The following quotes from The Combahee River Collective statement, “We might use our position at the bottom to make a clear leap into revolutionary action. 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.” What this is saying is that black women are considerably the most oppressed of all, and that is what this statement is saying. There is intersectionality throughout oppression, as we have learned, but black women are touch by them all. You would know that the systems of oppression were broken if black women were free because they are at the bottom, oppressed by all of the systems. There is not one system that has not kept them bound and oppressed. I think the first statement, “We might use our position at the bottom to make a clear leap into revolutionary action”, is saying that they have nothing to lose, it would be a revolutionary action for them because their freedom would require total dismantling of capitalism, sexism, racism, and the patriarchy.

In The Combahee River Collective Statement, when they are discussing identity politics they are taking about how the work you do for your own situation that is built around your own identity and the identity of those who identify with you, opposed to working for a cause outside of yourself, is the most powerful work because it creates a politic that is so personal and undeniably authentic. In Paris is burning this is also happening since they are creating the space they’re in for their own personal needs, expression, rights, to create freedom for themselves as a group. It is not for others, it is a movement that is personal.

In this reading Capitalism and the profound affects it has on black women is discussed in relation to the socialist concepts of The Combahee River Collective. Capitalism is directly related to race and gender because it is built around hierarchies, and those who built it and maintain it are the white patriarchal structure that racism and sexism are oppressed by.