"It's Really Up To Us" Barbara Smith on Combahee, Coalitions and Dismantling White Supremacy

Sep 24, 2020

Barbara Smith co-founded the seminal Black Feminist Socialist organization the Combahee River Collective and Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. She is an educator, organizer, scholar and publisher and theorist of Black Feminist politics. 

In this episode we talk about Barbara Smith’s latest piece on the Hamer-Baker plan to dismantle white supremacy. We also discuss the work of the Combahee River Collective and Kitchen Table. Smith talks about the challenges of coalitional politics and the need for white political groups to desegregate their personal lives as a necessary precondition to desegregating their political spaces. She also discusses some of her role models including Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and Howard Zinn and her comradeship with Audre Lorde and others. Smith also discusses the term identity politics, which first appeared in the Combahee River Collective Statement and her own opinion on its current use and demonization.