å Saturday, April 1st, 2017

During the period of slavery, African American were treated as less powerful outsiders compared to white society who were powerful insider. There were no chances for African Americans to impact the society because everything was dominated by the white society. For example, the only chance for African American women to be in the “insider” was hired as domestic workers of white people. As African American became part of the insider, they started to recognized that it wasn’t the natural things like the intellect, talent, or humanity of white people that placed them in the superior status of society but it was the advantage of the racism such as education, environment…etc. Especially, the emerging black feminist literature gave a standpoint of different analyses of races, class, and gender. In the essay, “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought,” Patricia Hill Collins claims that the experiences of the black women society accentuate the tension which created by encountering of the weaker outsider community against the typical thought of a stronger insider community. It’s called The Black Feminist.

The Black Feminist, who was considered as “outsiders”, impacts the sociology fields and comprehension of society and culture. Patricia Hill Collins showed the Black Feminist thoughts with three key themes that represented in the examples of cross-disciplinary literatures. Black Feminist revealed the meaning of self-definition and self-valuation. For example, African American in this period thought they were born as slaves and they were positioned at lower status of the society. However, the literature work by Mae king and Cheryl Glikes revealed the function of stereotypes controlled by dominant white society. Then African Americans started self-valuation. Eventually, African American women were not only available to reject psychological oppression in their internal side but also achieved the inner strength. Another factor that influence the thought of African American women is culture. They put lots of effort to represent the importance of culture, which made huge effects on clarification of African American women’s standpoint.