Prepared by Jane M. Gangi, Ph.D.; April 20, 2011 A Mini-Profile of Patricia Hill Collins’s

“How long shall the fair daughters of Africa be compelled to bury their minds and talents beneath a load of iron pots and kettles” (as cited in Collins, p. 3)  Experiences young Black girls growing up, who often saw Black women as confined to “pots and kettles”: Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, Debra Dickerson, bell hooks

…often left out Black women, focusing mostly on White, middle-class women’s issues (p. 7)  Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?”

 Preface: A confident child, as she grew up she found herself increasingly silent; she wants to address the silence  Resists “being listened to only if we frame our ideas in the language that is familiar to and comfortable for the dominant group” (p. xiii)  Privileges the voices of Black women

 “No standpoint is neutral because no individual or group exists unembedded in the world” (p. 33)  “the primary responsibility for defining one’s own reality lies with the people who live that reality, who actually have those experiences” (p. 34)

 Rejects either/or dichotomous thinking and the objectification of the “the Other”  Rejects “controlling images” of Black women: the mammy, the matriarch, the welfare mother, Jezebel  Rejects standards of beauty centered around Whiteness

“Now, if you’re white you’re all right, If you’re brown, stick around, But if your black, Git back! Git back! Git back!”S  Recall Kiri Davis’s film, A Girl Like Me, that updated Dr. Kenneth Clark’s 1940s Black Doll, White Doll experiment: g&feature=related g&feature=related

 Watch for certainty, and be cautious of it  Watch for the classrooms care and nurture children  Watch for representation—Aunt Jemima (“the mammy” is more subtle but still there)  Watch for invisibility (a sixth grade girl reported hating to read until an undergrad  Watch for the ways children are (or not) allowed to define their own experience—to have voice.