Letters to the Editor
little lord baltimore
Published Letters: 191 Editor's Choice: 9
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@ nepats
[Read the article: The other 18 million]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"And since you're once again all huffed up about sexism and women, please explain the total absence of any African-American women on this website. It seems they would have been an interesting group to check in with in this campaign. What happened? They stand at the intersection of sexism and racism and yet...nothing."
THANK YOU! I've been posting for months about how there has been no analysis or discussion on how women of color, black women, Latinas, Asian women, bi/multi-racial women, are voting. There are so many brilliant writers who are also women of color writing about this election on other websites and blogs, how hard would it be to ask even one of them to contribute a piece to Salon?!
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the black woman/white woman divide
[Read the article: The other 18 million]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One more thing . . .
A few months ago, Joan wrote about the "black/brown divide." I disagreed with many of her conclusions, but agreed with her that it was important for blacks and latinos to have the tough conversations. But at this point, in light of all of the emotion and grievances stirred up by this election, isn't it at least equally relevant to call for tough conversations between white women and black women?
I am in my early 30's, I have considered myself a feminist, and even more fundamentally, a womanist since I read Alice Walker when I was 15, I understand how pervasive and crippling sexism can be, yet in this election I have felt completely and totally alienated and abandoned by the feminist movement and the middle aged white feminists that Joan represents in this article. I am not the only one. As a black woman, I have felt like I was shouting into the wind trying to get white feminists to understand why I would support Obama. At this point I no longer feel like I am part of the same movement and more importantly, I feel like even if I were to put my misgivings aside, I would no longer be welcomed at the 'feminists' table.
Feminism as a cause will not survive if its leaders continue to deny that for most of the women in America, sexism is inseparable from racism, issues of class and issues of access to education. When I work late and I have to walk home, I am afraid because I am the only black person on a block and in a white neighborhood in Baltimore where there has been racial tension since the 60's, and I am afraid because I am a single woman in a country where some judges might still decide that a woman was raped because she was asking for it. Both weigh equally on me as I walk home and I can't put one away to focus on fixing the other. It just doesn't work that way for me and for many, many others.
I want to feel like I and Joan and other feminists are working towards the same goals, that we are on the same side and that we are able to recognize the complexities of others' situations, but this election has truly shaken my faith that I as a womanist and Joan as a feminist are even fighting for the same side anymore.
Rather than asking Obama to invite Ferraro to meet him over lunch, wouldn't it do more to ask Ferraro to schedule a meeting with Donna Brazile or with any of the other millions of educated black women who voted for Obama and who used to consider Ferraro a role model to talk about what has happened over the last 6 months and how we can get back to making women's lives better?