Yall, Dont Do This: Put a Pussyhat on Harriet Tubman

[OxQQme]

Someone put a Pussyhat on Harriet Tubman.

It was the memorial to Harriet Tubman in Harlem, the one with the roots of slavery trying to hold her back as she strides determinedly toward freedom, and someone knitted a Harriet-Tubman-statue-sized pink Pussyhat and then put it on her.

No one, to my knowledge, knows this person’s motivations. Maybe they were trying to be cute. Maybe they felt that were Harriet Tubman still alive today, she’d be wearing a Pussyhat and marching in the march. Maybe it’s an attempted show of solidarity, reaching back through the centuries to show that we are all one in our struggles or something or whatever. Maybe they felt a strong emotional connection to their own hat and felt that this was leaving a tribute to Tubman. Maybe they believed themselves to be a modern-day Harriet Tubman in their pink-hatted daylight march past a total of seven Starbuckses and felt that they should both have Pussyhats. I don’t even know.

But y’all, don’t do that.

Don’t put a cutesy pink hat on the enslaved woman who ventured back into the South 19 times to guide more than 300 other slaves to freedom all while being a cook, a nurse, a spy, and a gun-toting badass.

more @ link http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2018/01/23/yall-dont-do-this-put-a-pussyhat-on-harriet-tubman/

[nini]

1. Link?

you mentioned a link?


I would guess they were giving her a nod as a strong brave woman but I don't know who did it - so not sure.

I would like to read the article though..thanks

[OxQQme]

3. My booboo, nini. Edited.

[nini]

4. thanks

[nini]

9. I see both sides of this

and it shows us all we have a lot to learn about each other even if our goals are similar. I can see someone meaning to give props to Tubman as a fighter and someone who didn't run from the fight - and that's what we all need to do. I can also see how some may not appreciate that to put it mildly.

This reminds me of when I took a class in college - 'The 60's from a Black Point of View'. (I'm white but grew up in a racially mixed area - thankfully). Anyway, I learned a lot about things/feelings etc.. I never realized people of color had because I could never have the same experiences - even if I thought I understood. The teacher was awesome and I wish everyone had to take that class or similar to learn about others.

[Demsrule86]

2. Why not? I think she would wear it proudly...and be marching right along side with our women.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

6. Many WOC and others marginalized by white feminism don't love the hats.

Putting it on Tubman is just flippant and ignorant.

[Kirk Lover]

7. And how do we know that a black person didn't put that hat on her?

[OxQQme]

8. She's describing white feminism

This from one of the links in the original feministe post:

>"At the 2017 Women’s March in Madison, Wisconsin, I carried a sign that read “I AM A WOMAN’S RIGHTS. –Sojourner Truth, 1851” I was citing an account of a speech Truth gave at the first National Woman’s Rights Convention, as it was recorded in the Anti-Slavery Bugle, an essay I often teach in courses on nineteenth-century African American women’s writing. Given mainstream white feminism’s habitual marginalization of nonwhite women’s voices, I deliberately chose to carry the words of a woman of color and to gesture towards black women’s long history of contributing to U.S. feminist discourse. I’d written the letters out in block form, mimicking the iconic “I AM A MAN” signs of the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Worker’s Strike. The comparison reminded me not only of the history of civil rights protest in the U.S. between Truth’s moment and my own, but also of Truth’s challenge to gender stereotypes. In this speech and others, she referred to her own physical size and strength. Truth was six feet tall and spoke and sang with a deep voice; on at least one occasion of her public speech on women’s rights, she was heckled by the crowd and accused of being a man.

As I stood with my sign last year, a middle-aged white woman stopped marching, turned around, and approached me. She called out, smiling, “You know, what Sojourner Truth ACTUALLY said was ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’” She was referring to an alternate version of the speech I had quoted, published by Frances Gage in the New York paper The Independent and the National Anti-Slavery Standard over a decade later, in 1863. I’ve taught this version, as well. While there were many things I might have said to this stranger, I instead smiled and directed her to the correct citation. This white woman clearly thought that she knew more about Sojourner Truth than a black woman holding a sign quoting her did, and this fact was not lost on me. Whatever I might have to say, she was more interested in explaining than listening."<

http://avidly.lareviewofbooks.org/2018/01/22/swing-low-white-women/

[bigtree]

5. strained argument

...better things to get righteous about.

[Ferrets are Cool]

10. +1