The Difference is Black and White: All Feminism Is Not Created Equal.
A childhood friend and I chat and catch up from time to time via the webz. She is working on her Ph.D. in Florida and I like to pick her brain about things going on. Our conversations sometimes end up at race, sexism, black community ish, feminism, etc. On the matter of feminism, I summed up white feminism in a few words:
White feminism is the peak of white woman boredom. They have run out of shit to do! White feminism operates on the premise of white women muling and laboring tirelessly to prove that they are equal to their men and can hang with the boys, not realizing that they have a patriarch that is doing what it’s supposed to do collectively and has done since the being: protect and provide. White women want to be just as oppressive as white men. White women have run out of shit to do. They want so badly to be oppressed when they don’t have to be. White women have a worthy collective patriarch that protects, provides, builds and supports. They actually have a standard of care, which was set by white men and is reinforced by white men. Faux-pression is a helluva drug. White feminism is edgy, fun, even, because being protected physically, financially, and socially, is apparently boring. Meanwhile, black feminism has been about liberation from oppression and violence committed by the insecure, feckless, and subpar black patriarch, which has failed, and miserably so, to set a standard of care for black women and girls. Black women are head and shoulders above black men and we’ve never needed to prove we could be equal to men we had already surpassed. Harriet Tubman didn’t sit around and wait for a black man to make moves. She said: “Fuck it. I’ll do it” and it was made so. She is the OG of feminism. It was then that the jig was up for the black male collective. It’s hard to respect a collective that failed at a very important job. Why in the world would black women work to take a demotion to prove we are equal to a collective of men to which we are and always have been far superior?
She asked me, “Why aren’t I seeing any scholarly publications from you?! You write about pertinent information or even non scholarly forums?!”
I said, “People don’t want to come to the original source because they are arrogant. Like…how are you going to dictate feminism to the ORIGINAL feminists? It’s okay to not found/create/produce everything. It’s not okay to not acknowledge the original sources and creators. Black feminism and white feminism are so separate from each other…”
White women can be so confidently arrogant while at the same time woefully and painfully unaware. White women don’t realize how their lives and image greatly differ from those of black women. They don’t know that the stakes are different for us and them. They don’t see the overall collective familial and social support they have and if something goes wrong with their spouse and/or children, anything that disrupts the dynamic, they have a safety net. Look at starter marriages. White women are the spokeswomen of starter marriages. I have more than a few examples of starter marriages involving white friends and acquaintances who moved on to the next man with their kids in tow and/or before the ink on their divorce decree was dry. White women get hella mulligans and children from previous relationships don’t make them damaged goods. White women have the social support such that their image isn’t tarnished because of being single moms. In fact, white women are the FACE of positive single motherhood by CHOICE. The articles I’ve read and the books I’ve seen out there regarding white women and being single mothers by choice present this choice in such a positive and supportive light. The image of black single mothers, whether by choice or not, has no positive collective support, at all. White single mothers aren’t blamed for the ills in the white community. Anything that goes wrong in the black community will be blamed on black single moms. All of the finger pointing is at black single moms, and what they do with the $17.83 child support check they receive each month with the legal father is working a job that takes out taxes.
On January 21st, white women marched because Trump grabbed WHITE women’s pussies. The same women who are a part of the collective of ww that elected him…were marching. They weren’t marching for women. They were marching for WHITE women. Trump is a grabber of only the finest of white pussies. Sis, this isn’t about you and your best interests. It never was. Think about all of the things that have been happening to black women on a collective and individual level. Who was taking up the cross and advocating for us? Remember; when white women were burning their Maidenform bras, YOUR black mothers, grandmothers, and Annies were hooking theirs closed to go to work at a second job, just to feed, clothe, and house a family that they didn’t create alone but somehow got stuck raising and defending solo. Rebecca got to return to her nice house in the suburbs. When white women are tired of throwing rocks, they wash their hands and hide them.
About the only thing black women and white women have in common is the centering of the black phallus. The same ww who believe #blacklivesmatter are very quick to dismiss black women when we speak of the undercurrent in the BC regarding domestic violence, sexual abuse, poverty, homophobia, etc. and the disproportionate impact on black women and girls. “That happens to white women, too.” “We get judged for x,y, and z, too.” NO IT DOESN’T AND NO YOU DON’T OR WE WOULDN’T BE HAVING THIS CONVERSATION, REBECCA.” They retort with, “#yesallwomen, attempting to dismiss and marginalize black women and girls while giving black men priority and preference, after of course, they have centered their ivory, beige, and porcelain selves, which is proof positive that even in white, well-meaning, gentrified spaces, the black peen reigns supreme.
White women have failed in their quest for equality, namely because they have no idea what they are doing. They’re running around here in pink pussy hats thinking that they are really moving mountains. They’re not though. They are tired and worn out and their attempts have backfired, because the best thing(s) white feminism has produced is the possibility of women going to wars started by MEN, women paying for dates, and splitting bills down the middle while still doing most of, if not all of the “woman’s work”.
White women have too much free time.
And you know what? I think they are starting to realize that they have gotten a raw deal, which makes me suspect that this (white feminism) was never about their equality but their attempt to coopt something else from black women, and center themselves, not knowing the story behind it. They didn’t know what they were taking on. They bit off more than they can chew. This isn’t a secret potato salad or macaroni and cheese recipe they can easily Columbus. This isn’t a new thing they “discovered”, like boxer braids. This life as an unambiguously black woman, with brown skin and features that remain undiluted by European DNA, isn’t for the faint of heart. This is a commitment, a daily tightrope of being strong, but not too strong, pretty, but not too pretty, kind, but not too kind, smart but not too smart, magical but not overwhelming so. White women aren’t built like we are and for what we are. This black woman strength, resilience, patience, endurance and inexplicable magic, cannot be packaged and sold or duplicated.
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