everyone can work together to ensure that this truth is applied among women as it is to the analysis of the problem between women and men.
Clearly the need for identity had to drive black and Latina feminists toward the identification of those concerns that were uniquely theirs. Yet, in doing so they would be moving against the currents of both the general fight against racism and the agenda of the organized women's movement. One of the most important moves by black feminists was the decision to recognize what was important to them even though it seemed opposed to the general women's movement. Realizing that they had a different agenda black feminists in the late 1960s and early 1970s "began to develop a positive written discourse on motherhood." How could such an agenda be constructive when black women were faced with white feminism's desire to escape the home and Black men's demand for an unquestioning, united front against racism?
Minority women, finding themselves torn between the movements for racial/ethnic equality and women's equality, have found that the sexist oppression they face within their groups has some of its roots in the generalized oppression of the patriarchy and some in the special circumstances of their own group's oppression. Mirande and Enriquez have noted that Chicana feminists have often realized this in their formulation of the problem. As Chicanas see it, the gains the women's movement has made and will make can help to change the universal oppression of women, "but they will have little impact on Chicanas as long as Chicanos remain a colonized people." It is largely a matter of recognizing the causes and effects involved in the two types of oppression. While Smith is correct in saying that "the man who beats you is a member of the ruling class in your own home", she does not make the important distinction between the d
...