CITE BLACK WOMEN: A CRITICAL PRAXIS
It's simple: Cite Black Women. We 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's time to disrupt the canon. It's time to upturn the erasures of history. It's time to give credit where credit is due.
#1 - Read Black women's work
#2 - Integrate Black women into the CORE of your syllabus (in life & in the classroom).
#3 - Acknowledge Black women's intellectual production.
#4 - Make space for Black women to speak.
#5 - Give Black women the space and time to breathe.
We must reconfigure the politics of knowledge production by engaging in a radical praxis of citation that acknowledges and honors Black women’s transnational intellectual production. 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? Historically, the university has exploited Black women’s labor, appropriated our ideas and refused to give us the appropriate credit for our work. Cite Black Women is, therefore, a project of radical refusal with revolutionary possibilities. If universities and oppressive spaces of knowledge production seek to silence and erase Black women than acknowledging and centering us holds revolutionary possibilities as a radical praxis of Black feminist utopian imagining/marronage.
There has been a total disregard when it comes to recognizing and respecting the intellectual property of Black women. For centuries, people have listened to our ideas and reproduced them without citation. For centuries, people have been content with erasing us from mainstream bibliographies, genealogies of thought, and conversations about knowledge production. We have also been fed up with it for centuries. As Lynn Bolles notes, "If the citation wars have meaning in the modern academy...then in both short and long runs African American scholars are/will be faceless and voiceless..." In the face of this erasure, Black women have also found alternative methods to instantiate themselves as radical producers of knowledge inside and outside of academia (Bailey and Trudy 2018; Collins 1990; Guy-Sheftall 2011; James 1999; Taylor 2017). Citation as a practice allows us to engage with voices so often silenced or left behind. As Barbara Christian argues, we have, “more pressing and interesting things to do, such as reading and studying the history and literature of black women, a history...ignored [and] bursting with originality, passion, insight, and beauty” (1987, 51). Citing Black women is both feminist and antiracist, pushing back against White male heteronormativity prevalent in academia.
Just take some time and do some serious research about the work that Black women have done on the politics of citation and the need to cite Black women. I won't do that labor here for political reasons: 1) We, Black women, are always given the burden of doing labor for everyone else; 2) we all must learn to do the hard work of research on our own (thank you Linh Huah for reminding me of this).
Our guiding principles truly reflect all that we hope to impart with this movement, so for those of you interested in taking the challenge to Cite Black Women, take them to heart. - Christen A. Smith (December 21, 2018)
References
Bailey, Moya and Trudy (2018). "On misogynoir: citation, erasure and plagiarism", Feminist Media Studies,
Bolles, Lynn (2013). “Telling the Story Straight: Black Feminist Intellectual Thought in Anthropology.” Transforming Anthropology21(1), 57-71
Christian, Barbara. “The Race for Theory.” Cultural Critique (6), 51-63.
Cohen, C. J. (2004). Deviance as Resistance: A new research agenda for the study of black
politics. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 1(1), 27-45.
Combahee River Collective (1983). The Combahee River Collective Statement in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. Kitchen Table Press
Giddings, Paula (1984). When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. New York: W. Morrow.
Guy-Sheftall, Beverly, editor (2011). Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought. The New Press: New York
Hill Collins, Patricia (1991). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the
Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.
Hull, Akasha Gloria, et al. (1982). All the Women Are White, and All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies. Feminist Press.
James, Joy (1999). Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics New York: St. Martin’s Press
Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. (2017). How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
#1 - Read Black women's work
#2 - Integrate Black women into the CORE of your syllabus (in life & in the classroom).
#3 - Acknowledge Black women's intellectual production.
#4 - Make space for Black women to speak.
#5 - Give Black women the space and time to breathe.
We must reconfigure the politics of knowledge production by engaging in a radical praxis of citation that acknowledges and honors Black women’s transnational intellectual production. 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? Historically, the university has exploited Black women’s labor, appropriated our ideas and refused to give us the appropriate credit for our work. Cite Black Women is, therefore, a project of radical refusal with revolutionary possibilities. If universities and oppressive spaces of knowledge production seek to silence and erase Black women than acknowledging and centering us holds revolutionary possibilities as a radical praxis of Black feminist utopian imagining/marronage.
There has been a total disregard when it comes to recognizing and respecting the intellectual property of Black women. For centuries, people have listened to our ideas and reproduced them without citation. For centuries, people have been content with erasing us from mainstream bibliographies, genealogies of thought, and conversations about knowledge production. We have also been fed up with it for centuries. As Lynn Bolles notes, "If the citation wars have meaning in the modern academy...then in both short and long runs African American scholars are/will be faceless and voiceless..." In the face of this erasure, Black women have also found alternative methods to instantiate themselves as radical producers of knowledge inside and outside of academia (Bailey and Trudy 2018; Collins 1990; Guy-Sheftall 2011; James 1999; Taylor 2017). Citation as a practice allows us to engage with voices so often silenced or left behind. As Barbara Christian argues, we have, “more pressing and interesting things to do, such as reading and studying the history and literature of black women, a history...ignored [and] bursting with originality, passion, insight, and beauty” (1987, 51). Citing Black women is both feminist and antiracist, pushing back against White male heteronormativity prevalent in academia.
Just take some time and do some serious research about the work that Black women have done on the politics of citation and the need to cite Black women. I won't do that labor here for political reasons: 1) We, Black women, are always given the burden of doing labor for everyone else; 2) we all must learn to do the hard work of research on our own (thank you Linh Huah for reminding me of this).
Our guiding principles truly reflect all that we hope to impart with this movement, so for those of you interested in taking the challenge to Cite Black Women, take them to heart. - Christen A. Smith (December 21, 2018)
References
Bailey, Moya and Trudy (2018). "On misogynoir: citation, erasure and plagiarism", Feminist Media Studies,
Bolles, Lynn (2013). “Telling the Story Straight: Black Feminist Intellectual Thought in Anthropology.” Transforming Anthropology21(1), 57-71
Christian, Barbara. “The Race for Theory.” Cultural Critique (6), 51-63.
Cohen, C. J. (2004). Deviance as Resistance: A new research agenda for the study of black
politics. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 1(1), 27-45.
Combahee River Collective (1983). The Combahee River Collective Statement in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. Kitchen Table Press
Giddings, Paula (1984). When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. New York: W. Morrow.
Guy-Sheftall, Beverly, editor (2011). Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought. The New Press: New York
Hill Collins, Patricia (1991). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the
Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.
Hull, Akasha Gloria, et al. (1982). All the Women Are White, and All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies. Feminist Press.
James, Joy (1999). Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics New York: St. Martin’s Press
Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. (2017). How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective. Chicago: Haymarket Books.