What were Gloria Steinem’s views on racial justice?

  “Gloria Steinem consistently viewed racial justice and gender equality as fundamentally inseparable, arguing that patriarchy, racism, and classism rely on the same power structures to control body sovereignty and economic autonomy.

Her perspective and actions centered on several key principles:

• Intersectionality and Interconnected Struggles: Steinem credited Black women with founding the modern feminist movement, often pointing out that Black women were practicing intersectional feminism long before white middle-class women entered the movement. She maintained that racism cannot be eradicated without addressing sex role enforcement, and vice versa.
• Multiracial Leadership and Partnership: Throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, Steinem refused to speak at events unless she shared the stage with a Black co-speaker. Her most prominent partnership was with child advocacy organizer Dorothy Pitman Hughes, with whom she toured the country to ensure the movement represented diverse racial and economic experiences. She also worked closely with leaders like Florynce Kennedy, Shirley Chisholm, and Alice Walker.
• Amplifying Black Women's Voices: When founding Ms. magazine in 1972, Steinem sought to create a platform that published, highlighted, and paid Black female writers and thinkers. The magazine frequently covered issues such as welfare rights, institutional racism, and reproductive justice for non-white women.
• Reproductive Freedom as Racial Justice: Steinem frames reproductive choice not merely as an issue of individual liberty, but as a site of racial control. She actively called out historical eugenics, forced sterilizations targeting Black, Indigenous, and Latina women, and the economic barriers that disproportionately impact women of color.
• Acknowledgment of White Privilege: In later years and retrospective writings, Steinem explicitly acknowledged the privileges afforded to her as a white, media-favored figure in second-wave feminism. She used her platform to redirect attention to the systemic erasure of women of color in feminist history”.

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