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Zariah Johnson

Freshman Comp 2

Mrs. Jacobs

November 14, 2017 Formatted: Space Before: 0 pt, After: 0 pt

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Critical Approach Essay Formatted: Space Before: 0 pt, After: 0 pt
Being a woman is hard., Bbeing an African American is even harder. As a Wwomean they

already deal with sexist acts and unfair advantages fromfor men, whilebut also being black is just

another addition. African American womean are hated, disrespected, and underestimated because

of their gender and skin color. Black womean areis constantly judged by their appearance due to

statistics and negative minds that title us by our skin and not their personality or character. The

This movement Black Lives Matter is happening all over the world and in black movements such

as Black Lives Matter. Thismovements. This black movement transitions Black Feminism

framework as a theoretical complement to African Americans everywhere. In the poem Still I

Rise by Maya Angelou, she expresses her feelings thoroughly. She shows how being black and

being a woman comes with a lot of power and pride. Black Feminism is all around the world in

many different black movements around the world like Black Lives Matter.

Not many people know the true meaning behind what feminism is or what and being an

African American is. Whereas, Aaccording to Mays, Critics sought to define African American

literary tradition as early as the twentieth century. A period of literary success in the 1920s, known

as the Harlem Renaissance, produced some of the first classic essays on writings by African

Americans. Criticism and histories of African American literature tended to ignore and dismiss

women writers, while feminist literary histories, neglected women writers of color. Only after

feminist critics began to succeed in the academy and African American studies programs were
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established did the whiteness of feminist studies and the masculinity of African American studies Formatted: Font: (Default) Times New Roman

become glaring. (1375) Also to Mays Feminism is like Marxist criticism, feminist criticism

derives from a critique of a history of oppression, in this case the history of womens inequality.

Feminism criticism has no single founder like Freud or Marx; it has been practiced to some extent

since the 1790s, when praise of womens cultural achievements went hand in hand with arguments

that women were rational beings deserving equal rights and education. (1372)But what is

feminism?

Feminist literary studies began by denouncing the misrepresentation of women in literature

and affirming the importance of womens writings Mays view as well. According to Angelou, used

Still I Rise is to show how she show her feminism was real to her in her poem. Like when she

stated in lines stanza 32-3526-29, Does it come as a surprise/ that I dance like Ive got diamonds/

at the meeting of my thighs? In this part of the poem she shows her feminism by talking about

the way she dances and that she has diamonds betweenon her thighs. Expressing that she is more

than just an ordinary woman she is phenomenal, and she is made of more than just women parts

and colored skin. In stanza 32-35 she imports the importance of history that makes her African

Americanism show like when she said, Up from a past thats rooted in pain/ I rise/ Im a black

ocean, leaping and wide, / welling and swelling I bear in the tide. This is when Angelou speaks

of the past and how it is going to change the future for the better. What Angelou is trying to show

the theme of respect and confidence.confidence?

What is Black Lives Matter, it is a global Network, a chapter-based member-led

organization whose mission is to build local power and to intervene in violence inflicted on black

communities by the state and vigilantes. The BLM movement embodies a thread of vindication,
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like that which black feminist have invoked in response to Black people. Black Lives Matter is a Formatted: Font: (Default) Times New Roman

real-world movement that is happening as we speak now. According to my scholarly article, Black

Lives Matter movement is breaking new ground in terms of black freedom struggle in the United

States. Digital technologies have propelled a bottom-up, grassroots movement. This movement

have insisted on a group-centered model of leadership, rooted in ideas of participatory democracy.

Its also both radically different and yet rooted in core values that are quite familiar to feminists. In

framing racial discrimination in human rights terms, the Black Lives Matter movement is today

piking up the baton of civil rights activists before them. This is still an ongoing movement that

many people today can get involved in to make a different in the community and how being an

African American in the world is today needs movements like this to improve change.

Black Llives Matter also involves rooted Black feminist and transnational feminist

traditions, that provides a coherent feminist framing for this activist work. It speaks to scholar

activist who might be inclined to explore the theoretical underpinnings of contemporary black

feminist. According to Asoka 2015, Black Lives Matter is feminist in its interrogation of state

power and its critique of structural inequality. It is also forcing a conversation about gender and

racial politics. Tthat they we need to have-womenhave women at the forefront of this movement

are articulating that black lives does not only mean mens lives or cisgender lives or respectable

lives, or the lives that are legitimated by state power or privilege. Black feminism plays a big role

in the Black Lives Matter movement, to make it real there had to be some type of life behind it

even though it mostly focuses on the life loss of African American men that where harmed by

white men.

The color of their your skin should never be the basis of how a person treats the other.
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Everybody deserves respect regardless of the color of theretheir skin. Being an African American Formatted: Font: (Default) Times New Roman

in the united statesUnited States is hard enough. Black feminism is real and plays a role in this

world today. One day there will be no need for black movements or any other racial motions in

the world. There will be peace and everyone will come to the understanding of values of all lives.