Anti-communism,

racism and
the women’s
movement

By ANGELA DAVIS

The following speech by U.S. anti-
racism activist Angela Davis was delivered
at the conference “Anti-communism and
the U.S.: History and Consequences,” held
in November at Harvard University, New
York. Sponsored by the Institute for
Media Analysis and attended by 1,200
people, in 37 panels with over 150 special-
ists, it examined various aspects of the
question. Following is an abridged version
of Davis’ presentation where she examines
the legacy of racism and anti-communism
on the development of the U.S. women’s
movement. Transcripts, tapes and videos
of the proceedings are available from the
Institute for Media Analysis, 145 West 4th
Street, New York, N.Y., 10012.

I want to begin by answering the ques-
tion, “Are you now, of have you ever
been ...?” Yes, lam now and have been
a member of the Communist Party for
the past 20 years.

One year after I joined the Communist
Party in 1969 I was fired from my posi-
tion in the Department of Philosophy at
the University of California at Los
Angeles on the basis of my membership
in this organization. Because of the
widespread publicity surrounding my
dismissal, I was the target of vitriolic
expressions of anti-communism, which
often took on a distinctly racist charac-
ter.

I received, for example, enormous
amounts of hate mail. It struck me at the
time that the authors of these letters fre-
quently equated my hairstyle — a large
Afro — with my political affiliations.

The second wave of the women’s
movement was taking shape as I fought
to defend my right to teach against the
remnants of McCarthyite anti-commun-
ism. Like most progressive movements
of that era, it had not been able to break
free of the legacy of the McCarthy era. At
the same time, while the activist con-
sciousness of the women’s movement
had arisen directly from the involvement
of many pioneering feminists in the civil
rights movement, there were hidden
racist influences preventing women’s lib-
eration from addressing the specific con-
cerns of women of colour. It was not
entirely coincidental that anti-commun-
ism and racism worked simultaneously
to weaken the potential of the women’s
movement at that time.

Anti-communist myths and_ racist
myths, as they exerted hidden influences
on the thought patterns of the people of
our country, reveal similar structures and
dynamics. The net effect of these myths is
to prevent the comprehension of connec-
tions and intersections of oppression and
thus also of the need for unity in the
resistance to these oppression.

One underlying effect of anti-commun-
ism in this respect is to encourage a cer-
tain hesitancy to embrace solutions
which call for deep, structural, socio-
economic transformations. Those of us
who advocated approaches to women’s
oppression that incorporated our own
understanding of the role played by capi-
talism in shaping sexist institutions were
often accused of being diversionary.

During that era, feminists argued that

because sexism can be detected in both
capitalist and socialist societies, they
concluded that sexist institutions are
entirely unrelated to social systems. This

ahistorical approach characterized
women’s oppression as transcending all
particular socio-economic orders. Of
course, this was a very disarming influ-
ence, since it prevented the movement
from learning about experiences of
women in the socialist countries and
from making common ‘cause with the
labour movement and with radical
movements for social change as, for
example, the Communist Party.

A prevailing theoretical notion during
that period posited male supremacy as
the most fundamental form of human
oppression, deserving priority over all
others. According to that analysis, all
other forms of human oppression found
their genesis in women’s oppression. In
other words, male supremacy spawned
both capitalism and racism.

The message received from the fled-
gling women’s liberation movement of
the late 1960s was that feminism implied
priority for those issues arising out of
white middle-class women’s particular
experience of oppression. For a while, it
seemed impossible to be both a dedicated
feminist and to work side by side with
men in a militant challenge to racism.

I felt that I was asked to be a raceless
woman, and a genderless Black activist.
It was especially painful to me because I
had joined the Communist Party
because I wanted my activism to reflect
an understanding of the fundamental
interrelatedness of the various forms of
oppression from which my community
suffered.

Twenty years later, where do we
stand? I do not want to suggest that we
have begun to solve all the problems with
which the early movement was afflicted,
but certainly over the intervening
decades the women’s movement has
developed a measure of maturity,
reflected in the increased involvement of
women of colour and of working class
women of all racial backgrounds, as well
asin the willingness to examine the larger
context of women’s oppression.

This political and theoretical maturity
is at least partially due to the waning
influence of anti-communism. The last
eight years of the Reagan adminstration,
which have seen anti-communism ele-
vated to the level of governmental policy,
have also encouraged the development
of more complex, more sophisticated
forms of mass consciousness in general.
Within the women’s movement, this has
led to the acceptance of an analysis of
women’s oppression which prioritizes
class and race in a new and refreshing
way.

Considering the recent (U.S.) election :

results, it will be incumbent upon us to
more forcefully challenge anti-commun-
ism and racism within the women’s
movement as well as within all other
progressive formations. Above all, we
should try to achieve that which both
anti-communism and racism are trying
to thwart: a togetherness and thorough-
going unity in our practice or resistance.

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