Femme-fights: ‘Feminists, Womanists’ Battle Across Racial Lines
by Guest Contributor Ope Bukola, originally published at Zora & Alice
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post that discussed the problem I feel feminism poses for a lot of women, among them black women.
An argument that played out this past weekend in the “lady blogosphere” offered a good example of the problem. It started last week when, in The Guardian, Womanist Musings‘ Renee Martin wrote a piece titled “I’m not a feminist (and there is no but).” Renee was responding to an article by Chloe Angyal, a writer for Feministing, in which Chloe argued that young women should boldly proclaim themselves as feminist. Renee’s post rejected what she describes as a “white feminist movement”, represented by college “women’s studies” curricula and by blogs like Feministing, which do a poor job of representing women of color.
So far, so good – a friendly, if somewhat esoteric, disagreement between two women who both clearly care about the status of women. Things got really interesting when the mega-blog Jezebel picked up Renee’s article and criticized her for ignoring the women of color write for the publications she disparages. The comment threads quickly devolved into an “us vs. them” with readers mostly divided along black and white racial lines. One commenter wrote what I felt before I even clicked the link to the Jezebel post: “My urge to comment swelled when I first read the post, and then I thought to myself, “Self, take cover and just wait for the shitstorm.”
And a shitstorm it was. If you have two hours or so, you should read the original articles and the comments. For those who want the CliffNotes: many white readers (they self-identified, I’m not assuming) accused Renee of ignorance, ingratitude, even racism and race-baiting. A sample of comments:
“ Oh jeebus, the ‘womanist’ thing again? Almost as bad as ‘feminininsm’.”
“What I’m saying is that feminism is the belief that all women should have equal rights. And that is not a bad thing. If someone doesn’t want to be a part of it, screw them. If they chose to put a different name to it, I think they’re serving to break up a movement that is powerful in its size and noble in it’s cause.”
“It gets a little tiring to go about your life treating everyone the same (or so you think), and then be told you’re racist anyway, because you’re simply bolstering institutional racism. What’s a well-meaning person to do?”
“I don’t get it. As white women, we’re told we’ll “never understand” and that it’s futile and downright offensive to even try through our privilege colored glasses. Then, people get mad when we can’t consider the WOC’s perspective, when we’ve been directly told that we could never even begin to understand it so don’t even try…..There is no pleasing anyone, except to just sit here with a sign that says “White Person Punching Bag” and taking every hit anyone can throw at us. I know as a white person, I’m not allowed to feel frustrated regarding issues of POC, but I am.”
It wasn’t long before black readers stepped in to, as one commenter put it, “school” the white readers. To them, the vitriol directed at Renee by the (mostly white) readers of Jezebel just proved Renee’s point:
“Instead of forcing the term of feminist on women who feel racially oppressed by the label, mainstream feminism should work to correct the problems that lead many women to feel this way.”
“In the US, the social structure is created by white people and set up to benefit white people. I’m not saying that people are racist; rather that the structure of the country and its institutions and movements, including feminism, are imbued by systemic racism, or the idea that “white” is default and everything else is “other”
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