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Assignment #8

In the situation of the reading, “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significant of Black Feminist Though,” black women were consider as the “Outsider”, they were working for white families, became honorary members in that “families,” and make themselves more likely to being a “Insider”. Even the black women were trying to be more closer to the “Insider”, there still had the wall of race and gender between them. According to Collins reading, She argues that, “Black women’s experiences highlight the tension experienced by any group of less powerful outsiders encountering the paradigmatic thought of a more powerful insider community.” She attempts to explain this point by examining the sociological significance of the Black Feminist thought stimulated by Black women’s outsider within status. She explored the idea of three characteristic themes: The black women’s self-definition and self-valuation, the interlocking nature of oppression, and the importance of Afro-American women’s culture.

The importance of Black women’s self-definition and self-valiation is it involves challenging the political knowledge-validation process has resulted in externally-defined, stereotypical images of Afro-American womanhood. The stereotype usually gave the negative image of black women.

The interlocking nature of oppression for Black women is in two way, they were women, and they also were black. The double oppressive make black women faced more difficult situation. And make their standpoint to create the black feminist theory.

In the study of Afro-American women’s culture, the black feminist found out the unexplored areas of the black female experience, they also identified concrete ares of social relations where Afro-American women create and pass on self-definitions and self-valuations essential to coping with the simultaneity of oppression they experience.