Bio: (1944-) American feminist theorist. Angela Davis earned her Ph.D. at Humboldt University and is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In her works, she extends the Marxist theory of inequality to racial and gender relations. She believes that the exploitation of the proletariat, sexism, and racism are related systems of domination that reinforce each other and that all three are inherent features of unfettered capitalism. Global capitalism not only strengthened bourgeois power and authority but also extended race-based domination to the entire planet. Angela Davis also studied the topic of rape. She interpreted the rape of black women, who were slaves, by their white owners, as a method of controlling and subjugating slaves of both sexes.

The stereotypes introduced during slavery still exist: African American women are portrayed as sexually unrestrained, and African American men as sexual predators. The author sees every form of rape mostly as an expression of the desire for control and power, and not as a consequence of unrestrained sexual desire. Subjugation and violence against women in the family are consequences of capitalist patriarchal socialization. Davis is also a great opponent of the US penal system. The prison system in America serves to maintain the racist capitalist system, but also to appropriate the products of free labor of prisoners. Of the more than two million prisoners in the United States, most are African American (although they make up 12% of the population) and most have been convicted of crimes that are a direct consequence of poverty. Davis advocates for socialism in which all forms of oppression and domination (class, racial, and gender), as well as all forms of violence, are abolished.

Main works

If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance (1971);

Women, Race, & Class (1983);

Violence against Women and the Ongoing Challenge of Racism (1985);

Women, Culture & Politics (1990);

Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003);

Abolition Democracy: Beyond Prisons, Torture, and Empire (2005);

The Meaning of Freedom: And Other Difficult Dialogues (2012);

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (2015).