The idea for the edited collection Black Feminist Sociology came about over dinner. It was a humid August evening in Philadelphia, PA. Jazz music wafting in from the side dining room mixed with laughter and the clink of glasses. At a long table sat 11 young Black women of different ages, colors, sizes, hairstyles, backgrounds, and sexual orientations. We decided to meet for dinner after a year of Facebook conversations. On Facebook, a few sociologists proposed they could name every Black woman on the Sociology tenure track since there were so few of us. We arranged to meet in person during the sociological conferences that summer in Philadelphia.
One on hand this gathering was unremarkable since Philadelphia is a large city with many Black women and the restaurant was a popular one. On the other hand, this was a remarkable dinner. All the women had PhDs, were trained in Sociology, and were all attending the 2018 disciplinary conferences of Association of Black Sociologists (ABS) themed” The New Black Sociologists” which that year had two Black feminists as primary plenary speakers and/or American Sociological Association (ASA) themed “Feeling Race” and feature sessions on DuBoisian and Black radical thought, racism within the study of sexuality, and global formations of Blackness. On Saturday of the conferences, hundreds of people wore shirts imploring their colleagues to #CiteBlackWomen, a campaign Pirtle began.
Dinner proved to be magical; given Black women make up less than 3% of the professoriate[1], and there are only 544 members, across stage of career, in the over 11,500 ASA membership that identify as Black and women.[2] It was so rare— and invigorating—to be surrounded by so many Black women early career sociologists; we had to make something more concrete of the conference and convening. And thus, the idea for an edited volume showcasing Black feminist sociology was proposed. ABS President Marcus Anthony Hunter and President-Elect Zandria Robinson were enthusiastic and five weeks later Zakiya Luna and Whitney Pirtle submitted a book proposal to Routledge. We signed the contract with a virtual toast about 4 months later and began the process of collecting submissions and building up our team.
We couldn’t imagine how popular the idea would be, with nearly 100 abstracts submitted from across the US and around the world. Our BFS team grew to include two insightful graduate students Jasmine Kelekay and Tashelle Wright
We couldn’t have done it without Jodi O’Brien, Sociology Re-Wired series co-editor and Dean Birkenkamp, Senior Social Sciences Editor at Routledge Press
While the book editing process typically involves ups and down, no one could have imagined the pace at which the world would change as we were all in the process of revising selected chapters. A worldwide pandemic happened and we were forced to rethink all aspects of our lives, including how we would work and be in a community with one another. Balancing rest and preservation with piling demands, we crafted the chapters into a volume while continuing to check in on one another, celebrating, toasting, and taking breaks as we needed. Every process of this book, as you can read more about in our intro, was a clear reminder to us: Black feminist sociology is what we need.
[1] U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2017). The Condition of Education 2017 (NCES 2017-144), Characteristics of Postsecondary Faculty.
[2] Email correspondence with Teresa Ciabattari, Director of Academic and Professional Affairs, American Sociological Association. September 11th, 2018.
[3] Burton, Kelly. 2017. “From Welfare Queen To Black Girl Magic: How Black Women Flipped The Script And Changed The Narrative.” Huffington Post (blog). March 8, 2017. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/from-welfare-queen-to-black-girl-magic-how-black-women_us_58bf62ade4b070e55af9e924.; Williams, Vanessa. n.d. “Maxine Waters Inspires a New Anthem: ‘Reclaiming My Time.’” Washington Post (blog). Accessed September 6, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/08/01/maxine-waters-inspires-a-new-anthem-reclaiming-my-time/.
[4] Carr Glynda C. and Kimberly Peeler-Allen. May 25th, 2018. “2018 is the year black women are taking power” CNN Opinion. Assessed September 10th, 2018. https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/25/opinions/2018-is-the-year-black-women-are-taking-power-carr-peeler-allen/index.html