Second-Wave Feminisms, Plural

The social divisions – the social inequities – of race/ethnicity, class, and gender that structured feminisms into organizationally distinct movements – Black, Chicana, and white – operated at several levels. The macrostructure of postwar American society created unequal sets of resources, privilege, and opportunity for feminists situated in different racial/ethnic communities, and these inequalities created obstacles to cross-racial/ethnic organizing. Feminists in oppositional movement communities organized in specific intramovement contexts that shaped their visions of what they could and should do. As they organized, they kept a sense of themselves as leftists who wished to do their politics the right way.

In previous chapters, I have shown that organizing within oppositional political milieus was never simply a question of feminists co-opting resources and splitting off from parent movements. Instead, the historical record gives us discussion, debate, and ambivalence about how to organize as feminists.