When compared to the Black Panther Party the National Black Women's Health Project centered the experiences of Black women from their founding and had an intersectional approach that while itmore narrowly focused their work on Black women also from the beginnging centered on the intersection of race and gender in way that the Black Panther Party did not.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

The NBWHP's work is intersectional in nature because it is centered on the intersection of race and gender. This is evident both with how the organization grew out of white feminist health activism as a specifically Black feminist health organization, but also in publications and internal documents that overwhelmingly name racism and sexism as categories of oppression with major impacts on Black women's health.

Intersectionality and the NBWHP

While the Black Panther Party for the bulk of its existence had a majority of women in its membership, with many women in major leadership roles. Many scholars may have ignored the later period of the Black Panther Party (1972/1974-1982) and see this period as less radical because at the time the Black Panther Party was led and run by women, and the focus of their revolutionary action was on survival programs that especially benefited children, the elderly, and disabled Black community members. 
Schalk argues that the Panther's revolutionary ideology during their later years highlighted a deep understanding of the interconnected nature of racism, classism, and ableism. Schalk contends that since the Panther's approach to disability politics did not always align with the language and tactics used by the predominantly white Disability Rights Movement the Panthers have been overlooked in disability studies. But, sexist and ableist attitudes within academia have impacted scholarship on the Black Panther Party and led to its revolutionary nature, especially in the later period of the Black Panther Party being overlooked in Black Studies.

How Sexist, Racist, and Ableist Attitudes have Shaped Views of the Black Panther Party

In addition to naming the impacts of racism and sexism on Black women's health, the NBWHP also frequently mentioned classism and homophobia and rarely mentioned oppression faced by older adults, disabled people and fat people. 

Learn Before

Related