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Posts tagged audre lorde.

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      My political obligations? I am a Black woman … in world that defines human as white and male for starters. Everything I do including survival is political.

— Audre Lorde

331 ♥ 9.20.12

One of the main problems facing Black womyn, it seems to me is that most of them simply refuse to even admit that such a phenomenon as sexism exists. Admittedly, all straight women seem to have difficulty acknowledging that fact…

The thing I find most disturbing regarding womyn in general is the seeming impossibility of their thinking clearly when it comes time to deal with men. Womyn with advanced university degrees often seem utterly unable to dot an i when they are confronted with the realities of man’s barbaric treatment of womin. To put it bluntly, I find it absolutely terrifying to see just how effective men have been eradicating womyn’s sense of self, a condition that seems to prevail in at least 90 percent of all womyn all over this male-infected globe. 

- Anita Cornwell, Black Lesbian in White America

8 ♥ 7.17.12
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      The development of self-defined Black women, ready to explore and pursue our power and interests within our communities, is a vital component in the war for Black liberation. The image of the Angolan woman with a baby on one arm and a gun in the other is neither romantic nor fanciful. When Black women in this country come together to examine our sources of strength and support, and to recognize our common social, cultural, emotional, and political interests, it is a development which can only contribute to the Black community as a whole. It can certainly never diminish it. For it is through the coming together of self-actualized individuals, female and male, that any real advances can be made.

— Audre Lorde, “Scratching the Surface” from Sister Outsider, 46

74 ♥ 5.24.12
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      If this society ascribes roles to Black men which they are not allowed to fulfill, is it Black women who must bend and alter out lives to compensate, or is it society that needs changing? And why would Black men accept these roles as correct ones, or anything other than a narcotic promise encouraging acceptance of other facets of their own oppression?

— Audre Lorde, “Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface” from Sister Outsider

29 ♥ 5.24.12
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      In the 60s Black people wasted a lot of our substance fighting each other. We cannot afford to do that in the 80s…

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- Audre Lorde, (144) “Scratching the Surface..” from Sister Outsider

 It is now nearly 30 years later and these words still ring true. 

13 ♥ 5.24.12
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      Black women… speaking up for ourselves, sharing close ties with one another politically and emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men. We are Black women who seek our own definitions, recognizing diversity among ourselves with respect. We have been around within our communities for a very long time, and we have played pivotal parts in the survival of those communities: from Hat Shep Sut through Harriet Tubman to Daisy Bates and Fannie Lou Hamer to Lorraine Hansberry…

— Audre Lorde, (144) “Scratching the Surface” from Sister Outsider

12 ♥ 5.24.12
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      Often as soon as any young Black woman begins to recognize that she is oppressed as a woman as well as a Black, she is called a lesbian no matter how she identifies herself sexually. ‘What do you mean you don’t want to make coffee, take notes, wash dishes, got to bed with me, you a lesbian or something?’ And at the threat of such a dreaded taint, all too often she falls meekly into line, however covertly. But the word lesbian is only threatening to those Black women who are intimidated by their sexuality, or who allow themselves to be defined by it and from outside themselves.

— Audre Lorde, (144) “Scratching the Surface…” from Sister Outsider 

54 ♥ 5.24.12
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Referring to Black lesbians and gay men, the student president at Howard University says, on the occasion of a Gay Student Charter on campus, ‘The Black community has nothing to do with such filth - we will have to abandon these people.’

…And I don’t know what I’d say face to face with that young man at Howard University who says I’m filth because I identify women as my primary source of energy and support, except to say that it is my energy and the energy of other women very much like me which has contributed to his being where he is at this point.

— Audre Lore, “Learning from the Sixties” from Sister Outsider

5 ♥ 5.24.12
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      We slipped off the cotton shifts we had worn and moved against each other’s damp breasts in the shadow of the roof’s chimney, making moon, honor, love, while the ghostly vague light drifting upward from the street competed with the silver hard sweetness of the full moon, reflected in the shiny mirrors of our sweat-slippery dark bodies, sacred as the ocean at high tide.

— Audre Lorde, Zami

31 ♥ 5.2.12