Question: The members of the Combahee River Collective understand themselves to be adding to the feminist principle that the personal is political. Specifically, their Statement takes this idea to an extreme by suggesting that black women's personal lives involve confrontations with all the major systems of oppression.In the Collective's view, therefore, Black women's longed-for liberation would signify the freedom of people who don't share the same kind of oppression: "We might use our position at the bottom...to make a clear leap into revolutionary action. If Black women were free, it would mean everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all systems of oppression" (7). However, it is unclear from this theoretical pronouncement how, in practice, Black women encounter a complex, multifaceted system of oppressions. According to the Collective's statement, how do Black women experience the relationship between different kinds of oppression, and how is the structure of this experience reflected (or not) in the Collective's political analysis and practice?
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