Challenging power structures from the inside, working the cracks within the system, however, requires learning to speak multiple languages of power convincingly.

To maintain their power, dominant groups create and maintain a popular system of 'commonsense' ideas that support their right to rule. In the United States, hegemonic ideologies concerning race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation are often so pervasive that it is difficult to conceptualize alternatives to them, let alone ways of resisting the social practices that they justify.

Work for black women has been an important and valued dimension of Afrocentric definitions of black motherhood.

Challenging power structures from the inside, working the cracks within the system, however, requires learning to speak multiple languages of power convincingly.

Women gain social influence through their roles as mothers, transmitters of culture, and parents for the next generation.

Under the color-blind ideology of the new racism, Blackness must be SEEN as evidence for the alleged color blindness that seemingly characterizes contemporary economic opportunity.

The role model approach to social change is no substitute for challenging unjust employment practices, educational policies and housing.