Two Articles by Patricia Hill Collins: Click on the
correct article for study guide questions.
Article 1: Some
Group Matters: Intersectionality, Situated Standpoints and Black
Feminist Thought
Article 2: The Social
Construction of Black Feminist Thought
Some Group Matters:
Intersectionality, Situated Standpoints and Black Feminist Thought by
Patricia Hill Collins
1) “Standpoint theory argues that group location in hierarchical
power relations produces shared challenges for individuals in those
groups.” 66
2) Post-modernists de-emphasize structure and, instead, focus on
individual experiences and interpretations of reality. They deny
how one’s social and material position affects experience. The
author has a problem with post-modernists.
3) “Within unjust power relations, groups remain unequal in the powers
of self-definition and self-determination. Race, class and
gender, and other markers of power intersect to produce social
institutions that, in turn, construct groups that become defined by
these characteristics.” 68
4) “The notion of standpoint refers to groups having shared histories
based on their shared location in unjust power relations.” 68
5) PROBLEM: dichotomous thinking places gender, race and class into two
and only two categories. Thus, it denies how gendered people have
races and classes. Thus, peoples’ experiences are more complex
than whether they are simply men or women. We must understand the
intersections of the different structures of oppression to understand
people’s experiences.
6) Further, the ideology of the country places “individualism” at the
center of social thought. This denies power structures and
assumes that all actions can be reduced to individual “choice.”
7) “For the most part, Black and White women live in racially
segregated, economically stratified neighborhoods.” 75 —So
what’s the consequence of this......
8) Further, “A good part of women’s subordination is organized via
family ties......For women domination and love remain intimately
linked.......women participate in naturalizing the hierarchy within the
assumed unity of interests symbolized by the family while laying the
foundations for systems of hierarchy outside family
boundaries.” 76.
Families teach people their place in the multiple systems of
hierarchies.
9) Social hierarchies are played out at three levels of
reality:
Macro (institutional) – how labor markets, media, government and
schools offer differential opportunity based on social categories
Meso — groups of people outside the institution. How do white
women or black women interpret their social opportunities. How do
they resist or accept such opportunities.
Micro – How do they different people within the groups play out their
“position” in interactions with others.
The Social Construction
of Black Feminist Thought
1) Like other subordinate groups, African-American women not only
have
developed distinctive interpretations of Black women's oppression but
have
done so by using alternative ways of producing and validating knowledge
itself. P.88
2) Viewing an Afrocentric feminist epistemology in this way
challenges
analyses claiming that Black women have a more accurate view of
oppression
than do other groups. 89
3) While a Black women's standpoint and its accompanying
epistemology stem from Black women's consciousness of race and gender
oppression,
they are not simply the result of combing Afrocentric and female values
-- standpoints are rooted in real material conditions structured by
social
class. 89.
4) Concrete Experience as a Criterion of Meaning --
wisdom not knowledge.
"...Black women cannot afford to be fools of any type, for their
devalued status denies them the protections than white skin, maleness
and
wealth confer." 89
"...those individuals who have lived through the experiences
about which they claim to be experts are more believable and
credible....:
89
5) The use of dialogue in Assessing Knowledge Claims
".....connectedness rather than separation is an essential
component
of the knowledge-validation process." 92
6) The Ethic of Caring
".......personal expressiveness, emotions, and empathy are
central
to the knowledge-validation process." 93
a) individual uniqueness
b) emotions in dialogue
c) empathy
7) The Ethic of Personal Accountability --
8) How do Afrocentric and feminist scholarship relate to all the
above?