Women, Race & Class

One of Davis’s most prominent themes is her consistent and repeated criticism of white middle-class women’s acceptance of racism and anti-working-class views. This is abundantly clear in her thorough historical overview and analysis of the women’s rights movement from its birth at Seneca Falls through the contemporary anti-rape and abortion rights movements. Although Davis does at some points criticize others for failing to incorporate race-consciousness—in Chapter 10, she explains that “one of the unfortunate legacies” of the Socialist Party was its lack of dedication to Black liberation (151)—the bulk of her critique centers on the relatively privileged women who have historically been at the center of feminism.

The key instances that exhibit this theme are: (1) the suffrage movement’s failure to include Black and working-class women through its embrace of racism and its unquestioning acceptance of capitalism; (2) the anti-rape movement reinforcing the Black rapist myth instead of recognizing its racist underpinnings and the need to challenge it to help Black women combat sexism; (3) the abortion rights/birth control movement’s failure to evaluate its history of racist and classist eugenics and sterilization abuse and the movement’s failure to understand the impact of poverty on working-class women.