PLATFORM : Angela Davis

The Women of Color curriculum presents gender, race and socioeconomic class as central theoretical concepts and as conditions of experience that affect all women and men as well as people of all ethnic, racial and income groups.

Is any one of us without gender? Without ethnicity?

State Sen. Bill Leonard (R-San Bernardino) and others who label Davis as “extremist” seek to define the terms of discussion and to control the production of knowledge. Rather than expanding their frames of reference to include voices of women of color, such critics attempt to bar this field of knowledge from students in higher education.

Make no mistake, this is an attack on academic freedom and thought.

The curriculum on women of color does not exclude, but rather includes those historically left out of our institutions of learning. Without such expansions of curriculum, we will be faced with an inferior educational system in California.

While Davis has long been critical of our society, she has always worked toward the development of cross-cultural relations. Those who wish to discredit Davis and the Women of Color research cluster point us back to an elitist and exclusionary educational system.

These attempts to “cleanse” our educational institutions are part of a larger strategy to control the ways we think and act.