Patricia Hill Collins Quotes

• Oppressed groups are frequently placed in the situation of being listened to only if we frame our ideas in the language that is familiar to and comfortable for a dominant group. This requirement often changes the meaning of our ideas and works to elevate the ideas of dominant groups.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Change, Ideas, Society

  Patricia Hill Collins (2002). “Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment”, p.7, Routledge

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• To maintain their power, dominant groups create and maintain a popular system of 'commonsense' ideas that support their right to rule. In the United States, hegemonic ideologies concerning race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation are often so pervasive that it is difficult to conceptualize alternatives to them, let alone ways of resisting the social practices that they justify.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Practice, Class, Ideas

  Patricia Hill Collins (2000). “Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment”, p.284, Psychology Press

  105 Copy quote

• Knowledge without wisdom is adequate for the powerful, but wisdom is essential to the survival of the subordinate

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Powerful, Survival, Essentials

  Patricia Hill Collins (2002). “Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment”, p.257, Routledge

  82 Copy quote

• Most activism is brought about by us ordinary people.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  People, Ordinary, Ordinary People

  61 Copy quote

• Challenging power structures from the inside, working the cracks within the system, however, requires learning to speak multiple languages of power convincingly.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Challenges, Cracks, Brilliant

  85 Copy quote

• I suggest that Black feminist thought consists of specialised knowledge created by African-American women which clarifies a standpoint of and for Black women. In other words, Black feminist thought encompasses theoretical interpretations of Black women's reality by those who live it.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Reality, Feminist, African American

  57 Copy quote

• A white college student from a private college goes into a poor neighborhood and volunteers four hours a week and that's considered exemplary. [Whereas] a poor kid who lives in that community and takes care of all the kids in that neighborhood four hours every day is not seen as a volunteer.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Kids, College, White

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• The potential significance of Black feminist thought goes far beyond demonstrating that African-American women can be theorists. Like Black feminist practice, which it reflects and which it seeks to foster, Black feminist thought can create a collective identity among African-American women about the dimensions of a Black women's standpoint. Through the process of rearticulating, Black feminist thought can offer African-American women a different view of ourselves and our worlds

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Practice, Our World, Views

  69 Copy quote

• Despite long-standing claims by elites that Blacks, women, Latinos, and other similarly derogated groups in the United States remain incapable of producing the type of interpretive, analytical thought that is labeled theory in the West, powerful knowledges of resistance that toppled former social structures of social inequality repudiate this view. Members of these groups do in fact theorize, and our critical social theory has been central to our political empowerment and search for justice.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Powerful, Views, Long

  Patricia Hill Collins (1998). “Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice”, p.16, U of Minnesota Press

  53 Copy quote

• Women gain social influence through their roles as mothers, transmitters of culture, and parents for the next generation.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Mother, Parent, Generations

  23 Copy quote

• Thus, gender ideology no only creates ides about femininity but it also shapes conceptions of masculinity.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Shapes, Gender, Femininity

  49 Copy quote

• Far too many black men who praise their own mother feel less accounted to the mothers of their own children.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Mother, Children, Men

  36 Copy quote

• That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  White, Slave Girl, Female

  Patricia Hill Collins (2002). “Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment”, p.92, Routledge

  30 Copy quote

• Under the color-blind ideology of the new racism, Blackness must be SEEN as evidence for the alleged color blindness that seemingly characterizes contemporary economic opportunity.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Opportunity, Color, Racism

  Patricia Hill Collins (2004). “Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism”, p.178, Routledge

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• Social conditions that spur large numbers of people into action are ignored in favor of a Hollywood version of history focusing on one conquering hero. Since a movement for social change is embodied in its leader, death of the leader means death of the movement.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Hero, Mean, Numbers

  37 Copy quote

• The role model approach to social change is no substitute for challenging unjust employment practices, educational policies and housing.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Educational, Practice, Role Models

  21 Copy quote

• Black women's feelings of responsibility for nurturing the children in their own extended family networks have stimulated a more generalized ethic of care where black women feel accountable to all the black community's children.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Children, Responsibility, Community

  22 Copy quote

• Work for black women has been an important and valued dimension of Afrocentric definitions of black motherhood.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Motherhood, Being A Mom, Black

  18 Copy quote

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