Education
Collins attended Philadelphia public schools [2]—and even at a young age, Collins had realized that she attended a school that catered to mostly white middle-class students that were in a predominantly Black neighborhood. During the 1950s and 1960s, when Patricia was going to school, most schools in northern cities like Philadelphia were channels for social mobility. Although they were well funded, they were not particularly easy to navigate, especially for African-Americans and people of color like Patricia. However, Patricia was part of a group of young workers who had access to educational resources and opportunities their parents did not.[citation needed]
Elementary School and High School
As a child, Collins attended Frederick Douglas Elementary School.[4] Later, she attended Philadelphia High School for Girls (known as Girls' High), which was founded in 1848 as the nation's first public high school for women. Collins was in attendance during the 1960s, which was when the process of the desegregation of schools had begun in the United States. This contributed to her growing interest in sociology, feminism, and activism for African-Americans and civil rights.[citation needed]
College Education
In 1965, Collins went on to pursue an undergraduate career at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts[4] as a sociology major. She graduated cum laude with honors with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology in 1969.
She proceeded to earn a Master of Arts degree in Teaching (MAT) in Social Science Education from Harvard University in 1970.[2] From 1970 to 1976, she was a teacher and curriculum specialist at St. Joseph Community School in Roxbury, Boston and two other schools.[2][citation needed] In 1984, she completed her doctorate in sociology at Brandeis University.[5]
Career
From 1976-1980 she was the director of the Africana Center at Tufts University. Tufts University is a predominately white school, as such Collins worked to bring the academia, ideas, and culture of the Black community to the campus. Additionally, she had aimed to bring attention to issues surrounding black women.[4][citation needed]
While earning her Ph.D., Collins worked as an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati beginning in 1982. She taught in the Department of Africana Studies for over two decades and retired in 2005 as the Charles Phelps Taft Distinguished Professor of Sociology.
In 1986, Collins published her first major article in the sociological journal Social Problems. The article focuses on how Black women have taken their marginalized placement and benefited from society’s harmful status quo. Black women have been able to creatively fight against the status quo.[citation needed]
In 1990, Collins published her first book, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. A revised 10th-anniversary edition of the book was published in 2000 and subsequently translated into Korean in 2009, French in 2016, and Portuguese in 2019.
In 2005, Collins joined the University of Maryland's department of sociology as a distinguished university professor. Working closely with graduate students on issues such as critical race theory, intersectionality, and feminist theory, she maintains an active research agenda and continues to write books and articles in relation to social, racial, and gender issues. Her work has achieved international recognition.[citation needed] Collins is focused on understanding, in her own words, "How African American male and female youth's experiences with social issues of education, unemployment, popular culture and political activism articulate with global phenomena, specifically, complex social inequalities, global capitalist development, transnationalism, and political activism."[6]
In 1990, Collins published Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment, whose approach to the title topic was influenced by such figures as Angela Davis, Alice Walker and Audre Lorde. The analysis drew on a wide range of sources, including fiction, poetry, music, and oral history. Collins's work concluded with three central claims:
- Oppressions of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation are intersecting, mutually constructing systems of power. Collins utilizes the term intersectionality, coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, to refer to this simultaneous overlapping of multiple forms of oppression as a matrix of domination.
- Because black women have unique histories at the intersections of systems of power, they have created world views out of a need for self-definition and to work on behalf of social justice. Black women's specific experiences with intersecting systems of oppression provide a window into these same processes for other individuals and social groups.
- Black feminist thought on race and gender came from Black communities rather than in opposition to white feminism.
In Black Feminist Thought, Collins posits how Black feminist studies highlight two very important themes. One is "how Black women's paid work is organized within intersecting oppressions of race, class, and gender."[3]: 45 Although these women no longer work in domestic work in private homes, they continue to work at low-paying jobs in the growing service sector.[7] Moreover, she continues, the theme that "concerns how Black women's unpaid family labor is simultaneously confining and empowering" for them is also extremely important.[3]: 46 Collins emphasizes this point because she points out that Black women see the unpaid work of their household as a method of resistance to oppression rather than solely as a method of manipulation by men.[3]: 46
In an interview with Global Dialogue magazine in 2017, Collins restated the argument that she laid out in Black Feminist Thought by emphasizing the stereotypes faced by black women: "In Black Feminist Thought, I examine how African-American women confront four main stereotypes: (1) the mule, the woman who works like an animal without complaint; (2) the jezebel, the highly sexualized woman who is often depicted as a prostitute; (3) the mammy, the Black woman domestic worker whose loyalty to her employer is beyond reproach; and (4) the Black lady, the educated Black woman who has given up family life in exchange for a career".[8]
In an interview with Oklahoma's KGOU radio station in 2017, Collins' spoke on her careful process while writing the book: "I think it was very difficult for me to come to voice around the types of work that I do because there was no space for this work,” Collins says. “We had to create the space to write black feminist thought, to talk about race, class, gender, to talk about intersectionality. And that was all part of the process of being seen as legitimate, being listened to, being clear, being respected"[9]
Race, Class and Gender: An Anthology
Published in 1992, Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology was a collaboration with Margaret Andersen, in which Collins edited a compilation of essays on race, class, and gender. The book is widely recognized for shaping the field of race, class, and gender studies, as well as its related concept of intersectionality.[citation needed] The essays cover a variety of topics, from historical trends and their effects today, to the current media portrayal of minority groups. The tenth edition was published in 2020.[10]
Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice
Collins' third book Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice was published in 1998. Fighting Words focused on how Black women's knowledge examines social injustices within Black communities and wider society. Expanding on the idea of "outsiders within" from her previous book, she examines how outsiders resist the majority's perspective, while simultaneously pushing for and creating new insight into the social injustices that exist.[11] Collins also notes how acknowledging the social theories of oppressed groups are important because their different experiences have created new angles of looking at human rights and injustice.[12] This has not always been the case because, as she points out, "elites possess the power to legitimate the knowledge that they define as theory as being universal, normative, and ideal".[13] '
Collins's next book, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism, was published in 2004 and won the Distinguished Scholarly Book Award from the American Sociological Association.[14] This work argued that racism and heterosexism were intertwined in multiple areas of life. For example, how ideals of beauty work to oppress African-Americans males and females, whether homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual. Collins asserts that people must examine the intersection of race, class, gender, and sexuality because looking at each issue separately can cause one to miss a large part of the problem. Her argument for resisting the creation of such narrow gender roles requires action on individual and community levels as well as recognizing success in areas other than those typically respected by Americans, such as money or beauty. Collins also contends that the oppression of African Americans cannot be successfully resisted without analyzing how intersecting oppressions influence their own group, such as the treatment of women or LGBTQ people.
In 2006 she published From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism, which examines the relationship between black nationalism, feminism and women in the hip-hop generation. The book is a compilation of multiple essays by her, written over multiple years, compiled into one cohesive examination of the current situation of African Americans. Collins examines contemporary structural racism, which she calls "new racism," and explores how old ideas about what racism is prevents society from recognizing and fixing the wrongdoings that persist. The author explores a range of examples, from American national identity, to motherhood, to feminine portrayal in hip-hop. Following the Civil Rights Movement, she argues, there was a "shift from color-conscious racism that relied on strict racial segregation to a seemingly colorblind racism that promised equal opportunities yet provided no lasting avenues for African American advancement".[15]
Another Kind of Public Education: Race, Schools, the Media and Democratic Possibilities
In 2009, Collins published Another Kind of Public Education: Race, Schools, the Media and Democratic Possibilities, in which she encourages the public to be more aware of and prevent the institutional discrimination that African-American children are experiencing today in the public education system. Collins explains that teachers have a great deal of power to be the facilitators of either discriminatory attitudes or tolerant attitudes; they are the "frontline actors negotiating the social issues of our time." Claiming that the education system is greatly influenced by the media, Collins examines racism as a system of power preventing education and democracy to reach its full potential.[16] Within the text, she provides examples of how people, specifically teachers in the education system, can resist colorblind racism to ensure children are provided with safe classroom environments and where they can be guaranteed freedom of expression.[17]
One of the primary concerns in her book is the importance education has in producing citizens and making sure the disenfranchised feel empowered. Within the book, Collins includes personal stories about her position as an African American child who felt “silenced in Philadelphia’s public schools” in order to further elaborate on the important role the education institution has in establishing democracy.[17]
Other Books
Collins co-edited with John Solomos The Handbook of Race and Ethnic Studies (2010), a book on critical race theory.
In 2012, she published On Intellectual Activism, a collection of personal essays and interviews where she explains how ideas play an important part in bringing about social change.
In 2016 and revised in 2020, Collins also published the book Intersectionality, with co-author Sirma Bilge, which discusses, in depth, the intertwined nature of social categorizations such as race, class and gender, sexuality and nation, and how these ideas create a complex web of discrimination and disadvantage in society. Taking a global perspective, topics covered include the history of intersectionality, critical education, human rights, violence, global social protest, identity politics, and women of color feminism in the United States and Brazil.
Participation in Social Activism
On October 13, 2014, Patricia Hill Collins gave a lecture at DePaul University in Chicago, IL titled, “Charting a New Course: Intersectionality and Black Activism" to a group of 182 university students as well as to other residents of Chicago. In the lecture, Collins discussed activism stereotypes as well as intersectionality and how to use intersectionality to challenge the oppression they may face. She also encouraged the audience to create coalitions and to participate in activism themselves. Additionally, Collins’ lecture allowed her audience to think critically about sociological thought and to figure out “what it means to strengthen one’s power through ideas.”[29] During her lecture, Collins is quoted to have said the following to lines in her discussion on intersectionality and activism:
"As we look at the world we realize that. . . the country is stronger when you take from the strengths of everyone," Collins said.[29]
“There are risks, but the rewards are substantial," Collins said.[29]
Representation of Media
In 2009, a video from the C-Span website titled "BookTV: Patricia Hill Collins, author "Another Kind of Public Education"[32] Collins takes a visit to "Busboys & Poets", a restaurant/bookstore/theater located in Washington DC and provided an hour and 16 minutes-long "book talk" regarding her book Another Kind of Public Education.[16] As the website describes the video: "Professor Collins posits that public education is heavily influenced by the media and by the continuing influence of institutional racism and she examines ways in which schools perpetuate racism and other forms of social inequality. Professor Collins also read passages from her book and responded to questions from members of the audience."[33]
In 2012, a video from the YouTube website titled "Dr. Patricia Hill Collins Delivers 2012 Graduate Commencement Address",[34] Collins gives the commencement address at Arcadia University on Thursday, May 17, 2012, when she received an honorary doctorate. She provides stories of her past from growing up in Philadelphia, her and her parents' struggles, and being in a school that predominately caters to middle-class white students. She also touches upon breaking her silence and how she came about using her voice as a critical instrument to make social change.[34]
In 2014, a video from the YouTube website titled "Patricia Hill Collins at Grand Valley State University February 2014".[35][36] Collins gives a talk to undergraduate students from Grand Valley State University in which she expresses her concern of mainstream colorblindness, especially focusing on issues of racial profiling (regarding African Americans) [regarding Trayvon Martin] and tackling other issues regarding race, sex, class, etc. Additionally, Collins reads mini excerpts from her book Black Feminist Thought.[3] The website description is: "On February 26, 2014, Grand Valley State University's Office of Multicultural Affairs, Women's Center and LGBT Resource Center hosted Patricia Hill Collins as part of ongoing Intersections programming. Patricia Hill Collins presented "We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest: Lessons from Black Feminism."[35]
In 2015, a YouTube video titled "Patricia Hill Collins Keynote at 2015 Social Theory Forum @ UMass Boston".[37] Collins visits University of Massachusetts Boston and gives a presentation regarding the sociological theory mainly focusing on intersectionality's challenges and the critical inquiries.
In 2016, Collins alongside Patricia Williams, Robin Morgan, Kate Harding, Polly Toynbee, Arwa Mahdawi, and Suzanne Moore were all asked the following panel question by The Guardian following the defeat of Hillary Clinton by Donald Trump in the 2016 United States Presidential election: “What does the US election result say about misogyny?” In her answer Collins exclaims, “I am disappointed but I will keep up the fight.”[38] She discusses the sadness she feels for Clinton’s loss. Additionally, Collins brings one’s attention to the idea that to gain social change, Americans must remember they will deal with struggles. Collins leaves the reader on a positive note by saying she believes that America has made progress in being committed to opportunity, equity, civility and fairness. However, she still sees a need to keep fighting to achieve a strong democracy.[38]
On November 21, 2018, a YouTube video titled "Intersectionality and Sociology- Professor Patricia Hill Collins." Collins gives a keynote lecture at the University of Cambridge during the university’s 50 Years of Sociology conference. In this lecture she is reflecting on her sociology career as well as “discussing critically the intersectional approach and alternative knowledge projects, and returning to the core question that motivates her work: What will it take for Black people to be free?”[39]
