Angela Davis's supportive statement after the screening of Angela: Portrait of a Revolutionary at Hackesche Hoefe

I certainly hope Judith Butler’s refusal of the civil courage award will act as a catalyst for more discussion about the impact of racism, even within groups that are considered to be progressive. The assumption that.. somehow people from the Global South, people of colour are more homophobic, is a racist assumption. .. If you consider the extent to which the ideological structures of homophobia, of transphobia, or heteropatriarchy are embedded in a our institutions, the assumption that one group of people is going to be more homophobic than another group of people misses the mark. Because we not only have to address issues of attitudes, but we have to address the institutions that perpetuate those attitudes and that cause, that inflict real violence on human beings. And I was going to say in answer to the last question about the urgency of the late 60s, is that had people not acted with that urgency, that we would not perhaps have the expanded notion of social justice that we have, that we wouldn’t perhaps have the vocabulary, and there’s always been a struggle over language, over vocabulary. And I've come to believe that when we win victories in movements, struggles, that what we do is change the whole terrain of struggle. So we don’t simply add on. We don’t add on women to black people, we don’t add on LGBT people to women and to black people, we don’t add on trans people, and so forth. Each time we win a significant victory, it requires us to revisit the whole terrain of struggle. And so therefore we have to ask questions about the impact of racism in gay and lesbian movements, we have to ask questions about the impact of racism in the women’s movements, we have to ask questions about the impact of sexism or misogyny in black communities, we have to ask questions about the influence of homophobia in black communities or communities of colour. This notion of intersecting or crosspatched or overlaying categories of oppression is one that has come to us thanks to the work of women of colour feminists.