Political, Social and Cultural Impact of The Statement
The Combahee River Collective Statement is referred to as "among the most compelling documents produced by black feminists", and Harriet Sigerman, author of The Columbia Documentary History of American Women Since 1941 calls the solutions which the statement proposes to societal problems such as racial and sexual discrimination, homophobia and classist politics "multifaceted and interconnected"
In their Encyclopedia of Government and Politics, M. E. Hawkesworth and Maurice Kogan refer to the CRCS as "what is often seen as the definitive statement regarding the importance of identity politics, particularly for people whose identity is marked by multiple interlocking oppressions"
Smith and the Combahee River Collective have been credited with coining the term identity politics, which they defined as "a politics that grew out of our objective material experiences as Black women. In her essay From the Kennedy Commission to the Combahee Collective: Black Feminist Organizing, 1960–1980, Duchess Harris credits the "polyvocal political expressions of the Black feminists in the Combahee River Collective (with) defin(ing) the nature of identity politics in the 1980s and 1990s, and challeng(ing) earlier "essentialist" appeals and doctrines..."
The Collective developed a multidimensional analysis recognizing a "simultaneity of oppressions"; refusing to rank oppressions based on race, class and gender According to author and academic Angela Davis, this analysis drew on earlier Black Marxist and Black Nationalist movements, and was antiracist and anticapitalist in nature.
Read more about this topic: Combahee River Collective, Developing The Statement, Process of Writing The Statement
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