When Angela Davis released her seminal work in 1981, the American feminist landscape was largely a white, middle-class affair. It's kinda wild to think about now, but back then, the idea that race and class were inseparable from gender was almost radical. Angela Davis Women Race and Class didn't just add a few footnotes to history; it essentially tore the existing narrative down and started over.
Davis wasn't just writing a history book. Honestly, she was performing an autopsy on the American social structure. She looked at how the "cult of true womanhood"—that Victorian ideal of the fragile, domestic wife—never applied to Black women. While white women were being told their place was in the parlor, enslaved Black women were being worked to death in the fields right alongside men. There was no "fragility" allowed for them.
The Myth of the "Equal" Suffrage Movement
One of the biggest misconceptions people have is that the early women’s rights movement was some harmonious sisterhood. It wasn't. Angela Davis Women Race and Class highlights the moments where the movement's leaders basically threw Black people under the bus to get the vote for themselves.
Take Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. They were abolitionists first, sure. But when the 15th Amendment came around—the one giving Black men the right to vote—they flipped. Stanton famously used some pretty racist rhetoric, suggesting that "degraded" Black men shouldn't get the ballot before "cultured" white women.
It’s a messy history. Davis doesn't shy away from the fact that by the late 19th century, the suffrage movement had largely aligned itself with white supremacy. They figured that if they could convince white men that white women's votes would "counteract" the Black vote, they’d finally get what they wanted. It was a tactical betrayal that created a rift between Black and white feminists that, in many ways, still exists today.
The Statistics of Survival and Labor
Davis gets really deep into the economics of it all. She points out that after the Civil War, the "emancipation" of Black women was often just slavery by another name. They were pushed into domestic service because there literally weren't any other jobs.
By 1910, roughly 52% of all employed Black women were working as domestic servants. Compare that to white women, who were increasingly finding clerical or factory work. Even as late as 1960, a full one-third of Black women workers were still stuck in those same household jobs.
This wasn't just a coincidence. It was a deliberate economic pipeline. Davis argues that the capitalist system needs a pool of "devalued" labor to function. By keeping Black women in domestic roles, the system ensured that white middle-class life could be maintained cheaply.
- 1890s: Black women begin forming their own clubs because white clubs won't let them in.
- 1910: Over half of working Black women are domestics.
- 1930s: The "Scottsboro Nine" case highlights how the myth of the "Black rapist" was used to justify lynching and keep Black communities in a state of terror.
- 1970s: Radical movements start connecting the dots between capitalism, patriarchy, and racism.
Why Intersectionality Isn't Just a Buzzword
You've probably heard the word "intersectionality" a thousand times by now. While Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the actual term later in 1989, Angela Davis Women Race and Class provided the historical and material foundation for it.
Basically, you can't talk about "women's rights" as if every woman has the same experience. A wealthy white woman’s struggle for "career advancement" is lightyears away from a working-class Black woman’s struggle against forced sterilization or the carceral state.
Davis talks about the eugenics movement, which is a part of history most textbooks skip. In the early 20th century, some birth control advocates—including Margaret Sanger—flirted with the idea of "population control" for "unfit" groups. This led to the horrific reality of thousands of Black and Puerto Rican women being sterilized without their consent. For these women, reproductive "freedom" wasn't just about the right to an abortion; it was the right to actually have and keep their children.
Domestic Work and the "Obsolescence" of the Home
In the final chapters, Davis gets really spicy about housework. She calls it "the approaching obsolescence of housework." Basically, she thinks the idea of a private individual doing hours of unpaid labor every day is a waste of human potential.
She argues for the socialization of housework. Imagine communal kitchens, public laundries, and state-funded childcare that actually works. Her point is that as long as domestic work is seen as a "private" female duty, women will never be truly equal in the workforce. They’ll always be working a "second shift" when they get home.
Is it a radical idea? Sorta. But when you look at how much modern families spend on DoorDash and daycare, you realize we're already trying to "socialize" these things—we're just doing it through expensive private companies instead of a collective system.
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How to Apply These Insights Today
Reading this book shouldn't just be an academic exercise. If you want to actually use what Davis teaches, you've gotta look at modern issues through that triple lens of race, class, and gender.
- Audit your advocacy. If you're supporting a cause, ask: who does this not help? If a policy for "women's safety" involves more policing, how does that affect Black and Brown women in over-policed neighborhoods?
- Follow the money. Look at the labor behind your conveniences. The gig economy is the modern version of the domestic service Davis wrote about. Who is doing the "dirty work" so you can have a "seamless" life?
- Question the "Mainstream." When a news story talks about "the average woman," remember that there is no such thing. Check the data for specific demographics.
- Prioritize Solidarity. Davis’s biggest lesson is that when we fight for the most marginalized person in the room, everyone else gets liberated by default.
Angela Davis Women Race and Class is a heavy read, but it's a necessary one. It forces you to stop looking at history as a straight line of progress and start seeing it as a series of power struggles. The fight isn't over; it just changed its outfit.
To continue your journey with this framework, your next step should be to investigate the Combahee River Collective Statement. Written around the same time as Davis's book, it provides a practical manifesto for how Black women organized politically against these overlapping systems of oppression.