black women and feminist sociology: the emerging perspective

Black Women a n d Feminist Sociology: The Emerging Perspective

ROSE M. BREWER

Since the 1960s, leftists, interpretive sociologists, black nationalists and feminis ts have challenged the subject matter, methods, and social control func t ions o f sociology. The femin i s t critique continues today, but it is arguable that a "'fourth critique" o f the f ie ld is in the making. This four th critique emanates f rom the writings o f a black f emin i s t intelligentsia. Its theoretical anchor is a developing perspective on the intersection o f race, class, and gender. This intersection is an important revision o f f emin i s t sociology and f emin i s t theory, which tend to emphasize gender. The perspective is also corrective o f race relations perspectives, which are often omissive o f gender. The perspective, there- fore, is recreative and may be transformatory o f all prior critiques o f the field.

An appraisal of the impact of feminist transformation on sociological scholarship is incomplete wi thout some look at perhaps its most dramatic manifestation since the mid-nineteen seventies: the emergence of a black feminist intelligentsia with a black feminist sociological perspective. This is conceivably one of the most intriguing developments in feminist sociology. 1 The emerging black feminist intelligentsia are important in the evolution of feminist theory in the discipline of sociology. They appear to represent the intellectual wing of a third phase of the women 's movement . Moreover, they represent what I call the "fourth crit ique" of American sociology in the past twenty-five years. It is this latter development which is the focus of my discussion.

Three intellectual critiques are precursors to emergent black feminist theory in sociology. The first precursor is rooted in a radical sociology critique of the field. The second precursor is rooted in the black struggle for liberation, and the third precursor is the growth of a feminist sociology. As these movements have de- clined or moved into middle age, it is apparent that the fourth critique, centered on the ' intersection of race, class, and gender ' may be the most transformatory critique. Indeed, the major paradigm of black feminist th inking--" the intersection

Rose M. Brewer is in the Departments of Sociology and Afro-American and African studies at the University of Minnesota. Her current research interests are race, class, and gender theory, black family formation, and welfare state policy. Please address correspondence to Department of Soci- ology, 909 Social Sciences Bldg., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455.

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of race, class, and gender"--draws upon each of these earlier critiques, attempting to create something different from and recreative of sociological thought.

In this essay I will discuss the historical precursors to the fourth critique, and then I will look more carefully at the revision of feminist sociological theory rooted in the intersection of race, class, and gender.

The Case o f t he 'Crisis in Soc io logy ' - -Cr i t ique I

The point of origin for the critique of sociology in the 1960s was actually present from the beginning of the discipline (Bilton, Bonnett, Jones, Stanworth, Sheard and Webster 1981). At least two overarching critical strands from the earlier period run through the more recent critiques. These strands are: a) the conflict between a value-free and a value-engaged perspective, and b) the conflict between positivism and antipositivism.

The first of these issues, the idea that sociology could be value free is rooted in a related assumption about its scientific status. Thus the value free argument was closely tied to the conflict around positivism as the guiding paradigm of the field (Bilton et al. 1981). Critical theorists such as Habermas presented an alternative view of sociological knowledge (Glover and Strawbridge 1985). Habermas, as a representative of the Frankfurt school, focused on the conflict of interests in the generation of sociological knowledge (Glover and Strawbridge 1985). Drawing upon the critical Marxian insight that ideas bear an important relationship to class interests, Habermas went on to delineate the relationship between interests and knowledge. So long as conflict of interests exist, knowledge will remain affected and distorted by them (Glover and Strawbridge 1985). The idea that values and interests are implicit in the evolution of sociological knowledge underpins this critique.

Mills's (1959; 1970) opposition to a value-free perspective is also representative of this first critique. He argued forcefully for the inevitability of values. Social scientists reflect values rooted in social situations. According to Mills, a sociologist has political and moral concerns, so values are inevitable. Gouldner too, contested the value-free framework. He expressed the idea that "value freedom had dehumanized and demoralized sociologists . . . sociologists have betrayed themselves in this way only to buy a social and intellectual respectability" (1975, p. 4).

The debate over a value-free sociology was implicitly rooted in the positivist versus antipositivist tensions of the field, and, by the 1960s, it was apparent that in a conceptual and procedural sense, the discipline of sociology was experienc- ing a "crisis" (Friedrichs 1970). Intellectually, this crisis was expressed in the writings of earlier critical thinkers such as Mills (1959); Stein and Vidich (1963). One element of the crisis centered on whether an empiricist/positivist approach was adequate for explaining and understanding social life. Furthermore, the es-

58 The American Sociologist/Spring 1989

tablished pract ice of pat terning sociology after the natural sciences to pose problems, collect data, wri te up findings, and make empirical generalizations wi thout considerat ion of the interactive relationship b e t w e e n observer and observed was questioned.

The issue of h o w different the social sciences w e r e from the natural sciences was raised in a number of circles, and some observers ques t ioned the "scientific" status of sociology (Friedrichs 1970). Yet, the cri t ique did not end wi th these concerns. Perhaps the most politically charged aspect of the cri t ique was the indictment by sociologists and lay persons that sociology cont r ibuted to the repression/oppression of its subject matter: it was part and parcel of the techno- cratic, control or iented and bureaucrat ic state of the Western and industrialized world. Sociologists, as well, p rovided the data needed by the Welfare/Warfare State to maintain its equil ibrium and social control function (Gouldner 1970).

The major counterparadigm to the dominate positivist paradigm came from the qualitative camp. These we re the sociologists w h o employed an interpretive mode of analysis (generally people w h o did field research and employed participant observat ion to unders tand the way of life of the peop le they researched). Their roots can be t raced to a group of European and American sociologists who focused on "meaning" rather than social facts. Indeed, they saw themselves as practi t ioners of a type of sociology which offered an alternative to the sterile, empiricst/quantitative approaches which dominated American sociology at that time. This group included phenomenologis ts , e thnomethodologis ts , and existen- tial phenomenologis t s (Bruyn 1972). According to Bruyn, these scholars utilized the me thod of participant observat ion from the American perspect ive and phe- nomenology from a European perspective. Pointing out that the two groups shared some major assumptions in common, Bruyn (1972) articulates the points which phenomeno logy and participant observat ion share in opposi t ion to traditional empiricism. He says,

1. The researchers seek to investigate paticular phenomena without preconception of their nature while the traditional empiricist is definitive in his preconceptions and his experimental design prior to his investigation.

2. The new researchers observe phenomena that appear symbolically in their consciousness and treat these symbols as data whereas the traditional empiricist observes first what immediately appears to his senses and often restricts his study solely to the realm of sense data.

3. The new researchers intuit essences and essential relations existing in the symbolic data they study whereas traditional empiricists operationally define variables which have visible referents and which can then be studied for their correspondence statis- tically (Bruyn 1972, pp. 259-60).

In essence, according to Bruyn, "the n e w researcher discovers n e w meanings in his data as he (sic) knowingly participates in the process of social communi- cation which reflects the symbolic life of the people he (sic) studies" (Bruyn

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1972, p. 260). Distinctions b e t w e e n the interpretative strategies might be sum- marized as such: Whereas the phenomenological approach studies symbolic meanings as const i tu ted in human consciousness, the participant observer, although doing this, is more conce rned with the relationship b e t w e e n symbols and culture. In other words, the concern is with h o w symbols are const i tu ted in the particular pat tern of lifeways of a group of people. The participant observer identified with the peop le studied through empathic understanding, yet, he or she must maintain distance to accurately assess what is going on. Thus, the paradox here is in at tempting to be distant and near at the same time while interacting with the people, getting involved in their activities, and exper iencing their lives (Bruyn 1972).

In short, the central concern of the interpretive cri t ique involved an a t tempt to bridge the schism b e t w e e n "lived exper ience" and scientific abstractions and reductionism. The interpretive scholars argued that the sociologist must experience the people and their lives if understanding is to occur. Given this thrust, the interpretat ive paradigm alerted sociologist to the dangers in reifying social life and the danger in not understanding nor discerning human agency.

The qualitative cri t ique was matched by a scathing attack on the control functions of sociology. Rooted in a radical sociology, the control functions of the discipline wou ld provide the cannon fodder for what I call the second critique: a decolonized sociology. This discussion will center on one group advocating a decolonized sociology: black activist sociologists.

D e c o l o n i z i n g S o c i o l o g y - - C r i t i q u e II

In the second crit ique of the discipline during the sixties, the sociological issue was splintered b e t w e e n challenges to analysis of racial inequality and reconcep- tualizations of whose interests sociology should pursue. Black and third wor ld theorists asked the question, w h o should s tudy racial inequality and h o w should they s tudy it? The whi te Left asked the question, Sociology for Whom? The whi te Left cri t ique gave rise to "the sociology liberation movement" (Flacks 1988). Flacks writes,

In 1967, some of us at the San Francisco ASA meeting got together to push a resolution opposing U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The result was a rather stormy business meeting. The very idea that a "scientific" organization might take a stand on a public issue was considered anathema. I think that the outcome of that event was that the question was sent to a mail ballot of the ASA voting membership and the resolution failed, but the debate opened a political cleavage in the organization, revealing what appeared to be deep ideological and, to a great extent, generational polarization. That cleavage traveled a fault line that dated back at least to the 1930s, when Robert S. Lynd asked the question, "Knowledge for What?" of his sociological colleagues (Flacks 1988, p. 9).

The black/Third World cri t ique gave rise to a range of heated intellectual exchanges from McWorter 's ( 1969) proposal of an alternative v iew of the field


roo ted in a black perspect ive to Carmichael and Hamilton's (1966) charge that sociological analyses emphasizing pre judice and discrimination we re inadequate for describing the institutional racism that characterized twent ie th century racial inequality. Blauner (1972) p roposed an internal colonial perspect ive that grew out of the political struggles of the internal Third World.

Yet, some of the most heated intellectual exchanges we re around the insider/ outs ider quest ion (see Merton 1973; Wilson 1974). The core of this debate was not theory or methods per se, but the race and ethnicity of the investigator. A strong insider perspect ive was roo ted in the idea that authentic knowledge about that group could only come from scholars from the group. In the case of black/ whi te dynamics, whites had misrepresented the black experience; they had not lived it, nor did they unders tand it. The solution at the t ime was thought to be research conduc t ed by black or b r o w n or Native American researchers on their o wn community. This was the first step toward a "Third World sociology" and the decolonizat ion of the research process.

The p roponen ts of a "Third World sociology" argued for a critical, decolonizing paradigm. Blauner's work on internal colonialism and Carmichael and Hamilton's analysis of institutional racism were the key theoretical models invoked. Ladner (1973) in a book titled, The Death of White Sociology wen t a step further and called for the creat ion of a black sociology. This was the ult imate reject ion of the assimilationist thrust that pe rmea ted racial/ethnic theory in sociology. The major assumption of the assimilationist perspect ive was that all racial and ethnic groups wou ld ultimately share in the boun ty of American society. White ethnics had made economic , political and educational progress through social mobi l i ty- - Third World ethnics wou ld a lso-- in time.

According to black activist scholars, the assimilationist approach was merely propaganda. So, when the dust had settled, the most militant black sociologists in this debate indicated that statisical surveys, census data, and comparisons involv- ing the quantification of differences b e t w e e n blacks and whites, we re being used to oppress the black population. This positivism did not capture the essence of the people or their communities. Careers had been made by whites, using the black community. Data had been supplied to the state to control the black community. So much data had been collected, but these communi t ies and the black population in them were still oppressed; still confronted with high unnemployment , inadequate schools, and the denigration of their personhood. Kenneth Clark said " . . . the tombs col lect dus t - - f rom Johnson to Moynihan to the Kerner Commis- sion" (Blackwell and Janowitz 1974). The solution was the creat ion of commit ted scholars of color w h o deve loped emancipatory paradigms. One such paradigm was "black sociology." Staples (1973) summarizes the thrust of a black sociology:

Black sociology is based on the premise that black and white peoples have never shared, to any great degree, the same physical environment or social experiences.

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People in different positions relate to each other and to their physical environment differently. The result is a different behavior pattern, a configuration that should be analyzed from the view of the oppressed not the oppressor. Such an analysis is black sociology (Staples 1973, p. 168).

Although roo ted ideologicaUy in the revolutionary nationalism of the period, the theorist espousing black sociology had given much less considerat ion to exactly what methods and theory the n e w black sociology wou ld employ. Wilson (1974) argued that much of the n e w black sociology employed mainstream theoretical paradigms (Parsonian systems theory, and structural-functionalism). Noth- ing theoretically innovative had come out of this; value perspectives, not conflict, were being employed (Wilson, 1974). Although, a number of o lder scholars had w o r k e d in the assimilationist tradition with an emphasis on the "melting pot" nature of American society, the second crit ique poin ted to the incomplete assim- ilation of people of color and some scholars called for an intellectual revolut ion to match the political revolut ion that seemed to be occurr ing at the time.

The major intellectual thrust of the second crit ique involved the use of an Afrocentric rather than a Eurocentr ic perspect ive (Asante 1987). Asante dates the emergence of Afrocentricity in the struggle for Black Studies during the nineteen sixties. According to Asante,

More damaging still has been the ability of European thinkers, particularly of the neopositivist or empiricist traditions, to see that human actions cannot be understood apart from the emotions, attitudes, and cultural definitions of a given context. The Afrocentric thinker understands that the interrelationship of knowledge with cosmol- ogy, society, religion, medicine, and traditions stands alongside the interactive meta- phors of discourse as principal means of achieving a measure of knowledge about experience. The Afrocentrists insist on steering the minds of their readers and listeners in the direction of intellectual wholeness (Asante 1987, p. 164).

More centrally, Afxocentricity represented a counterparadigm to Eurocentric dom- ination of knowledge and social thought. It embod ied the spirit of the times. "Afrocentricity recognizes the centrality of a wor ldv iew based on Africa," says Asante.

During the per iod of revising knowledge through Afrocentricity, gender was addressed only weakly. Later, some black w o m e n wou ld argue for the p o w e r of gender and race (Hull Scott, and Smith 1982; White 1984), bu t their cri t ique was initially marginalized in the most intense per iod of American black nationalism. This weakness wou ld reemerge in the late 1970s and into 1980s as the fourth cri t ique of the field.

In sum, black sociology advocates called for decolonizing social research and seizing research channels to further the advancement of equali ty for blacks in this country. Black intellectual thought was strongly focused on carving out alternative frameworks for living outside of the existing order intellectually and politically. These perspect ives w e r e also strongly focused on "black people generi-


cally." This meant that black women's lives were rendered invisible except through the generalized statements about racial inequality. Thus strategies for social change did not center on the powerful impact of gender as it intersected with race in the second critique. Nevertheless, the second critique did embody the oppositional spirit expressed in the "crisis of sociology literature." It also laid the basis for the emergent feminist sociology. The intellectual wing of feminism was rooted in the second wave of the women's movement - -a movement that received a good deal of its impetus from the black struggle for liberation (Stimpson 1988).

F e m i n i s t Theory in Sociology--Critique III

Recent feminist thinking in sociology emerged out of the political struggles of the 1960s (Stimpson 1988; Evans 1980). The intellectual wing of the women's movement became ensconced in women's studies programs through political struggle. Courses about women appeared in sociology departments, and women's studies departments were founded. The emphasis of the new women's movement and women's studies was critique. According to this third critique, sociology was incomplete, biased, and patriarchal. Women were rendered invisible in theories of society and the discipline. Women were studied largely as dependents in the context of the private sphere; thus, something was seriously wrong with the discipline. As political activists took this critique into academic settings, a feminist sociology was forged. Stacey and Thorne (1985), Smith (1987), and Anderson (1988a; 1988b), define the parameters of a feminist sociology. According to Stacey and Thorne, feminist sociology involves,

placing women at the center, as subjects of inquiry and as active agents in the gathering of knowledge. This strategy makes women's experiences visible, reveals the sexist biases and tacitly male assumptions of traditional knowledge, and . . , opens the way to gendered understanding (Stacey and Thorne, 1985, p. 302).

Yet, Stacey and Thorne are critical of the feminist revolution in sociology. They say the high hopes expressed by Daniels (1975) for a feminist sociology have fallen short. In terms of a feminist revolution, sociology has achieved much less than other disciplines such as history, literature, and anthropology (Stacey and Thorne 1985)

To say that the feminist revolution in sociology is incomplete at the level of paradigm shift is not, however, to ignore the tremendous impact of feminist scholarship on the field. Indeed, the emergence of a feminist social science has been powerful (Stimpson 1988). The feminist critique of science was rooted in an attack upon the sexism of science which paralleled the black nationalist charge of the racism of science. Schiebiner (1987) captures this feminist assessment:

Though traditional feminine values alone may not serve well as an epistemological base for the new philosophies of science, they provide a powerful critique of science by throwing into bold relief prevailing distortions in the norms and methods of science.

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The feminist critique of science promotes feminine values as an essential aspect of human experience and envisions a science that would integrate all aspects of human experience into our understanding of the social world. The task at hand is to refine the human effort to understand the world by restoring to science a 'lost dimension'--the feminine--whose loss has distorted human knowledge" (Schiebiner 1987, p. 322).

Feminist philosophers of science such as Harding (1986) place women at the center of any scientific construction. This matches the work of the Afrocentrists who replaced a Eurocentric with an Afrocentric perspective.

Sociologists are doing feminist scholarship. Yet, it is a scholarship that is too often predicated on "global woman." The early feminist, and even much of the later, scholarship rarely if ever, systematically incorporates diversity. Anderson (1988a) says that the important frontiers in feminist sociology entail the incorporation of diversity. This major omission has been a key element in the social construction of the fourth critique.

As women of color in the discipline have increasingly developed a feminist consciousness (Dill 1979; Collins 1986), the emergence of a fourth critique of sociology is in the making. This critique centers on revising feminist sociological thought through the lenses of race, class, and gender. It also draws upon the earlier methodological and substantive critiques of the radical sociologists and black sociologists.

Black F e m i n i s m a n d the ' I n t e r sec t ion o f Race, Class, a n d G e n d e r ' - - C r i t i q u e IV

Black feminism in its sociological form is centrally concerned with the social forces of race, class, and gender, interactively (Brewer 1988; King 1988; Collins 1986; Dill 1979). Fundamentally, the theorizing about race, class, and gender is fueled by the absence of a post-civil rights paradigm to explain racial inequality in late twentieth century American society and the omission of difference in traditional feminist scholarship. As the racial struggles of the sixties have subsided, issues of gender have come to the fore (Giddings 1984). Yet, acknowledging the importance of gender for race relations is resisted (Gordon, 1985) (and feminist theorists have poorly incorporated issues of race and class in their writings). Black activists argue that too great an attention to gender diverts resources away from racism (Gordon 1985). Indeed, black feminists move against the tide when they argue that understanding gender is essential to black liberation. They must endure the charge that they are the pawns of white feminists, and they must also over- come the racial and gender inequalities of the academy (White 1984).

I will focus on these latter two issues in this section: the missing racial/gender paradigm in the post-civil rights era, and the colonizing of feminist thinking by white feminists. Finally, I will look more carefully at the emergent "race, class, gender" paradigm.


T h e Miss ing R a c i a l / G e n d e r Perspective

Essentially, I argue that in the current period, the old assumptions about race and racism are renegotiable. This is largely because there is no clear praxis uniting black intellectuals specifically or Afro-Americans generally. Kilson (1986) , in spec- ifying this per iod for black scholars, calls it the era of the pluralist intellectual. By this he means that a number of ideological posit ions co-exist. Most prominent n o w are the black conservative intellectuals, but I wou ld add the r eemergence of a second set of black thinkers; n e w to the race m o v e m e n t and to general social thought on Afro-Africans are the black feminist intelligentsia.

Historically, black w o m e n have been feminists (Omalode 1979) even though the term feminism is problematic. More formally, Afro-American w o m e n were active in antislavery societies that gave rise to the first wave of the feminist movemen t in this country. Their relationship to the whi te movemen t wou ld be separatist because of whi te racism. This pat tern of separate feminist deve lopment wou ld be r ep roduced in the second wave as well as a likely third wave of black feminism (White 1984; Hooks 1981; Hull Scott and Smith 1982).

The black feminist intelligentsia fill a vacuum by examining the complexi t ies and complicat ions of an inequality built on race, bu t also gender and class. As w o m e n of color, they argue for a revisioning of racial inequality as shaped by the sex/gender and class question. These thinkers are conce rned with the emergence of more formal perspect ives on the interlocking nature of race, class, and gender oppression largely for two reasons: 1) most sociological work is simply wrong- headed because the intersections are left out, and 2) because w o m e n of color need to define themselves. As Hooks (1984) points out, black w o m e n too often have offered the exper iences while others told them what their exper iences mean. The key idea is that black w o m e n must explain to themselves, for themselves and for others what these exper iences mean. This involves the creat ion of a black feminist theory.

The emergence of such theory has been slow. Part of the slowness is of course the resistance to a gender-centered explanation of racial inequality, and the other cause is roo ted in the colonization of black women ' s intellectual lives.

T h e C o l o n i z a t i o n o f B l a c k W o m e n ' s I n t e l l e c t u a l Lives

Few black w o m e n are able to pursue the "life of the scholar." In a recen t s tudy by Kulis and Miller (1988) , it was no ted that

both minorities and women are severely underrepresented in academic sociology, comprising, respectively, 11.6 and 24.3 percent of faculty members. If the underrep- resentation of these two statuses were simply compounded, we would expect that 2.8 percent of faculty members would be minority women. But they actually comprise a significantly smaller proportion of sociology faculty members, only 1.9 percent.

The penetrat ion into the academy has been further l imited by marginal status: secondary worke r status, concentra t ion in teaching or middle sized institutions,

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and lack of tenure status (Kulis and Miller 1988). Furthermore, these women often confront white w o m e n as well as black men and white men as competi tors ff~r intellectual authority. Since they are at the bo t tom of the hierarchy, the

struggle is an uphill one (Lewis 1977). Given the simultaneity of race, class, and gender in the lives of minori ty women,

it is inevitable that the training of black female sociologists will be marked by conflict. These are forces which do not operate separately, al though there is a degree of autonomy to them. Nonetheless the transmission and becoming process is far from seamless. What is presumed to be unproblemat ic-- t ra ining to become a sociologist--is inherently a problem, given the confluence of these forces. "l~e dilemmas are probably far greater than those expressed in the resistances of young white male leftists, feminists, or black male nationalists. Indeed, the black woman is the ultimate intellectual other in this society, and her general interests are in perennial conflict with the status quo embedded in mainstream sociological training (Malcolm, Hall and Brown, 1976). The multiple disjunctures that black women bring to the training and professional setting potentially are challenging to mainstream sociology. Being on the margin lays the basis for resistances or incorporation (Collins 1986).

Yet sociological training also has the potential to sharpen and enrich critical thinking, sometimes inadvertently. It is the reworking of sociological insight into a critical social consciousness which is the heart of the new black feminist impact on sociological thought. Collins (1986) describes this as the outsider-within status that black w o m e n occupy. She says

�9 . . a good deal of the black female experience has been spent coping with, avoiding, subverting, and challenging the workings of this same white male insiderism. It should come as no surprise that black women's efforts in dealing with the effects of interlocking systems of oppression might produce a standlx~int quite distinct from, and in many ways opposed to that of white male insiders�9 Seen from this perspective black women's socialization into sociology, represents a more intense case of the normal challenges facing sociology graduate students and junior professionals in the discipline (1986, p. 27).

Given the professed feminism of many white w o m e n sociologists, it is ironic for black feminists to find themselves in competi t ion with white women. White women, because of sheer numbers as well as resources, are able to exert intellectual control over an area. Thus, while it is well recognized that research in the American academy has been white male Eurocentric, it is less often stated that it is more and more white female Eurocentric. Getting established, getting research funds, and actually conduct ing the rcsearch is nearly impossible for women of color (Malcolm, Hall and Brown 1976). Yet, despite these many obstacles, the makings of a new feminist theory is occurring.


O n t h e I n t e r s e c t i o n o f Race, Class a n d G e n d e r - - T h e M a k i n g o f N e w F e m i n i s t T h e o r y

The black feminist theorists argue that the usual explanations of racism, classism and sexism typically treat these 'isms' separately. It is more and more apparent, however , that such parallelism misses an essential real i ty--racism, sexism, and classism cohere in theoretically and empirically important ways (Dill 1979, 1983; Lewis 1977; Chow 1987). Race/gender/class situations reflect the insepa- rability of these forces for w o m e n of color, sociologically and practically. How- ever, given historical changes, these forces vary in intensity. Sometimes racism is the more prominent inequality, sometimes, sexism, or classism is the more prominent inequality (Dill 1983). Thus to compartmental ize these social forces misses an essential reality: the simultaneity of racism, sexism and classism is a reflection of the p o w e r of white male patriarchy in the subjugation and oppression of w o m e n of color.

Furthermore, such subjugation also spawns its nega t ion- - the movemen t of black w o m e n and other w o m e n of color against these forces in their l ives-- their resistances are essential to the "intersection of race, class, gender" analysis. In fact, a good deal of the work by Dill (1983) , Higginbotham (1981a; 1981b), Chow (1987) , Davis (1971) and Gilkes (1980) is a delineation of this resistance. The perspect ive is eminent ly dialect ical-- i t analyzes oppression and the resistance to this oppression.

Major organizing principles of the theoretical perspect ive include:

1. ideas highly critical of the positivist tradition and the incorporation of critiques rooted in radical, black nationalist, and feminist sociology. It also draws heavily upon interpretive paradigms;

2. incorporation of macro realities, including in the analysis the larger economic, social and political forces of the social order;

3. concern with the interplay between biography and the social-historical juncture; 4. the delineations of intersections, interactions, and interlocks instead of hierarchical

dualism.

First, "the intersection of race, class, and gender" draws upon the methodological cri t ique of the interpretative sociologists; a good number of the studies are qualitative. They involve the use of oral histories, participant observations, and open-ended interviews (Gilkes 1980; Leggon 1980; Dill 1979). This strategy also embodies the cri t ique of the black sociologists that the respondents should be able to express their own realities. These realities should not be imposed from the outside nor should they be exploi ted simply for the career gains of the researcher.

Theorists are also conce rned with the interplay be t ween macro social s t ructure and micro realities. The issue is h o w agency and social s t ructure intersect in the lives of black w o m e n and other w o m e n of color. This entails, of course, an incorporat ion of biography and social structure.

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Finally, the feminist thinking of the n e w black intelligentsia, is a gender- cen te red analysis that draws upon existing feminist knowledge in sociology. Just as the third critique embodied the creat ion of a feminist sociology which renders w o m e n visible, the fourth cri t ique centers on render ing black w o m e n and o ther w o m e n of color visible in sociological theory.

In short, the "race, class, gender" frame is the major theoretical lens through which black feminist theory is constructed. Alone, race, class and gender are rather sterile categories for black feminist thinking. They are infused with meaning developed out of many decades of social thought on class, race, and gender. However, in interplay and interaction the concepts of race, class, and gender become rich. Nonetheless, delineating the nature of the paradigm and the spe- cifics of the intersect ion have proved to be rather difficult. This is because the metaframeworks of class, gender, and race, have to be revisioned. Feminist theorists working with the concepts cannot simply "add and stir" gender, race, or class. According to Collins (1986), emergen t thinking in this direct ion suggests that the theory must be historically based and holistic.

C o n c l u s i o n s

Until the emergence of black feminist thinking in sociology, sociological theorizing on racial and gender inequality has been cen te red ei ther on the dynamics of race or the dynamics of gender. This translates into discussions of whi te women's lives or black men's lives. How a scholar begins to utilize theoretical tools that were forged wi thout a group in m i n d - - e v e n as an af ter thought-- is the chal- lenge facing the new black feminist thinking. Thus, the slowness of the enterprise is that existing theories have to be revised through black women ' s experiences, historical positioning, cultural perceptions, and social constructions (Collins 1986).

Critique is key to black feminist thinking in sociology. What is missing from existing feminist, critical theory, and Third World critiques of the discipline is the multiplicity of forces shaping scientific practice: the omission of race from feminist critiques of science, the omission of gender from cultural critiques, and the omission of race and gender from class critiques. It is not simply the issue of restoring the feminine and eliminating the masculinist bias; or, t ranscending class conflict. It is capturing what it means to exist be tween the lines as a black w o m a n in this society. It is also clearly the issue of coming to terms with Western ethnocentr ism. It means confront ing dualistic thinking, because social forces that shape the lives of black w o m e n operate simultaneously and relatively autono- mously.

Finally, despite the difficulties, sociological thought embodying race, class and gender is growing. The works of Dill 1983, Collins 1986, Chow 1987, Glenn 1986, Brewer 1988, and Gilkes 1980 to name a few, are among a growing literature on this intersection. Indeed, these theorists are saying that wi thout a black, feminist, class perspect ive that goes further than existing frameworks, sociological theory and praxis is permanent ly stifled.


Note 1. In another paper (Brewer 1988) I argue that the black feminist intelligentsia come out of the poliical, social

and economic transformations of the post-civil rights period. They were located in centers of research, teaching and publishing; furthermore, foundation funding affected the establ ishment of their worldview.

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