2.1 Origins and extensions

Black feminist thought is a unique standpoint founded on the experiences of African American womxn4 ways of knowing and validation of knowledge claims that represents a “collection of ideas, writings, and art” (Few-Demo & Glass, 2015, p. 1). The Black liberation movements of the 1970s and 1980s in the United States emerged as a result of historical experiences of enslavement (including enslaved breeding and surgical experimentation), the Tuskegee study,5  lynching, segregation, racism, civil rights, and colonialism (Araujo et al., 2019; The Combahee River Collective, 1982). Against such a backdrop, Black feminism disrupted the hegemonic canon of both the middle-class, white patriarchal and cisgender liberal feminist movement, and the struggle of Black womxn with Black liberation movements dominated by men. Black feminism recognized the Black liberation movement and the tenets of white liberal feminism failed to represent the views and experiences of Black womxn from an intersecting matrix of racism, sexism, oppression, and other discriminations (Collins, 2000; hooks, 2009, 2014; Taylor, 1998; The Combahee River Collective, 1982; Walker, 1983).

The Black liberation movements dominated by Black men rendered the existence and experiences of Black womxn invisible, sexually oppressing and relegating them to the confines of the family and home. This sexual oppression directly resulted from a Eurocentric patriarchal and capitalistic conceptualization of manhood, one defined by males' sexual ability and wealth production (Black Men for the Eradication of Sexism, 2009). Black men were thought by society to be weak for failing to liberate Black people from racism and were made to believe that Black womxn had gained socioeconomic status after using their bodies for the pleasure of white men, leaving Black men behind (Cade Bambara, 1970).

Black and white liberal feminists in the United States had vastly divergent lived experiences. Black womxn experienced economic challenges as a result of enslavement and segregation (e.g., Jim Crow laws), requiring them to work (usually in lower-paid or caring jobs with poor working conditions) in the pursuit of upward economic and class mobility (Barlow & Smith, 2019; Branch, 2011; Collins, 1998). These experiences were vastly incongruent with the interests of the white liberal feminism movement, which sought the liberation of white, middle-class college-educated womxn from their homes and motherhood, hoping to enter the workforce (hooks, 2014; Love, 2016).

Divergences related to the ideologies of racism, sexism, and patriarchy were also prevalent (Beale, 2005; The Combahee River Collective, 1982). Unlike white womxn, who argued that men were the oppressor, Black womxn experienced racism from the middle-class, white womxn as well as sexism from Black and white men. The transition from a matriarchal to a patriarchal society combined with the historical oppression of Black men and womxn by white people explained the root causes of Black men's values of dominance and competition with Black womxn and Black men's sexist attitudes (Barry & Grady, 2019; Dove, 2015; The Combahee River Collective, 1982). Thus, the quest for gender equality in the white liberal feminist movement was unfounded since Black womxn and other womxn of color were not socially equal to other womxn, and discrimination continued against Black men (hooks, 2014). The call for gender equality ignored the discrimination among those of the same sex or gender (hooks, 2014) by virtue of race. Further, it accentuated European colonial practices of gender-specificity and division within communities and society (Barry & Grady, 2019).

Different ideological stances between white and Black feminism reinforced the notion that white liberal feminism was not feminism for all. It accentuated the different lived experiences between middle-class white womxn living in a patriarchal society and African American womxn (Collins, 1998; Dorlin, 2019; hooks, 2014), as well as between Black womxn and Black men. However, other groups in the excluded segments of society embodied similar experiences as a result of discrimination based on class, sex, and ethnicity, which posited Black feminist thought as a sociopolitical activist movement that could end discrimination faced by African-Americans, Black womxn, and other similarly situated groups (Collins, 1998, 2000; hooks, 2014; The Combahee River Collective, 1982). The lived experience of racialized Black womxn in geographic regions outside the United States has shaped Black feminist epistemology and widened the debate and social justice action by Black feminist thought on a global scale (Carvalho et al., 2019; Collins, 2000). For instance, scholars have expanded the theory of American Black feminisms to Brazilian Black feminism, Caribbean feminism, Latinx feminism, Romani feminism and other womxn of color (Barriteau, 2009; Carvalho et al., 2019; Nunes, 2019; Taylor, 2000; Todorova, 2017). Activist movements have also emerged as a result. This is evident in the Brazilian Black feminist movement “Who killed Marielle Franco?”; Marielle Franco was a Black, gay, feminist politician and human rights activist who was outspoken about police violence, particularly in favelas in Brazil.

Although we center Black feminist thought in the experiences of Black womxn, we argue this praxis can be deployed to better understand the experiences of people and groups at the intersection of multiple axes of historical connections such as colonialism, immigration, and experiences of racism and discrimination due to class, sex, gender, ethnicity, age, ability, language and so forth. Similar to Black feminist Jennifer Nash's discourse on the proprietary attachments to intersectionality (Nash, 2019), we seek to put forward a vision of Black feminist thought that is not invested in making Black women its only proprietary.

2.2 Intersectionality as a paradigm

Extending Black feminist thought and its intersectional paradigm to all communities with historical and ongoing experiences of discrimination is paramount for nurses to consider the impact of sociopolitical forces in healthcare, promote health and wellness and prevent illness. An intersectional paradigm directs attention to the multiaxis of systems of power that shape each individual's identity6 and experiences, amplifying the problems generated by commonalities and differences that underpin discrimination, and focusing on the sociopolitical structures that frame these problems (Cho et al., 2013; Crenshaw, 2011).

Intersectionality as a paradigm underpins Black feminist thought. Although Kimberlé Crenshaw first introduced the term (see Crenshaw, 1989), the conceptual understanding of intersectionality emerged from the works of other Black womxn and womxn of color such as Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the Combahee River Collective, bell hooks, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, and Gloria Anzaldúa (Moradi et al., 2020). Intersectionality recognized the multiaxis framework of identity (initially gender and race only) in African American womxn's experiences ignored by US law (Crenshaw, 1989) since intersectional factors such as race, ethnicity, class, sex, and gender were impossible to separate when the discrimination occurred as they were experienced simultaneously as systems of power (The Combahee River Collective, 1982). The intersection of systems of power (sexism, racism, ageism, classism, heteronormativity, and other forms of discrimination based on immigration, location, spirituality, language and so forth) shape each person's identity and, in turn, can create power differentials and discrimination in society (Collins & Bilge, 2016). Given that lived experiences vary, and these intersectional factors lead to privilege and discrimination, knowledge development should consider them.

To direct the work toward action on social determinants of health and systems of power, the discipline of nursing must adopt intersectionality as a paradigm. With the goal of sociopolitical change, intersectionality can provide insight into inequities within health care systems in its role as a tool for critical inquiry in research, teaching, and practice (Collins, 2019; Love, 2016; Moradi & Grzanka, 2017). In this line of thought, intersectionality is inextricably contextual and linked to a power analysis of sociopolitical, economic, and institutional structures (Cho et al., 2013; Collins, 2019; Crenshaw, 2011). These power analyses characterize intersectionality as a form of praxis, striving to unseat racism, sexism, classism, economic exploitation, colonial thinking, and other forms of discrimination (Collins, 2019). Thus, Black feminist thought prioritizes and problematizes racism and related pervasive social constructs (Barriteau, 2009).