January 16, 2017
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Well, then, Aunt Jemima, excuse white women for livin”!
In “An Open Letter to White Liberal Feminists,” a woman with the unmistakably black name of LeRhonda S. Manigualt-Bryant snorts:
If this most recent presidential election has revealed nothing else, it has shown that this specific ilk of white feminism must die. Rather than [women of color] holding up your weeping, weak selves, You must now do the intensive work to heal your troubled soul. And after you have come to terms with your own guilt, embarrassment, and pain, I encourage you to run with your newfound perspective.
Any human on this planet”whether white, black, male, or female”who doesn”t respond to such sick condescension with a hearty “go fist yourself in the ass, Moms Mabley” is a masochist who deserves whatever misfortune befalls them.
If one truly wishes to understand the driving cultural forces behind feminism, it may be more instructive to sort prominent feminists by religion rather than race. Writing in The Forward, a Jewish woman argues that Jewish feminists may be able to heal the yawning chasm between white and nonwhite feminists. I wish her luck with that plan and will closely monitor how it unfolds.
But the open disdain nonwhite feminists express for their white would-be allies seems to be causing an understandable whitelash. Regarding the intersectional squawking about whether the Women’s March on Washington was “too white,” a white woman from New Jersey wrote, “I”m starting to feel not very welcome in this endeavor.” A white woman who wound up canceling her trip to DC commented, “This is a women’s march. We”re supposed to be allies in equal pay, marriage, adoption. Why is it now about, “White women don”t understand black women”?”
Quite possibly it’s because many black women care far more about being black than they do about being women. And if that’s the case, white feminists may have to realign their entire political worldview.
It’s also quite possible that a majority of white women voted for Trump because they woke up to the fact that for at least a generation, American society hasn”t “bashed” women at all, but it can”t seem to restrain itself from aggressively bashing everything white. In the end, these white women may not have been “voting against their interests” at all.
