In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins asserts that within the U.S., Black intellectuals often struggle to justify the credibility of the knowledge they posses due to the oppressive processes by which knowledge is validated. These processes are oppressive because they tend to reflect the interests of the dominant group of elite White American males. Black feminist thought consists of ideas produced by Black women that clarify a standpoint of and for Black women. Several assumptions underlie this working definition. It contains observations and interpretations about Afro-American womanhood that describe and explain different expressions of common themes. In the book, she historically situates the term to describe the social location
