Skyler Brooks

Professor Mooney
ENC 1102
April 22, y

Research Proposal
How does the media portray black
feminism/womanism?

Background and Rationale

Throughout history people of color have been shut out of overarching
movements, such as the feminism movement. The complaints of many
prominent writers such as Audre Lorde and Alice Walker about the way
women of color were treated led to the creation of a subgroup of the feminist
community called womanist. This group functions under the same platform
as traditional feminist, who fight for the social, political and economic
equality of the sexes. Womanist believe in the same while also
understanding that women of color ,specifically black women must have a
community that targets issues specific to them. “African American women in
the 1970s and 1990s developed a “voice”, a self defined, collective black
women’s standpoint about black womanhood.”(Hill,1996) This is an example
of a community conflict leading to a separation as discussed in Ann Johns’
“Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership,Conflict
and Diversity” In their effort to form and advance their discourse community
the media has played an integral part of how the world perceives
Womanism.
Although there has been research on how women are portrayed in the
media.F or example the stereotypical portrayal of women as unintelligent or
must be dependent on a man and how that has affected women’s
sociopolitical stance. Additionally, there has been research that examines
how certain media outlets, (especially those that are more politically
conservative leaning) have tried to discredit the feminist movement and
portray it as a male hating group but there hasn’t been much research on

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how black feminism specifically is portrayed in the media.The reasons for
this may be because this is a very specific sect of a larger discourse
community but it would be interesting to display how the media has actually
proved the point that a separate community needs to be created to
accommodate the added obstacles and scrutiny that plagues the experience
of women of color.As well as explore how this community has progressed so
much that they are able to have their own representation in the media,
through womanist writers and television personalities, which allows a more
accurate portrayal of this discourse community.
To analyze the ways in which the media portrays womanism, I will use
the research method of Rhetorical Analysis.Using this method I will examine
multiple texts from media outlets and journals and focus on interpreting the
authors purpose for writing the piece as well as how the piece impacted the
overall perception of black feminism as a movement.

Research Timeline
1)Meet with Professor Mooney 2/10-2/11/20
2)Collect four articles of primary research.2/20
3)Annotate and analyze the collected research.3/12

Work Cited
1.Nuru, Audra K., and Colleen E. Arendt. “Not So Safe a Space: Women
Activists of Color’s Responses to Racial Micro-aggressions by White Women
Allies.” Southern Communication Journal, vol. 84, no. 2, Apr. 2019, pp. 85–
98. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/1041794X.2018.1505940.

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 2.Ortega, Mariana. “Being Lovingly, Knowingly Ignorant: White Feminism
and Women of Color.” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, vol. 21, no.
3, 2006, pp. 56–74. EBSCOhost,

3.Collins, Patricia Hill. “WHAT'S IN A NAME? Womanism, Black Feminism,

and Beyond.” The Black Scholar, vol. 26, no. 1, 1996, pp. 9–17. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/41068619. Accessed 8 Feb. 2020.

4)Mane, Rebecca L.Clark. “Transmuting Grammars of Whiteness in

Third-Wave Feminism: Interrogating Postrace Histories, Postmodern
Abstraction, and the Proliferation of Difference in Third-Wave Texts.” Signs:
Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 38, no. 1, 2012, pp. 71–
98. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1086/665810.
5)Downs, D and E Wardle. “Rhetoric: Making Sense of Human Interaction
and MeaningMaking”. Writing About Writing. Boston, MA: Bedford, St.
Martins, 2019.
6)Johns,Ann M. “Discourse Communities and Communities of
Practice:Membership,Conflict and Diversity”Text,Role and
Context:Developing Academic Literacies.Cambrige UP, 1997, pp.51-70

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