Dare To Be A Feminist

A new report says that the federal government is the largest funder of low-wage jobs for working women and people of color, and that President Obama should take executive action to help lift them into the middle class.

Personally, I haven’t encountered that argument in the feminist blogosphere, and I would never make it myself. It’s the first lady’s life that sounds like the nightmare to me. You only need to spend one election season writing about Michelle Obama’s clothes to be caught in a fusillade of drive-by commenters’ hate speech. Yes, they’re only Internet trolls, but they’re digital traces of the simmering racism that makes being a high-achieving and high-profile black woman in America singularly frustrating. Cottle pays lip service to the racial limitations of Michelle Obama’s public persona, noting that some say Michelle “must tread lightly to avoid being stereotyped as an Angry Black Woman.” As if that were an abstract theory used to rationalize Obama’s frivolity and not a racist episode we collectively watched unfold over the past five years.

CAP examines both the progress made and the challenges remaining for women of color across the country.

Throughout the 20th century, women fought for and achieved countless victories for women’s rights and became a political and economic force in our society after winning the right to vote, equal pay, and reproductive rights. While women have continued to organize for collective gains into the 21st century, the benefits of those achievements have not been equally shared. Over time, those gaps have expanded into wide and deep inequalities for some women—namely, women of color.

And then in Zami, when Audre Lorde shares with us another memory, a memory of people spitting at her in the streets, I understood something. An experience of racism can involve the loss of the words to explain what is going on. It was a memory of her mother explaining to her that people were spitting into the wind because they were ill-mannered and rude, because the mother wants to protect her black child from the knowledge that those people are spitting at her, because she is a black child. I understood something. I understood that racism can be what happens right in front of us – in the direction of violence towards some of us – but also that we learn not to see it. We might learn not to see racism as a way of being protecting from racism: but of course we are not protected. We might not learn the word ‘racism’ or learn not to say that word ‘racism’ as if by not saying it, it might go away. Not naming racism as if racism is not going-on keeps racism on-going. This is why, in naming racism, we are always doing something. We need to find the words. Black feminism can be a way of finding the words.

From Black feminism as a Life-Line by Sara Ahmed. (via tamghrabit)

In his new book, “Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy,” Chris Crass rightly points out that there are more men influenced by feminism today than at any other time in history. While this may be so, and I believe it is, a book written by a man about his deep commitment to feminism is still radical, and far too rare. Especially because these books are able to speak to readers with gender privilege in a unique and effective way. The good news is with his first book, Crass is able to do just that, and more.

...Crass seeks to bring his white audiences to consciousness about racism through articulating how white supremacy instills an internalized sense of superiority over people of color. This work is not easy as it requires confronting feelings of fear, guilt and shame. However, Crass believes that everyone is needed to build a powerful and successful movement. He states that his overall goal in writing is “to help turn race, class and gender into catalysts to help us build our progressive Left movement rather then have them continue to divide us.”

Read more at: http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/02/when_they_were_supposed_to.html

April 9 is Equal Pay Day--a reminder that women workers still make less than their male counterparts. Around this time of year, my university's Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance usually holds a Pay Equity Bake Sale to highlight the wage disparities between men and women. The price of each baked good varies by customer to reflect the wage gap. In the United States, women make about $0.77 for every $1 earned by male colleagues; therefore, female students pay $0.77 for a brownie while male students pay $1. Some people love this event, others hate it. What I have always liked about the bake sale is that it not only reflects wage differences between sexes, but races as well.