"The following hard-won thoughts developed from con-
versations and arguments with many women and men ofcolor, some of them students, some colleagues, and some peers in the women's movement.1 The initial problem that I wanted to examine was why white women in the women's movement had not created more effective and continuous alliances with Black women, especially given the high levels of support for feminist issues found in polls conducted among Black women. Why had we not been able to build on our common experiences and use them to create a ra-
cially unified movement? And why, simultaneously, had
Black women become heroines for the women's movement, a position symbolized by the consistent use of Sojourner Truth and her famous words, "Ain't I a woman?"
What I concluded was that white women wanted Black women to identify with whites as women, and not as Black women who have had different histories, live in different circumstances, and have different relations to men -both Black and white"
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40004218