Black women's feelings of responsibility for nurturing the children in their own extended family networks have stimulated a more generalized ethic of care where black women feel accountable to all the black community's children.

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.

Social conditions that spur large numbers of people into action are ignored in favor of a Hollywood version of history focusing on one conquering hero. Since a movement for social change is embodied in its leader, death of the leader means death of the movement.

The potential significance of Black feminist thought goes far beyond demonstrating that African-American women can be theorists. Like Black feminist practice, which it reflects and which it seeks to foster, Black feminist thought can create a collective identity among African-American women about the dimensions of a Black women's standpoint. Through the process of rearticulating, Black feminist thought can offer African-American women a different view of ourselves and our worlds

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.

Thus, gender ideology no only creates ides about femininity but it also shapes conceptions of masculinity.

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