Juneteenth is a not-yet-national holiday that commemorates June 19^th, 1865, the day Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas and announced that the Civil War had ended and that enslaved descendants of abducted Africans were now freed. Having begun that year in Texas and now recognized in nearly all US states, Juneteenth celebrates Black freedom, Black survival, and Black family. Yet the circumstances surrounding the original day point to something else important about the struggle against anti-Black racism and oppression. After all, June 19^th, 1865 is a date two and a half years after the day on which Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation took effect (January 1, 1863). These two and a half years point to the space between freedom in law or name and a freedom that can be truly lived, in which one’s racialization does not systematically proscribe one’s life chances or dramatically increase one’s risk of premature death.

Black people in the US have inhabited this space for over 150 years.

This Juneteenth of 2020 offers reasons for hope. This year, the day falls just under four weeks after the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade (among and in the wake of so many others) set off a series of nationwide and worldwide protests that even fellow Black philosopher and seasoned anti-racist activist Angela Davis finds remarkable. “We’ve never witnessed sustained demonstrations of this size that are so diverse,” Davis told The Guardian in a Zoom interview this week.[1]

This extraordinary moment and momentum (which, make no mistake, would not be possible if not for tireless Black activism over not just decades but centuries), calls on all of us to both contribute outward and reflect inward.

At Hypatia, we have decided to contribute this two-part curated online collection featuring previously published work by Black feminist scholars, which is made available freely, without subscription. The first part highlights Black feminists’ reflections on the discipline of philosophy. The second part highlights Black feminist theorizing, with a particular focus on Black feminist philosophers.

Just as the wider world, economically and politically dominated by white colonial nations and European-descended settler colonists, must come to recognize that Black lives matter (despite widespread social attitudes and practices that suggest otherwise), the myriad academic institutions founded by those same political regimes must come to recognize that Black thought matters, and that there is no hope of true transformation without it.

When we look at the dates of publication of the pieces offered in this collection, the need for inward reflection is clear. Hypatia’s first volume was published in 1986 but its first piece on Black feminism by a Black feminist did not appear until its thirteenth volume in 1998. The next piece did not appear until 2003, and it was not until this past decade (2010-2020) that Black feminist work by Black feminists began to appear regularly in our journal.

Of course, Hypatia’s failure in these areas must be understood in the relevant context, which I would argue are the US discipline of philosophy and US academic feminism across disciplines. As Kathryn Sophia Belle’s musing from 2011 (published under her previous name, Gines, and offered in this Juneteenth online issue) reports, by 2010 fewer than 30 Black women had earned PhDs in philosophy. While the past decade has seen a number of Black women earn philosophy PhDs (myself and several good friends among them), available data suggests that we still make up less than one percent of the discipline.[2] As for academic feminism, many Black women and other women of color would still echo the frustration Audre Lorde expressed in 1979, when she wrote that the “history of white women who are unable to hear Black women’s words, or to maintain dialogue with us, is long and discouraging.”[3]

Lorde was weary then and Black feminist academics are weary now, and, on balance, Hypatia has been more a part of the problem than a part of the solution. Even with the paucity of Black feminist philosophers in 1986 – Anita Allen puts the number at that time around eight[4] – Hypatia could have more vigorously pursued submissions from Black feminists outside of philosophy. Indeed, that first 1998 article was written by eminent Black feminist sociologist, Patricia Hill Collins.

That article, “It’s All In the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation,” is Hypatia’s most cited article ever, by a large margin. (The next two most cited were written by decolonial Latina feminist Marìa Lugones, and the fourth most cited was written by Black feminist philosopher Kristie Dotson – it also appears in this Juneteenth online issue.)

We are trying to do better. We offer our gratitude to those Black feminist authors who have submitted their work to our journal and to those Black feminist academics who have graciously agreed to review these and other submissions, offering invaluable insight and feedback. We also offer our gratitude to all those Black feminist authors who choose to send their important scholarly contributions elsewhere, and to those Black feminist academics who decline to review for us and prefer to reserve their time, energy and intellectual labor for other vital projects.

Black thought matters. Please read, engage with, and share these excellent articles.

 

Works Cited

Botts, Tina, Liam Kofi Bright, Myisha Cherry, Guntar Mallarangeng and Quayshawn Spencer. 2014. What is the state of Blacks in philosophy? Critical Philosophy of Race 2(2): 224-242.

Collins, Patricia. 1998. It’s all in the family: Intersections of gender, race and nation. Hypatia 13(3): 62-82.

Dotson, Kristie. 2011. Tracking epistemic violence, tracking practices of silencing. Hypatia 26(2): 236-257.

Gines, Kathryn. Being a Black woman philosopher: Reflections on founding the collegium of Black women philosophers. Hypatia 26(2): 429-437.

The Guardian. 2020. Angela Davis: “We Knew That the Role of the Police was to Protect White Supremacy”. The Guardian, June 15. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/15/angela-davis-on-george-floyd-as-long-as-the-violence-of-racism-remains-no-one-is-safe.

Hobson, Janell. 2003. The “batty” politic: Toward an aesthetic of the Black female body. Hypatia 18(4): 87-105.

Lord, Audre. 2012. Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Berkeley: Crossing Press.

Lugones, Marìa. 2010. Toward a decolonial feminism. Hypatia 25(4): 742–59.

Lugones, María. 1987. Playfulness, ‘world’-travelling, and loving perception. Hypatia 2(2): 3–19.

Yancy, George. 2018. The pain and promise of Black women in philosophy. New York Times. June 18.  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/opinion/black-women-in-philosophy.html

[1] The Guardian, June 15^th, 2020.
[2] Botts, et al., 2014; also in consultation with Eric Schwitzgebel (June 2020).
[3] Lorde, 2012, p. 66.
[4] Yancy, June 18, 2018.