Black feminism
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Black Feminism is a branch of feminism that emerged in response to the unique social and political forces Black women face as a collective. These forces—racism and sexism together—shape their lived experience and their intersectional identity. Black feminist thought centers the experiences of Black women, and “aims to empower African-American women within the context of injustice sustained by intersecting oppressions."
According to Black feminism, race, gender, and class discrimination are all aspects of the same system of hierarchy, which bell hooks calls the "imperialist white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy"; due to their inter-dependency, they combine to create something more than experiencing racism and sexism independently. The experience of being a Black woman, according to the theory, cannot then be grasped in terms of being Black or of being a woman but must be illuminated via intersectionality, a term coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. This idea corresponds with Deborah K. King's idea of "multiple jeopardy" which claims that not only do identities intersect, as Crenshaw suggests, they multiply as well which leads to compounded forms of oppression against Black women. These lens of thinking indicate that each identity—being Black and being female—should be considered both independently and for their interaction effect, in which intersecting identities deepen, reinforce one another, and potentially lead to aggravated forms of inequality.
A Black feminist lens in the United States was first employed by Black women to make sense of how white supremacy and patriarchy interacted to inform the particular experiences of enslaved Black women. Black activists and intellectuals formed organizations such as the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW). Black feminism rose to prominence in the 1960s, as the civil rights movement excluded women from leadership positions, and the mainstream feminist movement largely focused its agenda on issues that predominantly impacted middle-class White women. From the 1970s to 1980s, Black feminists formed groups that addressed the role of Black women in Black nationalism, gay liberation, and second-wave feminism. Alice Walker, bell hooks, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Davis, and Patricia Hill Collins have emerged as leading academics on Black feminism, while some Black celebrities have encouraged mainstream discussion of Black feminism.