“But “Mothers’ Day”—with the apostrophe not in the singular spot, but in the plural—actually started in the 1870s, when the sheer enormity of the death caused by the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War convinced American women that women must take control of politics from the men who had permitted such carnage. Mothers’ Day was not designed to encourage people to be nice to their mothers. It was part of women’s effort to gain power to change modern society.”
SOURCE: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-9-2020?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=facebook
Frequently these days as I read posts about the Ahmad Arbery killing, I also read comments akin to this one: I think this is awful but I am a white woman and I just don’t know how to help.
Really? This is a white people problem. ONLY white people can help. Black and brown-skinned people have been working diligently for over 300 years trying to convince us not to kill them. Maybe it is our turn to police ourselves, and since the random murder of black and brown-skinned folk just minding their own business is exclusively committed by white men, the policing, ladies, falls to us.
So, white women: you are the only ones who can help. You are it. This is your moment, yet again.
As the plantation mistress, you could have helped. But you didn’t. It cost you too much.
As the suffragette, you could have helped. But you didn’t. It cost you too much.
When the men were off fighting and you were home building airplanes and tending victory gardens and Japanese Americans were being hauled off to interment camps you could have helped. But you didn’t. It cost you too much.
As the figure being defended when the Klan abused and killed Emmett Till, you could have helped. But you didn’t. It cost you too much.
When children were shot and killed in schools and parishioners were shot and killed in church you could have helped. But you didn’t. It cost you too much.
White women, you can help by demanding white men stop killing. Say out loud to your husband, son, brother, father, cousin and all kin that killing unarmed people is wrong. Say out loud that men with brown skin and men with black skin are not any more dangerous than men with white skin. Say out loud that killing, even as a law officer, should be avoided as often as humanly possible. Say all of this out loud often enough that they turn away from you at family reunions because they don’t want to hear your speech again. SAY THEIR NAMES OUT LOUD.
White women, you can help by raising your sons to see those with black skin or brown skin as equal. Demand the boys and men around your sons see those with black skin or brown skin, as equal. TALKING OUT LOUD ABOUT RACISM IS A WAY TO SAY THEIR NAMES OUT LOUD.
White women, you can help by stopping racists comments when you hear them. If you don’t let a man curse in front of you, why do you let him demean another person or an entire race? If you don’t let a man say sexist things in front of you, why do you let him demean another person or an entire race?
White women, you can help by noting and punishing microagressions. You can learn to never assume anything about another based on the color of his or her skin and when your microagressions are called by someone of color you can simply say “Thank you. I didn’t know that and I need to learn it.”
White women, you can help by not making violence and racism cool, acceptable, sexy, powerful, attractive, or a joke. Instead, make violence and racism repugnant, unacceptable, unsexy, weak, ugly, and an insult.
White women, you can help by embracing black and brown mothers as your peers, by standing by them in their grief, by standing between them and your white husbands, sons, brothers, and fathers with guns.
White women, give up the pretense that you don’t know what to do. Give up your pretense of powerlessness. This time, let’s do it. The costs be damned.
“Men always had and always would decide questions by resorting to “mutual murder.” But women did not have to accept this state of affairs, she wrote. Mothers could command their sons to stop the madness.
"Arise, women! Howe commanded. Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.””