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With the weight of racial pressures in the 20``` century, the strained relationships among Black women emerged as well. Addressing these concerns, Africana Womanism, which is a paradigm designed for all women of African descent prioritizing race, class, and gender, became an antidote to the strain currently confronting both Black women as sisters and, moreover, Black male/female relationships, the foundation of the Blackfamily, and the key to Black survival. Africana Womanism takes its models from African women warriors and moves on to create a paradigm relative to this age-old legacy of Africana women's activism.
With the weight of racial pressures in the 201 century, the strained relationships among Black women emerged as well. Addressing these concerns, Africana Womanism became an antidote to the strain currently confronting both Black women as sisters, as well as Black male/female relationships. Nobel Prize-winning author, Toni Morrison, captures the strain of female relationships in particular in her commencement address, "Cinderella's Stepsisters," which she delivered at Barnard College in the 1980s. As you entertain Morrison's insights, just for the moment, I would like for you to substitute any particular group for women/ mothers/sisters here, such as Blacks, Native Americans, Asians, Latinas, Jews, differently abled, men, etc. who, in much the same way as the women or the "stepsister" here could be discriminated against simply because of their differences.
I am alarmed by the violence that women do to each other: professional violence, competitive violence, emotional violence. I am alarmed by the willingness of women to enslave other women. I am alarmed by a growing absence of decency on the killing floor of professional women's worlds ....
I want not to ask you but to tell you not to participate in the oppression of your sisters. Mothers who abuse their children are women, and another woman, not an agency, has to be willing to stay their hands. Mothers who set fire to school buses are women, and another woman, not an agency, has to tell them to stay their hands. Women who stop the promotion of other women in careers are women, and another woman must come to the victim's aid. Social and welfare workers who humiliate their clients may be women, and other women colleagues have to deflect...