Feminism's ugly internal clash: Why its future is not up to white women [View all]

I thought this was really interesting. I do think old-school feminism was 100% about white women, and many of them fought "The Man" while their children were watched and their houses were cleaned by women of color working for less than a living wage and with no sick or vacation time. And that kind of historical reality doesn't just disappear. And I think about how I would feel if a group made up primarily of men talked about class issues and fighting them in a way that helped mainly men but didn't really help women. There are probably examples of that but I can't think of any at this time in the morning.


http://www.salon.com/2014/09/24/feminisms_ugly_internal_clash_why_its_future_is_not_up_to_white_women

As Michelle Goldberg’s piece made clear, Internet feminism is a place where young women of color, black women in particular, hold an inordinate amount of power and influence. This makes many, many white women deeply uncomfortable. Shulevitz, it seems, is one of them. Thus Shulevitz makes clearly problematic claims that seem self-aware, but are ultimately not. She writes:

Would the exclusion of mostly minority home health care workers and others at the low end of the pay scale from paid-sick-leave legislation be grotesque, unjust? Absolutely. Should we take the legislation if we can get it? Absolutely. We build from there.

Those are the kinds of pronouncements that middle-class white women can make definitively without ever thinking twice. But I come from a community where many black women, including some of my female family members, eventually end up as home healthcare aides precisely because job opportunities are limited. They are workers who are most vulnerable to the system and most often in need of sick leave because of the kind of strenuous labor involved in lifting, washing, moving and caring for another person.

When I read what comes off as a kind of self-assured smugness, I think to myself, “The future of feminism can not be left to the hands of white women.” And while I hope that more white feminists have the kinds of expansive knowledge of black women both historically and in the present that Rebecca Traister takes great care to present in her responses, white privilege allows most white women not to have to do this kind of work, not to have to cultivate this kind of empathy for women who are not white.