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

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

So I wonder if you could say more about that. And let me—I’ll just add that I think that there’s certainly a right-wing kind of ridiculous caricature of identity politics. But I think that the concept is also sort of seen in a particular way by liberals or the left, in that for some the notion of identity politics seems to be that unless you suffer a particular kind of oppression, that you have no role in the struggle against it. And so there’s this real emphasis on experience as the main sort of—as the main kind of way that gives you the ability to fight a particular oppression. That if you don’t have that experience, then you really have no role. And so it’s almost as if by embracing one’s identity, that you give up on any sort of hope or notion that there is such a thing as solidarity. We never meant that. I mean, we actually worked in coalitions. I just described working in coalitions with socialist feminists. We worked in coalitions with other people, too. We certainly showed up for causes that might not be the expected ones for people who had the identities that we had. Demita [has] talked about standing up for union organizing, and for men of color who were being excluded from work sites and from construction jobs, because of racism. And I often cite that example, too, because I guess both of us will never forget the looks on the faces of the guys—who were primarily guys—who were demonstrating. And then we come, you know, and we demonstrate with them. You know, they...