Welcome to the discussion post for our February book: Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis! Blanket CW for discussions of sexual assault, misogyny, and racism. Also heads-up: I'm neither Black nor American so if this OP fucks up anything, please tell me.

This book is divided into 13 different chapters + topics. I'll sum up the important points (as I see them) briefly, to refresh everyone's memory.

• 1 - The Legacy of Slavery. Covers the role of Black women in the US under slavery. The division between labour for enslaved men and women was not as rigid as for white people; unlike white women, whose role as workers decreased due to industrialisation, Black women were not "trapped as housewives". Rape was specifically used as a weapon of domination against enslaved people, to break the will of Black women and demoralise Black men.
• 2 - The Anti-Slavery Movement and the Birth of Women's Rights. Explains why so many white women became abolitionists. With industrialisation of women's jobs, white women's status fell and they felt solidarity with Black men and women. Middle-class women now also had leisure time, and started getting into social reform. The birth of the Women's Rights movement was entwined the already established Black Liberation movement.
• 3 - Class and Race in the Early Women's Rights Campaign. Early focus of women's rights was the lack of property rights after marriage - women were thus dependent on men. Of course that's just the white middle class. Much of the textile industry was white (and/or immigrant) women, who were more interested in worker's rights.
• 4 - Racism in the Woman Suffrage Movement. White women helped fight for abolitionism, but now demanded suffrage as though it was an agreed-upon reward. They refused to acknowledge that Black people lived in very precarious economic and social situations and Black men gaining the vote was necessary for some form of control. A petulant tone of "so now even those uneducated [racist slur] can vote and we can't?!"
• 5 - The Meaning of Emancipation According to Black Women. Although Black women were officially emancipated, they still primarily worked in fields or as domestic servants (cf "Aunt Jemima" stereotypes) for white families and continued to be sexually exploited by white men. "Convict leases" - Black people could be arrested for no reason and basically be used as slaves again; New York "slave markets" where Black women would go in the morning to be picked out by white families to work as their domestic servants for the day.
• 6 - Education and Liberation: Black Women's Perspective. Education was an extremely important priority, during slavery and especially afterwards. This was a point of solidarity with white women, who helped with education, even when white solidarity with Black people was diminishing overall and despite being also threatened with violence.
• 7 - Women Suffrage at the Turn of the Century: The Rising Influence of Racism. Suffragists sold out Black women in favour of gaining Southern white women's vote. White supremacy was linked with male supremacy as the cult of woman-as-mother grew; all very 14 words. Eugenics in women's movement - "the race shall be purified" through women.
• 8 - Black Women and the Club Movement. Black women's clubs were formed as a response to lynchings and sexual abuse, not as charity orgs like white women's. These clubs were also primarily led by middle-class Black women, but as they had to challenge racism, there was more link with working class women. Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell were major leaders (in rivalry with each other); the most important goal was stopping lynching.
• 9 - Working Women, Black Women, and the History of the Suffrage Movement. Unionisation was starting up among women in textile industries (sewing women). Unlike white unions, Black organisers welcomed women into their union; Black men were also more supportive of the woman's vote. Middle-class suffragists were unwilling to accept prioritisation of Black Liberation or class solidarity. Working women had priorities other than the vote, which was supposed to make them equal with their men.. who were still oppressed by capitalism; their enemy was the boss, not their husbands.
• 10 - Communist Women. Few women in early communist movement, but growing numbers by early 1900s. For some class struggle was superior to all, but others fought racism. Several key women discussed: Lucy Parsons (Black labour leader, devoted to class struggle above all else); Ella Reeve Bloor (hitchhiking white orator who helped organise strikes and was an ally to Black workers); Capitola Tasker (Black organiser at the Paris Women's Conference, compared European 30s fascism to racism in the US); Anita Whitney (white communist who spoke against lynching when it was rare for white women to do so); Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (white labour leader who wrote that Black women were caught in a threefold bond - exploited as women, as Black people, and as workers); Claudia Jones (Black activist who wrote article about how Black women were always indispensable in fight for liberation, chided labour for not recognising Black women organising in domestic service, and explained that white women bear a special responsibility to Black women due to the "madam-maid" dynamic).
• 11 - Rape, Racism and the Myth of the Black Rapist. Black women are not very active in the anti-rape movement because 1) rape charge is indiscriminately aimed at Black men regardless of their guilt or innocence, and 2) Black women rape survivors who to go the police are often then victimised again by police. Rape against Black women during slavery, like rape against Vietnamese women, was a tool of oppression/control more than about white men's personal sexual desires. The myth of Black men being rapists came about after slavery and the Civil War (during which there were no accusations of Black men raping white women). It was a political invention to justify lynching and thus keep Black people down. White women were responsible for lynching via false accusations, active participation in lynching, and allowing their children to watch and become indoctrinated. Davis argues that privileged men are more likely to rape than working class men, as they are more likely to get away with it.
• 12 - Racism, Birth Control, and Reproduction Rights. Birth control is a fundamental pre-requisite for the emancipation of women, but again Black women are not very active in the abortion rights movement. Abortion for Black women (esp enslaved Black women) was more desperation than "wanting to work" like for white women abortion advocates. Furthermore, the early abortion movement was tied up with eugenics. White (middle-class) women having less children was condemned and considered "race suicide"; poor women, immigrant women, Black women had a "moral obligation" to have less kids. Birth control shifted to population control. Hundreds of thousands of Black, Chicana, Puerto Rican, and Native American women were sterilised without consent to lower their birth rate.
• 13 - The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective. Housework is invisible, repetitive, exhausting, unproductive, and uncreative. This chapter discusses how to solve the issue of the distribution of housework: housewives being paid by the state? men doing half? specialised well-paid team of people to come by and do housework?

So:

• General thoughts about the book?
• Was something particularly surprising/shocking/interesting? What stood out?
• General thoughts about the complicated intersection between women's rights, Black liberation, and class solidarity?