Strategies of Resistance in the Everyday: The Political Approaches of Black Women Living in a Public Housing Development in Chicago

Abstract

ABSTRACT Black women living in poverty in the United States have been shown to develop non-traditional, or what I call extra-systemic, political engagement to combat their vulnerability to government power. With that in mind, I ask the following question: what conceptual framework of “politics” is best suited to fully understanding the politics of poor Black women living in the US? To answer this question, I examined an ethnographic case study of the politics of 31 Black women living in Chicago public housing, over the course of one year (2011 through 2012). The evidence suggests some marginalized Black women incorporate an oft-hidden resistance strategy against forces exerting a disproportionate amount of power over their lives. The political strategies used by the marginalized Black women I observed, were best understood using an expanded extra-systemic conceptualization of politics, informed by Black feminist political theory.