er self-esteem and a more positive image of themselves.
Sociologist Lynn Walter (1995) theorizes that
feminist anthropology should ask questions about how differences in power and knowledge have been constructed over time as gender differencesà.Feminist anthropology is as interested in how people resist and change oppressive structures as it is in how people can accommodate oppression; therefore its approach to the study of gender and power must articulate the relationship between structure and agencyà.(Walter, 272-288).
Black feminism as a human culture emerged in the 1970s as a response to sexism, racism and classicism perpetrated against Black women. Specifically, it was a response to both the male dominated black liberation movement that equated freedom with Black manhood, and the Women's Movement that concerned itself primarily with white, middle and upper class women and their desired liberation from the role of homemaker. The origin of Black feminism, however, was not the 1970s, but the oppressed status of women of African origin as slaves in the 19th Century. This sets them apart from other women of color, such as Hispanics, and makes them a unique culture. Race, class and gender oppression designated Black women to a low status in American culture that was denigrating and often brutal. African female slaves worked in the fields or in the master's house, but wherever they worked, they were used by their masters as breeders of future slaves, and often had little contact with their children. It may be theorized that this experience is part of the reason modern Black women place so much emphasis on children and family.
This essay will not focus on the experiences of enslaved African women in the United States, or on the first wave of feminism embodied in the Suffragist movement, but on the second wave of feminism and the sub-field of Black feminist anthropology. The methodology used for t...