actually, i think otherwise! to put us all into this category highlights our position of power over people whose voices were not heard at the polls yesterday.Ā
rapists canāt be trusted, right? rapists are the absolute scum of the earth. and whatās worse is not knowing who is a rapist. someone in your circle of friends? someone you pass on the street? the person ahead of you in line at starbucks? so you close yourself off from someone who has that power over you. maybe just a little bit, but youāre aware of how you could be hurt. you make plans in your head about how youād escape if you were attacked; youāre aware of the person behind you at the atm; you go quiet when they start talking about how they treated their dates.Ā
and if a guy saidĀ ānot all men are rapists!ā youād say,Ā āyeah, but all men can be rapists.āĀ
white women, honestly, cannot be trusted. we have endorsed and enabled slavery. we have joined the kkk and we have thrown rotten fruit at children who are walking to school. we have spit on black women who tried to fight for suffragette rights alongside us. we have formed and worked in organizations that sterilize black women without their knowledge. we turn into teachers who demonize little black boys for being too āloudā and āmasculineā when theyāre only being kids. we do little shitty things like try to touch black women like theyāre exotic animals, and say that hispanic neighborhoods lookĀ āshady,ā and tell women of color that there arenāt enough white heroines yet and that black women need to wait their turn to be important.Ā
it makes sense that people of color would put up their barriers and make escape plans from us. with that history, when have we really been allies? when have we been anything but fair-weather friends who love beyonce but thinkĀ āghettoā black girls are trashy? how can they know which one of us is one of the nearly 70% of white women in america who voted for trump? which one of us in starbucks or passing by on the street would betray them - has already betrayed them?Ā
thereās a lot that we white women have to do into order to prove ourselves to black women and black communities. itās really hard to stand up against the status quo, especially when weāre very aware of what we could lost if we speak up. (there goes your job, your friends, your opportunitiesā¦.) but if black women are living without those opportunities every day, then we have a responsibility to work until they have them and no one can take them away. itās not up to people of color to give us leeway; itās up to us to work with our fellow white women to help them understand change.Ā
