Hello. This was definitely not how I
expected my booktube debut to go
You know I tried to be funny and cute and
stuff, but the world won't let me so
You know, you do what you gotta do.
We're all well aware of the protests that 
 ignited across the United States and
throughout the world after the murder of
George Floyd in Minnesota. I
wholeheartedly applaud the bravery of
people and especially Black people who
have been steadily going out to protest
against police brutality and racism and
institutionalized white supremacy.
It's impossible not to see the images of the
protests and not to admire the strength
of people who have been taking the time
out of their day and out of their week in
the middle of a pandemic to fight for
what's right and to fight for their
rights. However, one thing that I do want
to address is that it is tragic and
downright appalling that a man has to
die for conversations like this to
resurface and I was debating on whether
or not I wanted to actually go into booktube
because I was like well, that's too
much exposition for me in my line of
work - I'm an attorney - and that's not
something that is good for me to
really go really into but I do feel like
I had something to say about the
situation not to black people but for us
non-Black people as a whole. Because one
thing that has annoyed me and you know
irked me profoundly for the past weeks
are videos of many non-Black people
saying that it's inspiring that those
movements are happening, because these
movements have kick-started some very
necessary change. I think that Black
people- it's not my place to tell Black
people what and how they should process
their grief and they should process
their trauma. However, I do feel like it's
my place to tell non-Black people that
there's not a silver lining to be found
when what's in question and we're
looking at is the systemic oppression of
black people all over the world and more
importantly what kick-started this was a
death of a human person. As a Brazilian I
feel like I have the need to explain
this pretty clearly:
police brutality and racism aren't just
issues of the United States of America
right? We should also take this
opportunity to see and to learn more and
educate ourselves more about people who
have been murdered because of police
brutality and because of white supremacy
outside of the United States. Just to
give you an example on why the
conversation about racial injustice
racial inequality and police brutality
is not only something just for the
United States to grapple with: not even a
month before the murder of George Floyd,
João Pedro was a young black Brazilian who
was 14 years of age and was playing in
his aunt's house and was shot seventy
times - seven, zero - by the police in Rio de
Janeiro.
The police proceeded to steal his body
hide him for 17 hours until his parents
found him decomposing in a coroner's
office. Or even, Marielle Franco. Marielle Franco who was a councilwoman elected by
the city of Rio de Janeiro in 2016, one
of the highest voted officials in the
history of the city. In the 14th of March, 2018, Marielle Franco was heading back
home after an event with her party and
she was shot 14 times on her face. The
murder - even though it's not officially solved - has strong ties with the
government of Brazil. This is a type of
situation that we live worldwide: every
single country has a little bit of
history with slavery, racism, and the
exploitation of Black people to grapple
with. And it is our duty to keep that
history alive; it is our duty to keep
talking about this. I, as all latinx
people just come from a very
mixed, background heritage wise. My sister-
my biological sister, she's Black and I'm
not. It's an exhaustion that she carries
that even though we're sisters, right,
we were raised in the same family, we have
the same parents we, have the same
upbringing, there's a weariness that she
carries that I cannot take away, even
though I'm older and I should be able to
do that. I can't do less just because I'm
tired. She doesn't have that opportunity,
and no other Black person in this world
has this opportunity.
And if she doesn't, and if other what people
can't, then I don't have the right to either.
There is this one quote by Angela
Davis that has been making the rounds
on twitter recently where she says that in a
racist society, it's not enough to be non-racist,
we have to be anti-racist, and
this is something that I grappled with for a
long time because what does it say-
because it's a challenge, because when
she says it's not enough to be non-racist, we have to be anti-racist what
she's saying is it's not enough for us
to not dislike Black people, right.
We need to actively make the world a
place where Black people are not
systematically oppressed, and that poses
a challenge. What can you do to be
anti-racist? Something that I came to the
conclusion, and this is like, not set in
stone, this is definitely up for change, but
being anti-racist means
willingly put yourself in uncomfortable
situations, in which your entire worldview
and your privileges are constantly
confronted. Being anti-racist in the end,
for me, means putting myself in a
position where you're constantly being
exposed to hard truths and putting
yourself in a position where you are-
putting yourself in place where you have
to be aware and acknowledge a great
deal of sorrow. Being uncomfortable and
being anti-racist means that you have to
constantly learn your place in
contributing to that sorrow.
It means constantly doing the very
uncomfortable work of constantly
checking yourself for racist actions and
racist omissions as well. I was pretty active on
social media after the Floyd murder - I
was signing petitions and donating
where I could and etcetera etcetera,
but there's still something that- I sat
down to think and I was like well, I
could make more people uncomfortable. And
I could do that I do want to do best:
talking a lot. And all of that led to the
conclusion that I am here sitting in front
of all of you today, making a fool of
myself to go dip my toes into the waters
of "Women, Race and Class" by Angela Davis.
Also can we like just talk about my edition
like- Brazilian publishing has tradition
of being really really pretty
but this edition though? This edition
though? *gasps* Amazing. This Brazilian editor is
called Boitempo and they are famous
for doing these really pretty, progressive
left-wing sort of publications right?
and I've given them far more money
than I should have, as a college student.
Just throwing that out there. Angela
Davis has been making the rounds on
Twitter and social media as a whole for
the past few weeks - I even found a fancam, and uh...
and that was the happiest I've ever been
in like a long time. Whoever did that, I
thank you so much. You're the best.
Angela Davis is wildly renowned as
an activist and as a political organizer
and as someone who has struggled against
systemic racism and white supremacy for
longer than most of us were even born.
Two books that I've seen that have been
highly recommended through booktwitter
and booktube by Angela Davis are "Are Prisons Obsolete", from 2003 if I'm
not mistaken, where she develops a
critique of the criminal justice system
and incarceration politics as a whole,
and the other one is "Freedom is
a Constant Struggle" that came out recently, she started writing it after 2013, after
the Ferguson uprisings, and it's a series of
essays on what freedom means in this new
world that we live in. And you know, I've read the two books, those are great, but none
of them carry like, the emotional baggage
that "Women, Race and Class" carries to me.
"Women, Race and Class" was the first book that I came into contact when I first
started studying feminism, and I was so
lucky and so privileged that I came into
contact just like, so early on my
education, because this book shaped my
entire future education. It's been like
seven years since I first touched on
this book and it's like- it's been
constantly on my mind ever since. My
Twitter is basically like, Angela Davis
stan account as of now - like I've been
stanning her so hard - but you know being serious now I have
this really deep-seated respect for
Angela Davis as a person, as an academic, as
a revolutionary, as a political activist,
and that respect comes from the person
that she is. I read this tweet the other
day by @glendonfrancis that I'm gonna read.
It says: "Dr. Angela Davis comes from a
cohort of revolutionaries and thinkers
who have been imprisoned and or executed,
so it's an honor and a blessing to still
have her amongst us". This is the most
accurate description of Angela Davis
I've seen in a long time. The fact that
she's still alive and that she's still
free is a testament in itself, because it
wasn't by lack of trying.
Just to give you a small taste of the
type of person that Angela Davis is, this
is a video of an interview that they did
with her while she was still in prison -
she was accused of conspiring to murder, then she was in the most wanted list and then
she was actually in prison, defended
herself in court, it was incredible - but
this is a little bit of that interview:
"You ask me, you know, whether I approve of
violence? That just doesn't make any
sense at all! Whether I approve of guns, I
grew up in Birmingham, Alabama! Some very, very good friends of mine were killed by
bombs, bombs that were planted by racists!
I remember, from the time I was very
small, I remember the sounds of bombs
exploding across the street, our house
shaking. I remember my father having to have guns
at his disposal at all times, because of
the fact that at any moment, someone- we
might expect to be attacked. The man who
was at that time in complete control of
a city government, his name was Bill
Connor, would often get on the radio and
make statements like, n**** have moved
into a white neighborhood, we better
expect some bloodshed tonight, and sure
enough, there would be bloodshed. After
the four young girls who were- who lived- one of them lived next door to
me, I was very good friends with the
sister of another one,
my sister was very good friends with all
three of them, my mother taught one of
them in her class, my mother- in fact, when
the bombing occurred, one of the mothers
of one of the young girls called my
mother and said, can you take me down to
the church to pick up Carol, you know, we
heard about the bombing and I
don't have my car, and they went down and
what they find, they found limbs and heads
strewn all over the place. And then after
that, in my neighborhood, all the men
organized themselves into an armed
Patrol. They had to take their guns and
patrol our community every night because
they did not want that to happen again. I
mean that's why when someone asks me
about violence, sir, I just- I just find it
incredible. Because it what it means
is that the person who was asking that
question has absolutely no idea what
Black people have gone through, what Black
people have experienced in this country
since the time the first Black person
was kidnapped from the shores of Africa."
Angela Yvonne Davis was born in Birmingham,
Alabama in 1944 and it's a renowned
political activist, philosopher, scholar
and author. She is most known for her work
in incarceration politics, her
participation in the Black Panther
movement, and for having been a political
prisoner between 1971 and 1972. Her
arrest, trial, and subsequent release
gained worldwide traction, with the
campaign free Angela Davis echoing all
around the world. Her Marxist studies,
allied with her upbringing as a Black
woman in America, gave her the particular
in particular viewpoint that she needed
in order to analyze the intersections of
male supremacy, white supremacy and class
domination in America. And from that
viewpoint came "Women, Race and Class."
"Women, Race and Class" was first published in 1981, and it's an in-depth study on how male
supremacy, white supremacy, and class
domination are not only interacting all
the time, but are fundamentally
dependent on one another.
The main argument that she makes in the
book is that any effort to dismantle
male supremacy will be for nothing if it is not
necessarily accompanied by the
same effort to dismantle white supremacy
and class domination. Currently, this is
known as intersectionality. It's
important to know the roots and the
origins of the word, and it came from
works such as "Women, Race and Class", and it's important for us to get that and
bear that in mind, as feminists, that we owe Black feminists and we owe Black
scholars so much of what we discussed
nowadays. "Women, Race and Class" has 13
chapters that read more like
individual essays about different topics.
Like, don't be fooled, the book is kind of
thin, but this one packs a punch and I
don't have enough time in the world -
unfortunately - to talk about all of this
book has to offer. Because I don't have
the time and I don't have even the
hard drive space to sit here and talk
like, for 47 hours straight, about all of
the things that she discusses in this
book. I'm gonna narrow it down to a topic
that I feel is particularly
interesting to the discussion at hand,
and that is Black Womanhood. Which, you
know, it's a shame, I've been talking
about this book non-stop in class for
like seven years now, I've got so many
notes, I've talked about this so much, and
like to pick a single thing to thought talk
about its just UGH. Literally like, in
this book she discusses the obsolescence
of housework, the intersections between
lynching, male supremacy and rape culture,
she talks about, you know, how the debate
on reproductive rights has to
necessarily take into consideration forced
sterilizations that disproportionately
affect Black women and women of
color.  Also she talks about how the
suffragist movement let itself be
captured by white supremacy like- there's
just so much that she talks about in
here but I'm like- I literally don't have
enough time to go into all of this, and
it's like, you know, you're gonna have to
read the book. You're gonna have to read
the book, that's what it is, you're gonna
have to read the book. My objective with this video is to make
you pick this book up. Before we get into
it, I do have three disclaimers. There are
many discussions in this book of rape, of
lynching, of blatant racism, and also
there's the use of the n-word in several
different instances. Angela Davis is a
black woman and I think 
that she's entirely in her right to use
that word to get her point across, but if
that is something that upsets you or are
somehow a trigger for you,
especially if you're a Black
person, I strongly suggest you to
consider that before you pick this book up.
Secondly, this book was written in
1981. This means that a couple of things
that she says throughout the book, like
there is a moment in the book she
references the Apartheid and etc, that
are not necessarily true anymore. You
know this book is- 40 years old - I did
have to look at my calendar to know how
long has it been -
I'm not good with math. I'm not good with
math. I'm not a math person. That's why
I'm sitting here talking about books.
What I mean by that is that some things
are not as accurate as they should have
been, and if that's the case I'm gonna
note so accordingly. Third, I'm gonna go
in depth in the topic of Black Womanhood,
so I'm not sure if you can say academic
nonfiction book has spoilers but if
that is a thing spoilers? Maybe? I don't
know. So, let's just dive right in. Also, by
the way, this is not a disclaimer, I just
need to explain: I usually have two
versions of my academic books. This
version is obviously in Portuguese, as
you can see by the title in the bottom,
this is why it's not necessarily
annotated. I do have the book on eBook
format in my computer, and I use that to
study, because it prefer to read it in
the original language when possible. Just
a disclaimer that I'm going to be
reading from my computer, and not from
this book just- just saying. That makes
four disclaimers. That's four disclaimers.
I'm shit math, holy fucking shit, okay.
While the entirety of the book will
discuss Black women, their experiences
and their impact in the largest struggle
for bBlack liberation, there are three
chapters-slash-essays that I think are
more relevant to the discussion at hand. The
first chapter: "The legacy of slavery:
Standards for new womanhood", the fifth
chapter: "The meaning of emancipation
according to Black women", and the sixfth- sixthh-
sixhth- English is not my first
language as you can tell. And the sixtht- sixxht-
sihxth- and the sixth chapter (you're going
to get that the way that you get that)
"Education and liberation: Black women's
perspectives". So to understand a little bit
more about the impacts of exploitation
during slavery for black women as a
whole, Angela Davis decides
turn her eyes first to the question of
slavery in the United States. She does
that in the first essay, "The legacy of
slavery: Standards for a new womanhood".
Angela Davis notes that while the
institution of racism has been debated
and researched by historians in the past,
the question of the Black female slave
still seems to elude most people. She
specifically says that more research
into what Black women went through
during slavery would be invaluable to
analyze and to really take notice of
what Black women go through, but because
that research wasn't available to her at
the time, she then says that she will
start with some tentative ideas on what
and how slavery shaped the collective
Black womenhood's psyche to this day. The
first thing that she noticed is that, as slaves, the labor they performed
overshadowed every single aspect of their
life. She was first and foremost a worker,
and if the will or the need of the slave
owner required so, she then would be a
wife or mother. This is an important
thing to know, she argues, because even
though there is this sort of cultural
understanding or common conception that
the majority of the female slaves were
house servants, that is actually not true.
For the most part, slave women worked the
fields, and were subjected to the same quotas,
the same demands, and the same
punishments as their male counterparts.
With the exception of the sexual abuse
and the sexual violence that they were
subjected to. But however in order to be
truly effective, slave owners had to
undermine male supremacy within Black
people. The reason for that it's because
undermining the male supremacy of black
men, they were actually reinforcing their
own supremacy as the owners of the
slaves. Discouraging the male supremacy also
meant that the slave owners' own
authority would remain unquestioned: both
as a white person and both as a male. 
This context however allowed for a very
interesting concept to appear: the slave
family. Even though slave families were
constantly torn apart, destroyed, killed
off, sold off, the ties of kinship, love
and affection were instrumental. The
reason is because even the slightest bit of
love between people is enough to
preserve and maintain humanity
in the direst of circumstances.
The immediate effect of this is that
because there was no upholding of male
supremacy, there was also no division
between Black men and Black women who
were slaves at the time, and that meant
that both Black men and Black women were
united in their struggle against slavery
in fact, black women spearheaded much of
the resistance against slavery. Not only
they actively plotted escapades and
sabotages, but they also risked their own
lives making sure that their communities and
their families had resources that allowed
them to educate themselves. Hold on to
this information, because it's going to
be more relevant in a second, but just to
conclude, Angela Davis says, and I
quote: "This bears repeating; Black women
were equal to their men in oppression
there suffered; they were their men
social equals within the slave community;
and they resisted slavery with a
passion equal to their men's. This was
one of the greatest ironies of the slave
system, for in subjecting women to the
most ruthless exploitation conceivable,
exploitation which knew no sex
distinctions, the groundwork was created
not only for Black women to assert their
equality through their social relations,
but also to express it through their
acts of resistance." Honest to god it's-
like, I am such a ho for Angela Davis. In the next essay,
"Emancipation according to Black women",
Angela Davis continues to evaluate what
it meant to be a Black woman, now
specifically in the period after slavery.
Specifically what she is really interested
is understanding how the subsequent
reconstruction and its betrayal shaped
black women's lives. As it happened in
many countries that relied on slave
labor in the American continent, freedom
from shackles did not mean freedom from
poverty or from marginalization. Angela
Davis then notes that after 25 years of
the abolition of slavery, the majority of
Black women were still field workers.
Without the hold of slavery over them,
however, there had to be a new sort of
institution to make sure that Black
people were still performing the same
duties in the same conditions
or sometimes and even worse
conditions than the one they had in
slavery, and that was the convict lease
system. The convict lease system made it
possible for Black men and women to be
imprisoned at the slightest provocation
and then lent out to serve as field
workers for the many plantations in the
south. If that sounds familiar, you know
why. Angela Davis doesn't really go in
depth about the whole, you know, convict
lease system and incarceration politics
in this book, it's a very passing sort of
note, but if you're interested in that
discussion and in that debate,
her book "Are Prisons Obsolete?" is a
really great place to start, and
specifically about the convict lease
system, she goes really in-depth in the
second chapter, that is titled "Slavery,
civil rights: An abolitionist's
perspectives towards prison". So if this
is something that you're interested in,
feel free to check that out, it is really
good. However, for women who were not
working the fields, the only other viable
option for work was domestic work. This
line of work, however, was not without its
perils. In fact, Angela Davis reports
that sexual harassment and sexual
assault was so prevalent that it was
considered by the women at the time as
an occupational hazard, one that will
bring dire consequences to the women and
their families who dare to speak out
against their employers. Not only
the work is grueling and difficult Angela Davis really notes that it's really
unfulfilling. The fact that these women
had no sort of background or no sort of
support whatsoever from any labor
legislation at all - mostly because the
United States still doesn't have a
comprehensive labor legislation to this
day so HMMM--
Because those women were not receiving any support from any sort of
institution like an Union, or you know, a
sort of organization, this left these
women who working in domestic service to
be vulnerable to workplace harassment, to
violence and to severe underpay. She gets
really into specifics in Chapter 13 that
is titled "The obsolescence of housework", 
but you know the short of it is that she
sees that housework, domestic work as a
whole, is not fulfilling because it's not
productive in itself.
It's- Like, we call it reproductive work
it's something that has to be done in
order for life to sustain itself. And she
thinks that the real key to solve this
issue is to not only socialize domestic
work and housework, but also
industrialize it. It's a very interesting
chapter, and if you're interested in the
debate on housework and, you know,
housework and equality and etc, that's
definitely a great place to start, she offers
a ton of nuance into the debate.
Can I just say something though,
it's because- she is so sarcastic, and
it's actually super funny because
there's this one part in the book that
she's just, recounting this anecdote of
two early feminists talking, right? And
one is trying to get the other to sign a
petition to get store clerks the right
to sit down, and she's going on and on
about how these women are forced to
stand for like ten hours at a time, and
you know, how it breaks her heart to see
how tired they are, and then the other
feminist turns to her and says "Doesn't
your maid stay on her feet for like 14
hours a day, still climbing up and down
stairs?"
Isn't that- Hmm?- and I was like OOOOHOHO- 
AND I OOP
this was so funny, like- it's pretty rare that an
academic book will make you laugh out
loud, but Angela Davis writes in a way
that is so sarcastic and so witty, that
was like, I found myself cackling
throughout this book. As the years passed
and with the advent of modernization in the
field and in agricultural work, many of the
women who left field work were absorbed
by domestic work. In fact, just before the
Second World War, roughly fifteen-nine
point five percent of the women who had
employment outside of their homes were
working in domestic service. The fact
that after a century of the so-called
freedom Black people, and Black women
specifically, were still trapped in the
same cycles of poverty and marginalization means that emanticipation had to mean
something else. And for Angela Davis,
Black women were clear on what they
needed in order to be emancipated. They
needed the ballot, but they also needed
education. In the final essay that I'm
looking in this video, "Education and
Liberation: Black women's perspectives",
Angela Davis notes that Black people had
an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. In
fact she notes that Black people were
keenly aware that education was an
incredibly powerful tool against
domination and slavery.
Actually, in many states, the education of
slaves was prohibited by the law. And
because it was forbidden, many of the
slaves were sure that education was the
key for their freedom. In that respect,
Angela Davis says and I quote, "The
mystifying powers of racism often
emanate from its irrational topsy-turvy
logic. According to the prevailing
ideology, Black people were allegedly
incapable of intellectual advancement.
After all, they had been chattel,
naturally inferior as compared to the
white epitomes of humankind. But if they
really were biologically inferior, they
would have manifested neither the desire
nor the capability to acquire knowledge.
Ergo, no prohibition of learning would
have been necessary. In reality, of course,
Black people had always exhibited a
furious impatience as regards the
acquisition of education". While the civil
rights activist Frederick Douglass was
by far the most famous example of slaves
educating themselves and attaining their
freedom, he was not the only one doing
that. In fact, as Angela Davis points out
in her previous essay, Black women often
went to through great lengths, often
risking their own lives in order to
ensure their communities and their
families had access to education. She
specifically recounts slave women
foregoing whatever little rest they
could get in order to spend the nights
reading and trying to spell words over
and over again. This eager need for
education came from the realization, to
borrow Angela Davis's own words, that
freedom is a constant struggle, and in
order to obtain their freedom and their liberation, Black people were keenly
aware that they needed the tools to do
so, and the main one was education.
The betrayal of the Reconstruction and the
subsequent enforcement of Jim Crow laws
halted much of the progress that might
have been made for Black liberation and
Black education. However, one thing that
was not able to do was to erase the
significant strides Black people, and
especifically Black women, made in order
to educate themselves, their
families, and their
communities, and to use that as a tool
for their own struggles for liberation.
As it was then and as it is now, Black
education is not merely education - it's
revolution.
So, now, having taken a quick glance in these three essays, I have two
things that I want to point out. The
first thing is that because Black
education is so revolutionary and incendiary, 
it makes sense that the
educational system both in the United
States and in other countries across the
globe are structured in a way that
prevent Black people and people of color
from accessing a really affordable,
high-quality education. However, if we are
to act as true allies, we cannot forego
the fight for education. It's important
that we constantly fight for education
that is quality, that is accessible, and
also that instigates critical thinking.
The second thing that I think that we
can take from this debate, and that you
know, Angela Davis gets across pretty
straightforwardly, is that Black women
have shouldered plenty of pain in their
struggle for the freedom of their people.
And what we, as non-Black people, should
take from this discussion is that we
have no right to demand them to do that
work for us. I am in no way shape and
form as eloquent and as in-depth as
Angela Davis is in the book, but if you
have a rough idea of what slavery was
like in the United States, what slavery
was like for Black women and the role
Black women have- have had historically,
in politically organizing, if you know
that, you know, a little bit and you still
go after Black women and ask them to
educate you... What is wrong with you???
like you're literally asking Black women to
take the time away from their grief, from
their pain, and from their trauma to educate
you and make sure that your feelings are
being coddled. This is like, if you do
that, and if you constantly do that, that
is inflicting like a terrible violence
on Black women. I was reading this book
and I was reading like, how Angela
Davis went on about how Black women were
kind of like, forced to be strong, they had
no other choice other than to be strong for
their people, for the community, and to
really fight for their own liberation.
And while was reading that I was
remembering about one video that I saw-
I'm not gonna link it
here because it's a child and I don't
want to expose a child, but it's this
young Black girl, no older than seven, and
she is like in the protest and she's
yelling like, no justice no peace. All the
Black women that you know in your life
did not have the right of a childhood
where racism, racist violence and
police brutality was not a thing. That
seven-year-old girl did not have the
right to a childhood where she did not
have to shoulder the weight of the
trauma that there her people went
through for like hundreds of years. And
like, every Black woman that you need is
exhausted. They have carried this weight
for so long - look at what Angela Davis
has taught us, from the first essay to
the end of the book, Black women have
shouldered so much in order to attain
when little freedom Black people still
have. And you know, to this day, they are
still- you know, they still have to hold a
burden in the trauma of the collective
Black experience. They carry it in their
bodies. Being in knowledge of all that and
still asking black women to do the
emotional labor of educating you and
making sure that your feelings are not
hurt, it's like ignorant at best but it's
terrorizing at worst. You know,
I said what I said: by asking Black
people to educate you, you are
terrorizing Black women, okay? They have had
enough. They don't need to educate you. So
like the next time a Black woman tells
you Google is free you should like,
instead of crying about it on Twitter,
you should sit down, pick up this
book, read when Black women have gone
through in America ever since the first
Black person was taken from the shores
of Africa, like Angela Davis herself
said, and you know, grasp the sheer
horror and pain these women had to
endure, and then open the fucking
Google website and do your goddamn
research. *Breathes*. I got a little bit carried
away there. So I've gone on and on and on
and on about how much I love this book
right? But is this book without
criticism? And the answer is no. When we
do academic research, we're constantly
told that we have to limit our object
research, and the reason why we do that
is because you have to pick a topic and
stick with it. I know that because I'm
particularly terrible at doing that.
The reason why I'm saying this is
because Angela Davis delimitated her
research in the history of class, gender,
and racial relationships and their
intersections in the United States of
America. This was done with a specific
focus on Black woman's experience
throughout this period. You know that's super
valid; that's what she set out to do,
and that's what she did, and she did it
tremendously well. However, what we
do have to bear in mind though, is that
she's talking and discussing a specific
topic, and a specific cultural and
historical and geographical context. The
conclusions that she reaches in this
book and the history that she presents
in this book might not necessarily apply
to every single country that has also
grappled with- with their history
of slavery in their history of Black
exploitation. Just as an example, there
was an early 19th century- and I remember
being taught this in school, there was an
early 19th century census in Brazil. This
census found that the average life
expectancy of a slave in the early
19th century Brazil was anything from
between 18 to 25 years of age. That would
depend on the work that the slaves were
doing. Usually field workers lived longer
than miners because miners had more- the
work was more dangerous. So what I mean
by that is that there was no time to
form family connections. A slave that was
brought from Africa was only expected to
live for about a year, if that much. Like,
again, I'm not saying that the United
States had it easy, I'm not saying that.
What I'm saying is that the reality of
slavery and the reality of exploitation
in different countries varied drastically.
Like I said, I'm really bad with this but
the reason why I went in this tangent
is that because Angela Davis says, for
example, that the slave family was
fundamental for slaves to be able to
retain a little bit of their humanity,
and then conceive the struggle
and conceive resistance against the
slavery oppression and the domination of
white people, this had to be done
differently in Brazil. And because it had
to be done differently, because of the
conditions of the exploitation of black
people in Brazil, this means that it had
other-  other consequences and other
effects that are not
necessarily the ones that she will point
out in this book. I feel like this is, a),
great place to understand the history of
Black people and Black women in America
and, b), I think this is a great place
to start drawing comparisons to, but this
is not a book that will necessarily
explain or even address - and like, the
book doesn't set out to do this - but it's
important for us to notice that this
will not explain or address all the
hardships and the different-
cultural and historical differences of
different sorts of racial
discriminations and you know white
supremacist systems in other countries.
Angela Davis herself acknowledged this. 
There was a time when she came to
Brazil and she said like, you don't need
me because you have Lélia González. And
Lélia Gonzáles was an activist and a scholar, and an author and was very close
friends with Angela Davis, and she wrote
specifically about black women in Brazil
in Latin America as a whole. And it's
amazing, it's a pity that is not
translated, because it's been so
fundamental in my- my education, but
it's important that we bear that in mind.
In conclusion. It is, and I've said that a
couple of times, it is very rare for me
to say that a book changed my life. I'm
usually very critical of the books I read.
but "Women, Race and Class" shaped my
feminist education in a way that I don't
think any other book has done. The impact
that this book created in my life was
astounding, and the impact that it
created in feminist scholarship
throughout the United States and
throughout the world was also astounding.
You know, and if I can be in a position
where I can make sure that more people
are being made uncomfortable, the same
way that I did, and to learn how to be
better allies, then I feel like I have to
use this space and the resources that I
was given to do that. If you are still
interested in more works about Black
feminists and Black feminism as a whole I
would strongly suggest you take a
look into bell hook's amazing book
"Ain't I a Woman", where she discusses a lot
more about Black women in the United
States and Black women and femininity.
Another great book that I usually
recommend
for younger people or for people who are
just generally unfamiliar with feminism
is "We Should All be Feminists" by
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This book's
great, it's also a TED talk so it's free
to see on YouTube. It's just so
simple, so straightforward, and I've given it
to all of my younger cousins and my
younger family friends. You know,
spreading the word of feminism. I'm gonna
put a gdocs link in the description
below of the references and the
actual quotes from the book that I used
with the time stamps so you can
look for it in your copy of the book if
you have one. Maybe my next
video can be fun and cute. Maybe I can do
like, this cute wrap up of the books that
I read, doing all the cute stuff, but I
felt like this is what I needed to do and
this is what my heart told  me that
I needed to do. It felt necessary. I hope
that you, watching this as a non-Black
person, you were made uncomfortable just
so enough that you would be intrigued to
know more and to be better and to do
better. I'm also going to extensively
link petitions donations and resources. I'll
also link videos of Black creators on
booktube who spread a lot of Black joy
that I think is also as relevant to
understand as Black pain. I'm also going
to link discussions of other Black
people had on this book there were far
more in depth than I could ever be and
could ever aspire to be. Anyways,
sign petitions, donate if you can, Black
lives matter, I don't know how to end
this video so: Bye.
