Letters to the Editor
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Dear AKA
You want to know why I engage with you? It’s because you seem like your heart is in the right place. You remind me of the many older (than me, anyway) white women I’ve worked with over the years who are wise about many things but have, like another poster wrote of you, a tin ear when it comes to recognizing racism. I engage you because I think a voice like yours is important and in order to grow as a people we need to have conversations with one another to try to understand each other’s perspective. I want you to recognize that I come with no malicious intent and I think we probably have more in common than you think.
I’ll admit, your tin ear is the source of a lot of my frustration with you. You condescend to me and others by speaking (or, in this case, writing) absolutes and offering yourself up as an authority on subjects you sometimes know nothing about. For example, in response to a post I wrote about black feminism you dismiss me and an entire philosophy of feminism by equating it with something it is not.
You provoke people and then guilelessly pretend later that you had no such intent. In a post you wrote to Celia yesterday (”With the third wave, we got sex positive feminism. Now, it is okay to dress our ten year olds like sluts and girls can aspire to be strippers”) you basically accuse all women who self-identify as Third Wave feminists as those who would sexualize children. You mock people by lobbing these bombs out there, and then you act surprised when someone responds to one blowing up in their face. Then you imply people are too stupid to understand your logic. Like yesterday when you wrote to me, “As usual, when you cannot actually counter another's argument point-by-point, you resort to trying to imply that the other person is racist.” You want to know the real reason I don’t do that point-by-point thing? I have a life—when I don’t have the time to engage I simply don’t. You like to accuse Obama supporters of being condescending when, mama, you’re the queen.
I’m truly sorry you feel as if I imply you are racist. I want you to know, if I thought you were a racist I wouldn’t imply it—I’d tell you straight up. I think we live in a racist society and I don’t think anyone, whatever their color, can avoid immersion. To me, it’s about recognizing it when you see it, when you experience it, and responding in kind.
This is why I talk about privilege. You profoundly misunderstand me when I challenge people to think about privilege. I realize this when I read things like this that you’ve written: “Moreover, they enjoy painting all Clinton supporters as racist or as enjoying white privilege.” There are many forms of privilege, whiteness is just one. Class is another. You’ve challenge me about Obama’s male privilege and I would have to say I think he has benefited more from education and class privilege than male privilege, since black men’s maleness (in a dominant way) is affected by their blackness.
I have offered up reading selections to you before and I actually looked around the Internet to find a copy of a particular essay you might enjoy reading that I read in my first feminism class in college oh so long ago. It’s by a white woman (and a professor at Wellesly, Hillary’s old stomping grounds), Peggy McIntosh and it’s called “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” You can find it here: http://www.case.edu/president/aaction/UnpackingTheKnapsack.pdf. She also writes about male privilege. Let me know when you’ve read it; we can discuss!