Black Feminism

‘They’re Taking Our Humanity Away’: Kimberlé Crenshaw on Her Memoir, America’s Future and Why the Fight for Justice Requires ‘Backtalking’

PUBLISHED 5/14/2026 by

For decades, pioneering legal scholar and activist Kimberlé Crenshaw has shaped the language we use to understand systemic injustice—from coining the term “intersectionality” to helping launch the #SayHerName movement.

In her new memoir, Backtalker: An American Memoir, Crenshaw traces the personal and political experiences that shaped her work, while warning that the attacks on critical race theory, feminism and Black women are inseparable from the broader erosion of democracy itself.

In this wide-ranging interview, Crenshaw reflects on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, “intersectional failure,” the backlash against Black women leaders and the dangers of what historian Timothy Snyder calls “anticipatory compliance.” She argues that today’s political moment—from attacks on independent journalism to the dismantling of civil rights protections—demands a more expansive understanding of solidarity and resistance.

“The other side doesn’t want us to feel empathy,” Crenshaw says. “They’re taking our humanity away, the thing that makes us humans and not a machine.”

Crenshaw also speaks candidly about the personal costs of “backtalking” to power, the unfinished grief that continues to shape her activism, and why she still believes collective action and moral clarity matter.

“One step forward can lead to five or 10 steps back,” she says. “When we see the forces of retrenchment coming on the horizon, we must pick up every weapon we have to fight against it.”

‘Who Will Revere the Black Woman?’ Remembering Nancy, Cerina and So Many More

PUBLISHED 4/22/2026 by

Even though I did not know Nancy Metayer, my heart is utterly broken by the loss of her life and the violence of her death. The night before her funeral, I joined a virtual vèyè in her honor—a space to keep watch, to remember her impact and to hold one another in communal care.

That same day, news broke about Dr. Cerina Fairfax, also killed in her home. I did not know her either, and still, I was gutted.

Nor did I know Pastor Tammy McCollum, Ashly Robinson, Qualeisha Barnes, Davonta Curtis or Barbara Deer—Black women killed in just a matter of weeks. And to think these are only the names we know.

In moments like this, I find myself returning to a question first posed by Abbey Lincoln decades ago: “Who will revere the Black woman?” The reality of this violence—and the way it is so often explained away or softened—makes that question feel as urgent as ever.

Black feminists have long named the patterns, the structures and the stakes. And still, we are left mourning, naming and insisting: We will not let their lives be forgotten. We will continue the work in their honor—because we revere them.

Sally Hemings and the Making of Democracy

PUBLISHED 3/30/2026 by

The United States was founded not through declarations of equality, but through the labor of Black women whose political work reproduced the nation, even as it was erased from the democratic archive. 

Sally Hemings is rarely situated within the United States’ democratic legacy, despite her central role in the material conditions through which democracy was made possible.

In shaping the conditions of her children’s freedom, Hemings exercised a form of maternal political authority that governed who could move beyond enslavement. This labor stands in sharp contrast to Jefferson’s authorship of democratic ideals, which articulated freedom in abstract and ambiguous terms, while Hemings produced freedom materially through the governance of reproduction and kinship under constraint.

Hemings’ strategic negotiations secured her and her children’s futures within a political order that both denied her legal personhood and depended on her labor.

(This essay is part of the FEMINIST 250: Founding Feminists series, marking the 250th anniversary of America by reclaiming the revolution through the women and gender-expansive people whose ideas, labor and resistance shaped U.S. democracy.)

In a Time of Backlash, the Combahee River Collective Still Shows the Way

PUBLISHED 3/27/2026 by

Combahee was born in response to the murders of 12 Black women in Boston at a time when racial violence had a pernicious vice-hold over the city.

When so many Black feminist icons of their generation have gone on to become ancestors, we are privileged to have access to these women, and other Black feminist elders like them today. At a time when books are being banned, there are galling attempts to erase the histories and the stories of marginalized groups, the radical beginnings of the Combahee River Collective must be amplified. These women were proud of their African American heritage, unequivocal about their socialist politics, and unabashed about their lesbian identity. They have as much to teach us now as they did then.

Equal Pay Is Getting Pushed Further Away. We’re Pushing Back.

PUBLISHED 3/25/2026 by and

Amid the celebrations of Women’s History Month, it is a bitter irony Equal Pay Day—marking how far into the year women must work to earn what men did in the previous year—has been pushed back to March 26. The end of the month is shadowed by the knowledge that the gender pay gap still exists and is widening.

Black women, women with disabilities, moms and all women of color are paid significantly less than white men in comparable positions. Affordability is already a concern, with prices rising at the gas station and the grocery store. The pay gap is compounding these concerns to create further financial disparities for women of color.

Misogynoir à la Française

PUBLISHED 1/6/2026 by

A few days before Christmas, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo featured an abhorrent caricature of esteemed journalist, author, filmmaker, and activist Rokhaya Diallo. The grotesque image, which we will not reproduce here, shows a half-naked Diallo dancing on stage dressed in a banana skirt. Her features were exaggerated in the manner of time worn racist propaganda—contorting her nose, mouth, and eyes for a minstrel-like effect. Next to the image was an audience pointing and jeering underneath a sign that read “The Rokhaya Diallo Show: she ridicules the separation of church and state all over the world.” There is no question that Diallo was targeted for her widespread international success and renown as an antiracist activist, as well as her prominence as a Black feminist voice decrying racial injustice, sexism, and misogynoir in France and abroad. The timing felt insidiously intentional— the magazine chose to end the year with a decidedly harmful message to Black French women as a holiday send off.

bell hooks Taught Us to Imagine Freedom. Universities Are Forcing Us to Fight for It.

PUBLISHED 12/15/2025 by

On the day bell hooks became an ancestor, four years ago today, my beloved friend, comrade and co-conspirator Black feminist sociologist Shawn McGuffey and I were consoling one another over text when he wrote, “We should do something.” “Say less,” I replied.

We had institutional support from Northeastern University at a time when universities and other institutions were publicly and ceremoniously committing to funding DEI related initiatives in the tidal wave of so-called racial reckoning that occurred in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. The first symposium took place two months later on a cold and clear February morning in 2022. This annual gathering became an important tradition that we looked forward to each year.

This week, we mark four years since the woman born Gloria Jean Watkins, a Black feminist writer, academic, professor and activist became an ancestor. But in 2026, there will be no bell hooks symposium at my university. Due to university wide fiscal austerity, we will not mark the anniversary this year in any official way. It is a tremendous loss, for our students and for our community locally, nationally and internationally.

As I grappled with my own grief over this loss, I had to also reflect deeply about what it means to be a Black feminist scholar in the academy today.

Octavia Butler Saw This Coming

PUBLISHED 12/9/2025 by

The Huntington Library, located in San Marino, Calif., launches a new exhibit, Stories from the Library: From Brontë to Butler, on Dec. 13, 2025. This collection is especially renowned for its extensive archive on the personal writings and stories pertaining to science fiction author Octavia Butler, who died too soon at age 58 in 2006 due to a fall outside her home. The prolific writer and MacArthur Grant recipient leaves behind several series of novels and other works of fiction.

Janell Hobson spoke with Black feminist scholar and Butler biographer Susana M. Morris, who relied on the vast archive available at Huntington for her latest book, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler, which came out earlier this year.

“With Octavia Butler, we get cautionary tales. We could have just listened to her.”

Misogyny, Racism, Power: Connecting the Dots in the Violent Far Right

PUBLISHED 12/6/2025 by | UPDATED 1/23/2026 at 10:47 A.M. PT

In Part 2 of the Q&A between Jackson Katz and Cynthia Miller-Idriss, the author of Man Up discusses the link of misogynists and mass shooters: “The fact that so many domestically violent extremist attacks have both gendered and racialized dimensions shows that racism and misogyny are inseparable in the minds of many perpetrators.”

Miller-Idriss explains the key role online gaming and chat spaces play within the radicalization of young men and boys.

Misogyny is no doubt threaded through nearly ever mass shooting, and feminists are used as a scapegoat for taking away men’s opportunities.

‘This Is the Blind Spot in Extremism Research’: Cynthia Miller-Idriss on Misogyny, Gender and Violence

PUBLISHED 12/5/2025 by | UPDATED 1/23/2026 at 10:45 A.M. PT

Cynthia Miller-Idriss, director of the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University, makes the connection between gender policing, misogyny and far-right extremist violence, which for many years was not a connection scholars were willing to make.

Jackson Katz and Miller-Idriss discuss her book, Man Up, on misogyny, gendered violence, the MAGA movement and far-right extremism. Miller-Idriss says political violence coming from the far-right includes gender policing and exploitation.

“These aren’t just opportunistic elements of extremism—they are deliberate, organized and large-scale forms of gendered violence aimed at increasing pain and humiliation of victims, witnesses and family members. … I’m still blown away by how few people will acknowledge the connection.”