One thing thing that caught my eye in the "Combahee River Collective Statement," was the fact that the Collective of Black women claims solidarity with Black males, but not with white women.

The Combahee River Collective formed as a response to negative and racist actions against Black women from the white-dominated feminist movement. These Black women did not feel unity with the white women's movement because of the oppression they experienced within it. They felt they had their own battles to fight, specifically, as Black women.

While these women did not feel connected to the oppressive, mainly white, feminist movement, they did feel so connected to Black men. The Statement says, "Although we are feminists and Lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive Black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white women who are separatists demand" (2). However, the Collective also recognized that they were in a struggle against the oppression put on them by those very same Black men. "We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism," it says. They defended this by saying that racism can only be fought if all Blacks fight it together.

And what about the women's movement? How can female oppression be fought without all women coming together to shed light on the problem? This reminds me of Simone de Beauvoir's essay in which she points out that it is difficult for women to unify under a single stance because they feel more attached to their male counterparts than they do to other women.

These two essays show that feminism is more complicated than it looks. Within the group of "women," there are so many other factions that separate them--class, race, politics, etc. Is it possible for women to overcome these things that divide their cause and work together to begin to counter female oppression? Or will these divisions take precedence over feminism, such as in the Combahee River Collective?