Feminism and Diversity

Yes, ol’ fashioned racism can and does get to me. Those racial slurs as I ride my bicycle, being the only one followed by the security guard, or the never-really-random airport search, but most days, if I had to choose my direct racist experience, I’d rather any of the above over encounters with a Good White Person.

If you’re a POC, you probably know at least one of these Good White People! If you’re white and reading my blog, maybe you are one; a well intentioned whitey. You’re ‘on my side’, right? You figured out racism is ‘bad’ so now you’ve joined the fight against racism! Maybe you work in a social enterprise, for a charity, with refugees, or Indigenous people, or in the multi-cultural arts. You’re proud of yourself for your many years of human rights work. You’ve claimed your anti-racist identity, you have friends and maybe even lovers who are people of colour, so how could you possibly be racist?

How could you NOT be racist? We have been raised in a white supremacy and we have all internalised racism. We are all racist.

I don’t have the emotional or political energy for friends and acquaintances who express that they are hurt and offended that I’ve inferred that they are racist by critiquing their behaviour or by simply withdrawing from their company. I know that it hurts to feel admonished or abandoned, but this is not comparable or relevant to the hurt and betrayal I feel by people who have tried to contextualise the racist behaviours I experience in terms of the person who has enacted racism’s ignorance, insecurities, or good intentions (which are factors in their behaviour, but don’t alter my experience of their behaviour as racism). This justification de-validates my experience, and though I remind myself that friends are well intentioned in trying to comfort me by convincing me that I needn’t feel bad because nobody meant any harm, they are silencing me as a person of colour, re-centering the experience around whiteness, and being complicit in white supremacy. In contrast, I emphasise how empowering it has been to share experiences of racism and have my anger and sense of alienation validated by others. This has been infinitely more ‘comforting’ than the friends who have had a ‘Don’t worry about it’ attitude. That’s their privilege not to worry about something that permeates all aspects of my daily, lived experience.

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I operate with great suspicion around white people and white dominated collectives and spaces that claim anti-racist motivations. It so often seems that embracing diversity is seen as a magical recipe for equality when it’s no guarantee that everyone’s experience in the ‘diverse group’ will be an equal experience. It means there’s a complicated mix of power dynamics to do with race, class, gender, able-bodiedness, etc that need be acknowledged and constantly addressed. I’m not going to applaud them for their embracement of diversity, I’m going to wonder about how those dynamics play out and doubt that those from ‘marginalised groups’ feel empowered in the situation. Just because the doormat, the signage, the mission statement or they personally say ‘You’re welcome here’, does not mean that I have automatically been made to feel welcome, and when the racisms I critique are condoned or denied, that welcome means nothing.

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http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/intersectionality

" just the beginning. See, Slutwalk is one of the many long, long conversations about relationships between feminism, racism, class, nation-states, colonization, and power. We’ve got more than 70 posts on feminism and its discontents on our blog alone. And it’s a big, big internet with many others debating, writing, blogging.

So at this point, these aren’t accidents – it’s willful ignorance. One of the respondents says she’s fifteen – that she really didn’t think about all of those things. She’s still early in her walk, and people can change, if they chose to.

Unfortunately, as we see from the continuation on the thread, some people don’t want to understand why women of color would be angry at that phrase, and they don’t care why John Lennon isn’t the best representative on race issues. As Miles pointed out yesterday in the comments to the original post, some “white people just want to say the word nigger.”

And that they have.

The message – and the subtext – came through loud and clear. It just wasn’t the one they meant. "

http://www.racialicious.com/2011/10/06/slutwalk-slurs-and-why-feminism-still-has-race-issues/

We recognize that SlutWalks around the world have been critiqued from anti-racist standpoints since the first Walk. We agree with many of these critiques, and have attempted to engage with them in our organizing. We recognize that under the banner of SlutWalk, we put logistics over politics in many cases, and that this was a failing. But now as we are moving forward, we realize that we cannot cultivate an identity as a coalition without upholding all of the intersecting identities of our organizers and participants.

....

We realize that privilege within our movement must continue to be decentered. We are currently searching for strategies to resist replicating oppressive patterns within our organizing. We are willing to do this work for the rest of our lives, because we recognize that anti-oppression is life-long work. We recognize that we cannot do this on our own. We need to look to radical communities whose knowledge and experiences are as diverse as we wish to be.

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10/8/11

http://slutwalknyc.com/post/11198191308/to-our-community-we-are-responding-to-the-outcry

Me: Hey, so I've noticed that Slutwalk is using the "N" word in their campaign and it's actually quite hurtful and dismissive of the Black Women involved.

White Feminist: OMG! YOU DON'T GET IT! They're using it figuratively, so why do you feel offended? Nobody called you that! You're the only racist around here!

Me: *listening to rap music*

White Feminist: WHAT'S WRONG WITH U OMGAWSH!?!?! Why would you listen to such garbage, it's offensive to me that you're allowing yourself to be oppressed! UGH!

http://getsnarly.tumblr.com/post/17509539343/me-hey-so-ive-noticed-that-slutwalk-is-using