Freedom Is a Constant Struggle

One of Davis’s central themes is that Black feminist theories and practices, particularly its intersectional perspective, can lead the way for future movements to fully achieve freedom through deeper understandings of various issues and struggles. Black feminism is a philosophy that recognizes that Black women, due to their race and gender, are uniquely positioned to understand the ways in which oppression arises from multiple factors or issues that interconnect. As Davis defines it, a Black feminism framework can “demonstrat[e] that race, gender, and class are inseparable” (3). It centers an intersectional way of thinking that requires us to connect that which may “seem to be separate and unrelated” (4).

However, Davis also goes beyond traditional definitions of intersectionality, which originally “was about bodies and experiences” (19), such as race, gender, class, sexuality, and nationality, to include looking at interconnections between struggles, both past and present, and across the world. For example, Davis repeatedly returns to the Palestinian freedom struggle, which she connects to the US Black freedom struggle or the South African antiapartheid movement. Her main point is that we should not have to choose just one issue or movement.