The Combahee River Collective Statement , Coalitionary Politics, and White Male Feminism

The Combahee River Collective Statement was the first articulation of “identity politics,” offering a Black feminist framework in which knowledge, revolutionary theory, and practice was created out of the lived experience and study of "interlocking" systems. I suggest the Statement’s theory of identity politics was not only a theory that centered Black women’s experiences in critiquing heterosexism, capitalism, and white supremacy, but also a method of knowledge-production in service of coalitionary politics. While it is critically important to center the Black feminist history and labor in its genesis, I also suggest that its methods of the “revolutionary leap” (Hong, 2015) might provide a pedagogical pathway toward learning in ways that catalyze contemporary coalitions. Drawing on my teaching of white clergy men, I explore how studying the Statement invites white men, who often don’t have methods for feminist praxis, into learning and joining the legacy of the coalitionary politics of Black feminism through developing their own feminist statements in 2025.