“No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.”
Assata Shakur (1987:196)
Black women in the United States have been censored for their intellectual and artistic efforts across the centuries, and continue to be so today. Just last year, in 2022, the Florida state legislature adopted the Individual Freedom Act (IFA), also known as the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” the acronym standing for “Wrong to Our Kids and Employees.” Under the law, teachers are not permitted to educate students about white supremacy, implicit and overt bias, white privilege, or systemic racism. This particular legislation emerged out of the white conservative backlash against Black Lives Matter, culminating in the bastardization of Black intellectual perspectives. Most recently, in January 2023, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that the College Board’s Advanced Placement African American Studies course “lacks educational value and is contrary to Florida law.” In particular, the Florida Department of Education took issue with the inclusion of topics such as Black queer studies, Black Lives Matter, and Black feminist literary thought. Since then, several other states, including Virginia, Texas, and North Dakota announced their intention to review the course before its official launch later this year. We fundamentally disagree and assert that Black feminist thoughts and perspectives have critical and immense educational value.
Ida B. Wells, a Black feminist scholar-activist, taught us this lesson in the early 20th century when she broke the story of the lynching of Memphis business owner Thomas Moss, unraveling generations of racial taboo by asserting that the reality of consenting interracial partnerships between Black men and White women contradicted the rationale for lynching as retribution for rape. Instead, Wells asserted that lynching resulted from the “vengeful fury” of white men seeking to limit the economic power of recently enfranchised Black communities. In response, White Memphisians turned their vengeful fury on the looting and destruction of her newspaper office.
This vengefulness extends beyond written work. In the early to mid-20th century, Black migrants from the U.S. South were segregated and forced into impoverished neighborhoods throughout the United States. In these neighborhoods, jook joints, dives, dance halls, and other venues served as cultural hubs for Black American artists, especially blues musicians. Consequently, the suburban culture of the emerging middle class of white America policed “blues women” via reform and social purity programs based on eugenic, classist, and anti-Black ideology. Blues venues were susceptible to raids and closures, while Black women working in nightlife faced charges of prostitution and vagrancy. As evidenced by renewed calls to ban Toni Morrison’s 1998 novel Beloved and to remove rappers Cardi B and Megan thee Stallions’ Billboard-topping single “WAP,” from the airwaves, Black American women’s intellectual and artistic contributions remain the target of this policing. The continuance of a racist, sexist society that suppresses Black women’s ideas emphasizes the need for venues that provide sufficient and safeguarded space to promote their perspectives.
Influenced by these reasons and in these seasons, the team behind Black Feminist Sociology presents Perspectives: The Souls of Black Feminists, an online platform to cultivate and preserve Black feminist sociology past, present, and future.
Black Feminist Sociology: Perspectives and Praxis
As outlined in the introduction to Black Feminist Sociology, Luna and Pirtle discuss how the volume originated from a place of need and also a place of celebration. Despite how Black feminist thought has been deeply influenced by sociology and, more importantly, how sociology is deeply transformed by Black feminist thought, there has not been one place to bring together Black feminist scholars and practitioners to house our intellectual contributions and our calls for action. Black Feminist Sociology is, then, a celebration of the work that has for too long been marginalized.
The introduction further mapped the book’s journey to formation and, in doing so, allowed us to reflect on what we see as major tenets shaping Black feminist sociological work. For Zakiya Luna and Whitney Pirtle, Black feminist sociology is a framing orientation that finds grounding in its reflexivity, community-centeredness, and intentional praxis, and an epistemological orientation that questions the multiple and intersectional forces that can harm our lived experiences and envisions systemic changes to make life better for everyone. The creation of this blog, which expands our perspectives into a digital space, and our introductory post here, where we outline our aims, are two ways we bring these ideas to life.
Perspectives: The Souls of Black Feminists is a new platform created by the Black Feminist Sociology (BFS) team to continue to amplify Black feminist sociological knowledge. Digital media, social networking sites, and other internet-based tools have been used to generate a tidal wave of anti-Black disinformation in recent years, reinforcing centuries-old controlling images to justify the political, cultural, and economic subordination of Black people. By using blackfeministsociology.com as an extension of the original edited volume, Perspectives aims to create a virtual space for intellectuals and creatives to disseminate alternative epistemologies rooted in Black feminist sociology as an act of digital antiracist education.
Demystifying Processes: The Black Feminist Sociology and Digital Pedagogy Initiative
In 2022, the Black Feminist Sociology team secured a grant from Carla B. Howery Teaching Enhancement Fund of the American Sociological Association for the Black Feminist Sociology and Digital Pedagogy Initiative (BFSDPI). The primary goal of the Black Feminist Sociology Digital Pedagogy Initiative (BFSDPI) is to enable scholars and educators to access intellectual work being done in the Black feminist tradition through a digital public sociology project that functions as a virtual multimedia encyclopedia of Black feminist sociology. This repository will expand access to, and amplify the work of Black feminist sociologists, thereby also extending the pedagogical possibilities of Black feminist sociology beyond the academy. As a digital public sociology project, BFSDPI will address the shortage of internet-based outlets for education and learning led by Black women and LGBTQ sociologists.
By creating a virtual hub of resources and material for educators invested in bringing topics of Black feminist sociological thought to their students at an undergraduate and graduate level, the BFSDPI aims to: (a) facilitate a paradigm shift on the relationship between technology and knowledge production from a deficit to asset framework; (b) provide an alternative outlet to traditional publishing models for the production of knowledge produced by sociologists whose work or social positionality shifts perspectives on society from margins to center; and (c) redress the gatekeeping of academic research within paywalls and institutional repositories to broaden scholarship and pedagogy beyond the geographic boundaries of academia while simultaneously addressing the ghettoization of Black feminist sociological intellectual thought. In this way, the Black Feminist Sociology and Digital Pedagogy Initiative aims to continue the tradition of Black studies as a response to Black struggle aimed at liberation through consciousness-raising as a form of public, community-based education.
Writing for Perspectives: An Exercise in Black Feminist Public Sociology
For the inaugural set of blog posts, we are soliciting submissions from Black feminist sociologists working on a variety of themes, including but not limited to:
- Black feminist pedagogy
- Black feminist theory and methods
- Black feminist politics and praxis
- Black feminism and popular culture
- Black feminism and the arts
In the spirit of this blog as a digital public sociology project, we are seeking submissions that are both analytical and accessible to broader audiences. We also hope authors keep Black feminist epistemologies and approaches in mind when writing, some of which are outlined in these guidelines. Blog submissions may explore new ideas or seek to highlight previously published works; they may provide commentary on current affairs, critique popular culture, or present innovative ways to engage with Black feminist sociology in research, writing, teaching, or daily life. Some examples of blogs that encompass these themes include Janell Hobson’s Ms. Magazine article on “Rihanna, the Super Bowl, and Performing While Black and Pregnant” or Andrea J. Ritchie’s Teen Vogue article on “Why Young Girls Die Behind Bars”.
Most importantly, we want this blog to serve as a space for Black feminist exploration and experimentation, a site for learning and living Black feminist sociology outside the confines of the ivory tower. We want this space to center Black feminist thought, to demonstrate a Black feminist ethics of care, and to celebrate Black joy.
Perspectives: The Souls of Black Feminists is a Black feminist sociological intervention in virtual space, further underscoring why blackfeministsociology.com is an important hub now, especially with the current threats of censorship. These inaugural online writings continue the project of Black feminist consciousness-raising from a sociological lens, serving as an intersectional digital enclave. As Melissa Brown put it in her chapter “For a Black Feminist Digital Sociology”, “intersectionality mediates the relationship between power and social relations for people with marginalized race, gender, and sexual identities” in a sociotechnical context. This is how Perspectives amplifies Black feminist digital sociology. We hope, in claiming our narratives, that this public-facing platform and hub is a resource for people doing Black feminist work, opens a space to disseminate their ideas, and provides access to novel pedagogy, research, and writing.
appreciate you folks bringing these resources together, would be great to have more open-access books for those of us outside of the academic paywall.
peace, dirk