Mediating Discrimination: Resisting Oppression among African-American Muslim Women

Using qualitative data from interviews with twenty African-American Muslim women, this analysis contrasts the understanding of experiencing discrimination gained from Feagin and Sikes' Living with Racism (1994) with that gained from Patricia Hill Collins' Black Feminist Thought (1991). I demonstrate Collins' theory of a matrix of domination and the both/and conceptual stance through examining these respondents' experiences with the intersection of race, gender, and religious discrimination. Furthermore, I argue that these women are able to mediate, or resist the oppression of, discrimination through the self-definition and determination, provided by a humanist vision of themselves and others. Finally, the respondents' membership in the Muslim community provides them with a safe social space to transform their life and their consciousness. Through these cultural and social structural means, this group of respondents are able to socially construct a reality that allows them to mediate the discrimination they experience.