Work · African & Africana Philosophy
An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!
Essay in the journal Political Affairs: as domestic workers and in industry, Black women are paid least and organised least; their “superexploitation” as Black people, as women and as workers makes their struggles central to the labour, Black and women’s movements, which have neglected them.
Introduction
Claudia Jones published “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!” in June 1949 in Political Affairs, the theoretical journal of the Communist Party of the United States. The essay opens with Black women’s part in the struggles of the post-war years – in strikes, in peace and civil rights campaigns – and then sets out their economic situation: most work as domestic servants or in the lowest-paid industrial jobs, earn less than white women and Black men, and are largely outside the trade unions. From this Jones derives her central thesis of a “superexploitation” of Black women as Black people, as women and as workers. She criticises white progressives, trade unionists and her own party for neglecting this, attacks the stereotype of the “mammy” and white chauvinism among white women, and argues that Black women, as the most oppressed, are a leading force of the struggle for liberation. The essay is regarded as a founding text of Black feminist theory.
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