The characteristics of the traditional feminists, who set themselves and their experience to be the norm, were: whiteness, middle-class, college-educated, heterosexuality, and ablism. Anti-racist feminists address those issues, which are very important to them, because gender and race cannot be separated since they always interconnect and play a significant role in constructing the world. Therefore, "gender is always raced and race is always gendered"(On Women: An Introduction to Women's Studies, lecture notes; 1999-2000).
Racism is still very much alive in to-day's society, therefore there is a need for anti-racist feminism. Whatever history of feminism was recorded for the first time, only the history of white feminists struggle had been documented and nothing, or little, was included about the work of anti-racist activists/feminism. It was assumed that women of color did not participate in the feminist movement because they were not active. On the contrary, there were a lot of anti-racist organizing unions. During the First Wave, for instance, the First Nation Women were active and resisting by fighting to protect their land from the white settlers. During the Second Wave, mainstream definitions, ideologies and practices were more openly challenged by women of color. With the Third Wave, knowledge and schemas started to be re-thought and deconstructed. This was the time when the critiques of racism had more influence and began to change state policies and practices such as immigration policies affecting domestic workers, state laws and practices that play a major role in shaping First Nations peoples' lives both on an off reserves, and inclusive training in different government institutions. Other discourse analysis, such as standpoint work(link to standpoint theory) where a person is an analyzer from their own experience, emerged as well.
Furthermore, Critical Race theory puts emphasis on the critiques of "white normativity". It argues that whiteness gets identified as a force of power and exists as an unmarked category. Hence, there is a paradox where whiteness is nothing and everything, nowhere and everywhere. Differently put, whiteness is used as a tool to compare and judge other "racial" groups to itself but at the same time it serves as a neutral thing, as if it is not there. Although this statement is true even to-day, challenging racism continues to exist.
To summarize, anti-racist feminist political thought has a legacy in North America because it goes back to the 1800s and it is thus not a new activism. Second, anti-racist feminism has been driven by political necessity to respond to and challenge racism as a structure in force of the very formation of North America. Finally, it is not only a challenge to mainstream feminist thought but it is also the challenge of the very models of feminist thought.