Book Report: Women Race and Class by Angela Yvonne Davis (Book Report Sample)

Name Professor Course Date Book Report: Women Race and Class by Angela Yvonne Davis Introduction The Book Women, Race, and Class is a work that falls under the social science genre. The author of this book is Angela Yvonne Davis, an academic scholar, author and American political activist. Other publications by Angela Davis are Angela Davis: An Autobiography, Women, Culture, and Politics, and Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrud ‘Ma’ Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday. The 288 pages book presents a captivating study of liberations movements by women in the United States, from the abolitionist period to the modern day period. The book underlines the manner that these movements faced challenges by the classists and racist biases of its leaders. The paper is a book report on the book Women Race and Class written by Angela Yvonne Davis Born in Alabama in 1944, Angela Davis education was at the Brandeis University where she studied with philosopher Herbert Marcuse. After an involvement with Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Davis worked with the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA). Her work with the Black Panther Party attributed to her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement evident in her interests in issues entailing human rights such as rights for prisoners. She was among the prominent female leaders in the BPP, a party, which was liberal and open on issues of women roles and sexual expressions. The ability of the party to embrace and viewing women as capable of effecting social change through allowing women to assume leadership positions underlined the close working relationship with Davis. Moreover, the reality that the BPP could not chastise her for her sexuality or gender ensured that Davis sexual preference was a secret until she disclosed it in 1997 (James 62). In the book, Women, Race, and Class, which has thirteen chapters, Angela Davis discusses the history of the African and white American women’s struggle to address the social, sexual and economic shackles that restricted their freedom in a conservative American society. Her well-written masterpiece account underscores the parallels between the hampering, internecine influence of classism and racism in the nineteenth century and modern women’s movements. She praises the achievements of early feminist leaders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Margaret Sanger and Susan B. Anthony. Nonetheless, she underlines the manner in which these feminist pacesetters remained defenseless even years after their active participation in progressive causes because of the insidious ideological effect of racial discrimination (Davis 76). In an intuitive evocation, Davis highlights how the feminists in the twentieth century failed to move beyond the concern of racial discrimination, classism, and racism as their predecessors. Davies moves a step further to censure the works of feminists such Jean Mackellar, Shulamith Firestone, Susan Brownmiller and Diana Russell. The disproval of these feminists by Davis attributes to her conclusion that they played a defining role in creating of racist myths. Angela Davis attempts to position feminist struggle through comparing it with the heritage of slavery among the African American people especially the women. According to Faulkner (13), to Davis, slavery was a structure in the United States systems where the African American women enjoyed equality with African American men in terms of cruelty and suffering. Davies points out that African-American women were as productive and hardworking in domestic and manual labor in spite of being victims of frequent rape by the white American men who were their slave-owners. For this reason, the white American men during the slavery period used rape as a weapon of reminding the African American women of their susceptibility and femaleness. Davis acknowledges that the hard work, self-reliance, and perseverance, a heritage of resistance, tenacity and insistent on sexual equality was a legacy spelling out the levels and standards of women. In the quest for the pursuit of equality, the African American women initially received help for white women in antislavery movements evident in the efforts by two South Carolina sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke who were active in creating awareness on feminism and abolition. Evidently, from the slavery period, Davis concludes that women irrespective of the race or class were part of the social justice movements such as the labor movements, besides, the fight to ensure women received equal education as men. For this reason, Angela Davis allots a chapter to communist women activities whom their contributions to the labor struggles of the women are undocumented. Three chapters stand out as the pillars of the book. The first chapter is Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights. In the chapter, the author highlights the correlation between the eugenics movement, and early birth control movement. To the author whereas, the sterilization and birth control services were to white women methods of liberation, to the African, Native and Latino women these services were tools of genocide. The author supports the condemnation of the early abortion movements alleging that the leaders of this movement should have referred to the history to comprehend the injustices that were apparent in the form of birth control and sterilization. These services were tools used to eliminate the unfit population sector, which were African, Native, and Hispanic populations. The second chapter is Rape, Racism and the Myth of the Black Rapist. In the chapter, the author confers an insightful review of the lynching phenomenon, in addition to, the historical and current sexual abuse of the African American women. Nonetheless, Joseph (134) alleges that her arguments on excusing the public rape advocacy by Imamu Barak and Eldridge Cleaver water her argument evident in alleging that her argument was absurd. The claim attributes to the reality that all women are vulnerable to rape hence the utilization of the misogynist language was not excusable. Another chapter with a strong opinion in work is the final chapter The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working Class Perspective. In the chapter, Davis in her quest to address the concern of wages for housework, the author discredits the domestic roles as repetitive and boring. According to Davis, the people in the society, particularly women, should not engage in roles that are not creative, productive or stimulating. She presents her solution to the domestic roles to be using teams of ...