Reply #7: I am sick and tired of the racism in (white) feminism. Stop feeding it.

[Anouka]

"Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women"

My mind is blown.

What is this expectation of jealousy that always pervade any mention of this subject, in this manner? as in 'how dare!'

White women have benefited the most from affirmative action. White women have made the most gains in earning power, where white men have remained static, and black men have actually FALLEN.

What is this continued fear of the black man and anger towards the black man that people who write the above sentence are trying to exploit?

Why must 'women', still, be shorthand for 'white women'?

At what point will feminism deal with its history of racism towards non-white men......... and non-white women?

The feminist struggle, too often, has seemed less about equality and more about white women being bitter at not enjoying the full privileges of what it means to be white. 'How dare!' those black (men) receive the vote before white (women).

And black women have swallowed it up, bit their tongues, even as the bitter reality of what was really going on burned. Ask World War 2's black FEMALE pilots about the betrayals of the (white) feminist movement.

'Woman' never includes the struggles of women of color, precisely because of how female writers insist on framing the vote as 'blacks' before 'women'.

As if blacks (of both sexes) earned something which was not their to have, before (white) women. As if to be black is to be the Frightening Other Man, the Competing Other Man; as if to be woman can never include being non-white.

Strip away the bitterness to what lays at its core.

Instead of this bitterness and half-cloaked yearning for the fruits of full white privilige, I'd love to see feminism represent the black struggle as INSPIRING to feminism. I'd giggle at that type of revisionism, because in spite of it not being true for too many in the past, it can be true to the present and for the future.