User:Tsupatterson/Identity politics

Identity Politics

The term was coined by the Combahee River Collective in 1977. The collective group of women saw identity politics as an analysis that introduced opportunity for Black women to be actively involved in politics, while simultaneously acting as a tool to authenticate Black women's personal experiences. It took on widespread usage in the early 1980s, and in the ensuing decades has been employed in myriad cases with radically different connotations dependent upon the term's context. It has gained currency with the emergence of social activism,[clarification needed] manifesting in various dialogues within the feminist, American civil rights, and LGBT movements, as well as multiple nationalist and postcolonial organizations.

Black women identity politics

See also: Black feminism, Combahee River Collective, and Black women in American politics

Black women identity politics concerns the identity-based politics derived from the lived experiences of struggles and oppression.

In 1977, the Combahee River Collective (CRC) Statement argued that black women struggled with facing their oppression, and with their coinage of the term identity politics, it gave black women the tools and comprehension to confront the oppression one was facing. The CRC also suggested that "the personal is political". This expression explains the outlook that black women have for politics, as they are constructed by the lived experiences of racial inequalities, and the oppression based off their identities. As mentioned earlier K. Crenshaw, claims that black women oppression is illustrated in two different directions; race and sex. In 1991, Nancie Caraway explained that the politics of black women had to be comprehended in the understanding that the oppression they face are all interconnected, presenting a compound of oppression (Intersectionality).

In 1988, Deborah K. King coined the term Multiple jeopardy, theory that expands on how factors of oppression are all interconnected. King suggested that the identities of gender, class, and race each have an individual prejudicial connotation, which has an incremental effect on the inequity of which one experiences.