Our Praxis: A Critical, Collective Statement
In 2022 the Cite Black Women Collective published its Collective Statement as part of the Cite Black Women special issue of Feminist Anthropology. In this document, you will find our collaborative, historicized reflection on citing Black women as a political practice. Inspired by the work of generations of Black feminist scholar-activists, here we outline what we believe to be the urgent stakes of citation for us as Black women (why citation matters).
You can find a link to "Cite Black Women: A Critical Praxis (A Statement)" here, but unfortunately it is behind a paywall. If you would like to receive a copy, please contact us directly. We understand that for-profit publishing continues to be an exclusionary aspect of the U.S. academy. We also recognize how this perpetuates knowledge inequality and equal access to intellectual debates. We do not want anyone who wants to read our work to not be able to do so.
Here is the first part of the statement:
It’s simple: Cite Black Women. Black women have been producing knowledge since we blessed
this earth. We theorize, we innovate, we revolutionize the world. We do not need mediators. We do
not need interpreters. It is time to disrupt the canon. It is time to upturn the erasures of history.
Cite Black Women
It is time to give credit where credit is due: cite Black women. Cite Black Women is more than just a catchphrase or a hashtag: it is an emphatic statement, a command, a rebuke, a call to action, a celebration, an act of rebellion, an ethos, and an act of love.1 Behind it lies this critical question:What does it look like to dismantle the patriarchal, white supremacist, heterosexist, imperialist impetus of the neoliberal university (and its accomplices) by centering Black women’s ideas and intellectual contributions? Embedded within this question we also find our response. At least since the advent of slavery in the Americas, there has been blatant, total disregard for Black women’s “property”: our things, our bodies, our love, our creations, and our ideas (Berry 2017; Spillers 1987).2 The exploitation of and total disregard for our bodies, in concert with the exploitation of our labor,3 have been paralleled by the appropriation, abuse, and misuse of our intellectual labor—the stealing of our ideas and energy without pretense toward any form of acknowledgment (monetary or otherwise). As a result, one of the palpable echoes of slavery is the continued and widespread perception that Black women’s ideas and creative works should be plagiarized, just like our labor, our bodies, and our love. Plagiarism, like knowledge, power, and the academy, is a form of exploitation intimately tied to the projects of colonialism, slavery, and their progeny: white supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism, and imperialism. For centuries, people have been content with erasing us from mainstream bibliographies, genealogies of thought, and conversations about knowledge production because they view our ideas like they view our bodies: as eminently violable. This has been especially true in the university—a bastion of neoliberal heteropatriarchal white supremacy in the modern era. We are fed up with this state of affairs. Especially now, in this political moment, it is urgent that we reconfigure the politics of knowledge production by engaging in a radical praxis of citation that acknowledges and honors Black women’s transnational intellectual production. Following in the footsteps of the Combahee River Collective (1982 [1977]), the Cite Black Women Collective recognizes that we are writing in a particular moment with a unique (yet not so new) set of challenges. We are living in an era of reactionary, right-wing fascism; escalating gun violence and anti-Black, misogynist, transphobic, and queerphobic violence; increasing Black maternal mortality; the metastatic murders of Black (trans and cis) women; brazen police killings of Black people with impunity; the militarization of the police and the use of federal troops to limit citizenship rights and create police states in what should be public spaces; a global pandemic; and climate change and environmental racism (Ducre 2018; Perry 2013; Roberts 2017; Smith 2016; Taylor 2016).We are living in a time of economic precarity, income inequality, educational privatization, vast student loan debt, and the casualization of labor both inside the academy (i.e., adjuncting) and outside of it (i.e., the gig economy) (Harris 2016; McMillan Cottom 2017; Williams 2017). Although it is 2021, the gender pay gap still exists, there is incessant divestment in public institutions, and Black women’s labor is still exploited, just as Claudia Jones (1949) pointed out decades ago and others have since reaffirmed (e.g., Brewer 2016). In a current social context in which white supremacy and patriarchy proliferate, and there is an ever-shifting landscape of knowledge production, the Cite Black Women Collective demands reparations around citational practices. At the same time, we seek out joyous moments of organizing and innovative potentiality.
You can find a link to "Cite Black Women: A Critical Praxis (A Statement)" here, but unfortunately it is behind a paywall. If you would like to receive a copy, please contact us directly. We understand that for-profit publishing continues to be an exclusionary aspect of the U.S. academy. We also recognize how this perpetuates knowledge inequality and equal access to intellectual debates. We do not want anyone who wants to read our work to not be able to do so.
Here is the first part of the statement:
It’s simple: Cite Black Women. Black women have been producing knowledge since we blessed
this earth. We theorize, we innovate, we revolutionize the world. We do not need mediators. We do
not need interpreters. It is time to disrupt the canon. It is time to upturn the erasures of history.
Cite Black Women
It is time to give credit where credit is due: cite Black women. Cite Black Women is more than just a catchphrase or a hashtag: it is an emphatic statement, a command, a rebuke, a call to action, a celebration, an act of rebellion, an ethos, and an act of love.1 Behind it lies this critical question:What does it look like to dismantle the patriarchal, white supremacist, heterosexist, imperialist impetus of the neoliberal university (and its accomplices) by centering Black women’s ideas and intellectual contributions? Embedded within this question we also find our response. At least since the advent of slavery in the Americas, there has been blatant, total disregard for Black women’s “property”: our things, our bodies, our love, our creations, and our ideas (Berry 2017; Spillers 1987).2 The exploitation of and total disregard for our bodies, in concert with the exploitation of our labor,3 have been paralleled by the appropriation, abuse, and misuse of our intellectual labor—the stealing of our ideas and energy without pretense toward any form of acknowledgment (monetary or otherwise). As a result, one of the palpable echoes of slavery is the continued and widespread perception that Black women’s ideas and creative works should be plagiarized, just like our labor, our bodies, and our love. Plagiarism, like knowledge, power, and the academy, is a form of exploitation intimately tied to the projects of colonialism, slavery, and their progeny: white supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism, and imperialism. For centuries, people have been content with erasing us from mainstream bibliographies, genealogies of thought, and conversations about knowledge production because they view our ideas like they view our bodies: as eminently violable. This has been especially true in the university—a bastion of neoliberal heteropatriarchal white supremacy in the modern era. We are fed up with this state of affairs. Especially now, in this political moment, it is urgent that we reconfigure the politics of knowledge production by engaging in a radical praxis of citation that acknowledges and honors Black women’s transnational intellectual production. Following in the footsteps of the Combahee River Collective (1982 [1977]), the Cite Black Women Collective recognizes that we are writing in a particular moment with a unique (yet not so new) set of challenges. We are living in an era of reactionary, right-wing fascism; escalating gun violence and anti-Black, misogynist, transphobic, and queerphobic violence; increasing Black maternal mortality; the metastatic murders of Black (trans and cis) women; brazen police killings of Black people with impunity; the militarization of the police and the use of federal troops to limit citizenship rights and create police states in what should be public spaces; a global pandemic; and climate change and environmental racism (Ducre 2018; Perry 2013; Roberts 2017; Smith 2016; Taylor 2016).We are living in a time of economic precarity, income inequality, educational privatization, vast student loan debt, and the casualization of labor both inside the academy (i.e., adjuncting) and outside of it (i.e., the gig economy) (Harris 2016; McMillan Cottom 2017; Williams 2017). Although it is 2021, the gender pay gap still exists, there is incessant divestment in public institutions, and Black women’s labor is still exploited, just as Claudia Jones (1949) pointed out decades ago and others have since reaffirmed (e.g., Brewer 2016). In a current social context in which white supremacy and patriarchy proliferate, and there is an ever-shifting landscape of knowledge production, the Cite Black Women Collective demands reparations around citational practices. At the same time, we seek out joyous moments of organizing and innovative potentiality.