This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

Classism is oppression based on economic status. In a society where economic classes are stratified, those with wealth and therefore power (i.e., white men), maintain this unequal distribution by preventing others from competing. This results in women of color, and/or Third World women, being disproportionately in poverty and creates enormous challenges for those in poverty to escape it.

Feminism is a movement that seeks equality between men and women. This Bridge provided crucial nuance to the understanding of feminism at a time when feminism was working only on white, middle-class women’s issues with little regard for women with different identities.

Identity politics refers to the tendency of peoples from similar backgrounds coming together to further their own identity-specific agendas. This Bridge mentions identity politics regarding the political issues faced by various women and the question of how all women should advocate for and with each other. The idea reflects on the concept of intersectionality, where the women writing This Bridge had an enormous range of identities with varying needs and experiences associated with each.

Several of the writers in This Bridge identify themselves as Marxists, meaning they follow the work of Karl Marx. Marxism is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the political, economic, and social principles and policies advocated by Marx; especially: a theory and practice of socialism including the labor theory of value, dialectical materialism, the class struggle, and dictatorship of the proletariat until the establishment of a classless society.” This is connected to the issues they see in capitalism and how it perpetuates the oppression of those who are not the most privileged members of society. Some Third World feminists agree with the theorist, Marx, that socialism would be a less oppressive economic system to uphold.

People who are oppressed, as are the women in This Bridge, experience the imposition of discrimination for their identities, such as being a woman, a person of color, a Third World woman, queer, or poor. Any of these traits can result in having less access to opportunities, to being told one is lesser than another either directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. It is this oppression that This Bridge was written in response to, and specifically, the editors found issues within the women’s movement where middle-class white women recognized their lesser status in society for being women, without acknowledging the other oppressed identities other women were also living with.

Throughout This Bridge, writers refer to their activism against the patriarchy, which is a society that’s ruled by, or caters to, men. In particular, feminists work against an unequal share of power within society held by men, and the purpose of This Bridge was to point out that Third World women also have to consider the unequal balance of power along different lines such as race and class.

This Bridge uses privilege as the antonym to oppression. Privilege is having an advantage in society, often for having the right identity—being a man, being white, and having wealth. The contributing writers outline time and time again the privileges experienced by many of the mainstream feminists, which created blind spots for them to understand and consider the experiences of women who had far fewer privileged identities.

According to Merriam-Webster, socialism is defined as “any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.” More specifically, related to references to Marxism in This Bridge, it can be defined as “a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.”