When we hear the word feminist, we automatically think about women who are going against the unjust and cruel treatment by the dominance of men. Yet feminism supports equality of all the sexes through social, political, economic, and personal movements. According to the text, “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.” Black feminism really centers around valuing black women and their need for liberation and liberating and assisting the struggle against other major oppressed systems.

I think an important concept attached to this text is combining all voices and systems of oppression because not just one can be liberated. One cannot have the right, and the other one may not. It is simply hard to break down every race from its class or race from sexuality and give them all their own movement and voice because they are combined through their oppression that happens simultaneously. According to The Combahee River Collective Statement, “racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.” Many black activists such as Harriet Tubman and Ida B. Wells Barnett have always brought awareness to their sexual identity, then combined it with their political, racial, and personal views to their movement.

A snapshot that I wanted to respond to and took my interest the most was Karinys Carrillo’s snapshot of a dark skin individual putting makeup on in a bra and jeans with a short and maybe masculine haircut. I think this image relates to the idea of breaking down and analyzing the layers of black language and black feminism and where critical thinking started to go against oppression. According to the text, “We discovered that all of us because we were “smart” had also been considered “ugly,” i.e., “smart-ugly.” “Smart-ugly” crystallized how most of us had been forced to develop our intellects at great cost to our “social” lives.” We reject as a community a lot of stances and different layers to a human being because it doesn’t strategize with what we idealize or what we are trying to do. Because we don’t include them in our strategize in politics and movements, we exclude a large part of a black community and black feminism. We exclude a lot of black men, black women, black teens, and black children. This happens because we reference biological features, whether someone is feminine or masculine, and devalue proposals from others who may not support exactly what someone is trying to do. Even the idea of black feminism has a negative context because they feel the need to only value themselves and not organize around every black person.

To reference what I said at the beginning of my explanation about when we hear feminism, we think about women trying to dominate and go against men is in some ways true. Women threaten a traditional system because whether you are a male or female is where you stand in power relationships. One is not greater than the other. It always seems to be a competition to who is better at what. When in reality, they both complement and value each other and the community in different ways.