On their own and for their own : African-American, Chicana, and white feminist movements in the 1960s and 1970s
In this work, I ask and answer the following central question: what conditions accounted for the emergence of three organizationally distinct feminist movements during the second wave? I argue that structurally, African-American and Chicana women lagged behind white women in the race/class hierarchy; they felt relatively deprived vis a vis white feminists, so that the potential for joint feminist organizing was diminished from the start. The experiences of emerging feminists in the "parent" movements of the New Left, Civil Rights/Black Liberation, and Chicano nationalism show that feminists were saddled with competing loyalties that required them to readjust their political goals. The pull of competing loyalties was more acute for Black and Chicana feminists, who faced both gender and racial oppression. Black feminists critiqued both Black and white women's liberation for middle-class biases, declaring themselves a "vanguard center" simultaneously against racial, gender and class oppression. Chicana feminists mobilized quickly within their movement, benefitting from their later emergence and the existence of clearly articulated feminist goals. Lastly, I argue that the crowded movement sector contributed to the formation of distinct feminist movements on two levels, practical and ideological. Women ran the day-to-day operations of movements; feminist emergence threatened the economy of activism at a time when movements were actively competing. Moreover, feminist ideology crossed racial/ethnic lines. White feminists developed a universalist gender ideology, but universalism had an adverse impact on African American and Chicana feminists, since universalism made it easier for nationalist men to declare feminism a retrograde political choice. Additionally, an ethos of "organizing one's own" as the only legitimate radical politics led to a consensual separation of emerging feminisms along racial/ethnic lines. I conclude that only by looking at the joint impact of inequalities among women, prior movement loyalties and the configuration of the competitive social movement sector can we understand the emergence of feminisms--plural form of the noun--in the second wave
Thesis, Dissertation, English, 1998