I am a Black Feminist. I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my blackness as well as my womaness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable.
Interpretation
The struggles faced by Black women are rooted in both their race and gender, creating an inseparable duality of oppression and empowerment.
In this quote, Audre Lorde articulates the intersectionality of her identity as a Black woman, emphasizing that her experiences of power and oppression are intertwined. She asserts that to understand her struggles, one must recognize how her racial identity and gender intersect, suggesting that the fight for justice is not merely about one aspect of her identity, but about the complex interplay of both her blackness and womanhood.
In practice
During a women's rights conference, one might use this quote to discuss the importance of addressing the unique struggles of marginalized women.
The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.
There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.
The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.
In the colonial context the settler only ends his work of breaking in the native when the latter admits loudly and intelligibly the supremacy of the white man's values.
What is it about our society where anyone who does not have Asperger's gets talked out of their heterodox ideas?
I got teased and taunted about my night-shaded skin, and my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up lighter-skinned. The morning would come, and I would be so excited about seeing my new skin that I would refuse to look down at myself until I was in front of a mirror because I wanted to see my fair face first.
. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful.
Distracted from distraction by distraction
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