together.

I might not have called what we did “original” Black feminism, but instead wrote that the reason Combahee’s Black feminism is so powerful is because it’s anticapitalist. One would expect Black feminism to be antiracist and opposed to sexism. Anticapitalism is what gives it the sharpness, the edge, the thoroughness, the revolutionary potential.

I was obsessed with the idea of what it means to be empowered. I felt keenly as a child that there were so many out-of-control adults in my life who were just disappointing [laugh] on so many levels with regard to their own adulthood and their ability to take care of children and all of that.

I was just so upset that I couldn’t be taken seriously as a committed activist—it seemed like no matter what I did, the first thing that these men were dealing with was like trying to mack me. I’m here for a political reason and you’re trying to—oh! It brings up a lot of anger all over again. Because it was again another indicator that I was on the right track with regard to inquiring, why does sexism always impede my ability to manifest my own personal power? Why? Why, why, why?

the whole notion of reproductive rights was core to the early feminist enterprise. The ability to have agency over your body. The ability to not be dead in a fucking back alley because you need to interrupt a pregnancy, and it’s your damn body. Why can’t you do what you want with it?

I think the Afrofuturists are right—the whole notion about both being in your body and escaping your body. Having control of your body and having a sense of your destiny about your body—all of that I think comes together at different times in history. And I think in our so-called second wave of feminism—it came together around the issue of sexuality, sexual openness, sexual agency, and agency over the body.

white women aren’t going to readily deal with their racism, as feminists. They aren’t going to deal with it. They really aren’t gonna. I mean, there were people, as you know, who were socialist feminists, who talked about the issue of race, and there were feminists who were—radical feminists who I think were beginning to address the issues of class and race in feminism. But in terms of the quote mainstream close quote feminist movement, every other movement in this country that’s fueled by white folks’ energy, the one thing we are not going to talk about [laugh] in a real way would be race. We just can’t go there. That’s that third rail, so—and we knew we were on to something, because you know, people started crying everywhere we turned

It became important for us to establish what we considered to be our Black feminist theory because we did a lot of coalition work and believed deeply in building coalitions to do the work necessary to destroy white supremacy. We wanted to speak in our own voice, as Black feminists.

the point wasn’t about lasting and being like, you know, some groups—like NOW. Lasting forever. Most truly radical organizations, when you’re that—when you’re the edge of that sword—you burn out. It’s like a supernova, right? It bursts onto the scene and brings illumination. But like most things that are like that, they burn themselves out. And in the end, one of the things that I regret is that we did not have a deep, deep ongoing conversation with the African American community in Boston, so that we could continue undermining homophobia in that community and continue to ask the hard questions about class war and race war in Boston.

I’m not nostalgic. I’m looking back to mine the past for what it can help us with right now, and for what it can help us pass on and create. And I still feel part of creation. When people start talking about being an elder, I’m like, “Yeah, but you know, don’t be asking about some shit that happened thirty, forty years ago.” I have an eidetic memory, and I remember it exactly. But to me, that’s not—I’m not nostalgic. It’s like not then. What about right now? What about right now? That’s me.

That’s the next step our movement has to take. What brings us together even though we don’t all share the same life? We share the same aspirations. We yearn for the same things. And so what does it mean for us then to be in deep and principled relationship with each other? And to be not just wanting to be at the table—I love me some Solange—but we don’t just want a seat at the table. We want the table. And we want to decide who is sitting at the table. Right. [laugh] Right? And then maybe we want to get rid of the table.

I think there are some of us who are socialists. I think there are some of us who are anticapitalist. There’s not enough of us who are anti-imperialist, which I actually feel like is really needed.

I think what we’re trying to offer is that when you attempt to dismantle a global system and a global organizing principle, there are all kinds of ways in which the state tries to discourage that.

I think just like we have Black feminism, we need a new vision for Black socialism. We need a new vision for Black power that doesn’t throw anyone away, and that doesn’t replicate the same shit that we have right now, which is not working for us, even when we think it does.

what I’m hearing people talk about is independent political power for Black folks. And when I think about political power I can’t separate it from electoral organizing. I do separate it from Democrats and Republicans. Electoral organizing is still a vehicle that most people participate in. And if it wasn’t important for Black folks to be in that, they wouldn’t try to take it from us.

If we take to heart the spirit and politics of the Combahee River Collective Statement, what we go away with is this: (1) never be afraid to speak truth to power, and (2) in the face of racist, misogynist threats of violence and attacks, when you have the impulse to either fight or flight, what do you do? Fight! And, (3) always ally yourself with those on the bottom, on the margins, and at the periphery of the centers of power. And in doing so, you will land yourself at the very center of some of the most important struggles of our society and our history. The final thought I will share is this. The larger-than-life Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara once said, “Every revolutionary is motivated by great feelings of love.” And we have to take from that, never hesitate to love your people, and the people who struggle alongside you, but also never be afraid to critique and struggle with those you love.