White liberation leaders are also fond of pointing to the analogy between blacks and women as second-class citizens in a white, male chauvinist society. One of the clearest points of similarity between the situation of blacks and women is that they have both been brainwashed into the same ‘low self-image’; they are not supposed to use their minds, they are incapable of making decisions. They are both second-class members of the society who should be kept in their place.
If white women in the women’s movement needed to make use of a black experience to emphasize women’s oppression, it would only seem logical that they focus on the black female experience – but they have not. Had white women desired to bond with black women on the basis of common oppression, they could have done so by demonstrating an awareness of the impact of sexism on the status of black women. Unfortunately, despite all the rhetoric about sisterhood and bonding, white women are not sincerely committed to bonding with black women to fight sexism. They are primarily interested in drawing attention to the oppression they consider they experience as white upper- or middle-class women.
Jackie Huggins, "Black women and women's liberation", Hecate, 13(1), 1987
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