(1934-1992)
In her own words, Audre Lorde was a "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet"
"I think that black women are very aware of sexism. I think they are terribly, tragically
aware of sexism because I think that we probably, you know, are destroyed by it as much as and sometimes even more. I mean that not only do we have our own men, not only do we have black men, right, sitting on us, but we've got a whole white male establishment. So, I think that we are very aware of sexism. I think what is operative here is that we're also aware of racism and the ways in which those two things mesh.
And this is the point I was trying to make in the poem, "Who Said It Was Simple?" that racism and sexism fed each other, that if we removed sexism tomorrow, I have no reason to believe that the white female establishment would be any less racist than the white male establishment. And this is why I think it's absolutely necessary for women, black and white women, to get together and to begin to recognize some of the ways in which liberation is sucked away from us all, that we cannot separate the struggles for liberation because it is, eventually, all human liberation. And until we come into that concept, until we broaden our viewpoints so that liberation doesn't remain the private province of any one particular group, until we do that, we're going to be working against each other, and working against ourselves."
From Conversations with Audre Lorde (University Press of Mississippi, 2004) - Interview with Margaret Kaminski (1975)
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