66% of white women voted for Trump.
Their whiteness is more important than their womanhood to them.
White women want the power of white men.
White women cannot be trusted.
Not all white women. Not this white woman. To put us all into this category won’t help. I will continue to fight for all my friends.
actually, i think otherwise! to put us all into this category highlights our position of power over people whose voices were not heard at the polls yesterday.
it’s like…
rapists can’t be trusted, right? rapists are the absolute scum of the earth. and what’s worse is not knowing who is a rapist. someone in your circle of friends? someone you pass on the street? the person ahead of you in line at starbucks? so you close yourself off from someone who has that power over you. maybe just a little bit, but you’re aware of how you could be hurt. you make plans in your head about how you’d escape if you were attacked; you’re aware of the person behind you at the atm; you go quiet when they start talking about how they treated their dates.
and if a guy said “not all men are rapists!” you’d say, “yeah, but all men can be rapists.”
white women, honestly, cannot be trusted. we have endorsed and enabled slavery. we have joined the kkk and we have thrown rotten fruit at children who are walking to school. we have spit on black women who tried to fight for suffragette rights alongside us. we have formed and worked in organizations that sterilize black women without their knowledge. we turn into teachers who demonize little black boys for being too “loud” and “masculine” when they’re only being kids. we do little shitty things like try to touch black women like they’re exotic animals, and say that hispanic neighborhoods look “shady,” and tell women of color that there aren’t enough white heroines yet and that black women need to wait their turn to be important.
it makes sense that people of color would put up their barriers and make escape plans from us. with that history, when have we really been allies? when have we been anything but fair-weather friends who love beyonce but think “ghetto” black girls are trashy? how can they know which one of us is one of the nearly 70% of white women in america who voted for trump? which one of us in starbucks or passing by on the street would betray them - has already betrayed them?
there’s a lot that we white women have to do into order to prove ourselves to black women and black communities. it’s really hard to stand up against the status quo, especially when we’re very aware of what we could lost if we speak up. (there goes your job, your friends, your opportunities….) but if black women are living without those opportunities every day, then we have a responsibility to work until they have them and no one can take them away. it’s not up to people of color to give us leeway; it’s up to us to work with our fellow white women to help them understand change.
I cringed when I saw “not all white women”. Fucking seriously? Honey, that shit didn’t work when men tried it on us, don’t try it to our sisters of color.
I accept that women of color will be afraid/wary of me at first sight. I don’t blame them for that. Instead of being angry that they would class me with other white women, I’m just going to be that much more aware of times and places where I can use the privilege of my skin color to try and make them safer. Even if the next one that sees me is still afraid.
Why? Because, in that situation, MY FEELINGS AREN‘T IMPORTANT. It’s not about ME. It’s not about YOU, fellow white woman who was so insulted to be grouped with those white women. No, I didn’t vote for Trump. But even if I walked around wearing a shirt that claimed otherwise all the time, women of color cannot look at me and know for sure that I’m not one of those white women.
If women of color are fearful of me as a white person (who passes as female), then I understand that. The fear born of something real that they experienced or have witnessed other’s experiencing. Who am I to invalidate their feelings?
Sure, I’ll let them know I’ll try my hardest to be an ally. But at the same time I’m not going to try to convince them of this because I want to make myself feel better or convince myself I’m not part of the problem. As a white person, I benefit from that privilege and I’m prone to doing racist shit. I accept that, and I try my hardest to fix it. But I can’t escape it entirely and it’s asinine that white people think they can escape it.
We can and must do better. We must. Our sisters of color are in even more danger than us, and we have to stand WITH them, not next to them decrying the idea that WE’RE the good ones. I refuse to allow “not all men” to be a conversation in my hearing, and I refuse also, “not all white women.” No. Stop it. White women have harmed women of color. That is the point. We white women who don’t want to be lumped in with those white women need to amplify the voices of our sisters, not justify that we’re the good ones.
Woah, I’ve nearly to never seen a post like this
👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Keep it coming ladies.
We cannot expect to be taken seriously if we scoff at men who say “not all men” and then turn our white asses around and say “BUT NOT ALL WHITE WOMEN.”*
*I’m nonbinary & Jewish but I’m aware I’m perceived as a white woman and have the conditional acceptance as both so better fucking own it.
I don’t care who you voted for, white woman like me, we are “in that category” whether we like it or not. Facts are facts. Good intentions are paving stones.
I guarantee the woman with the Trump bumpersticker on her gas guzzling SUV sees my white (not young) face in the Kroger and assumes I voted like she did. She smiles at me, but gives sass to the young Muslim girl in a hijab who works at the store. And until we own that, we can’t respond to the fact that 2/3 of us voted for Trump with a “not me.” It’s a badge we haven’t earned and we can’t wear it.
White feminism is a real, dangerous, tangible thing and we need to fight that first because that is how we help our WOC/POC friends.
We cannot expect to be taken seriously if we scoff at men who say “not all men” and then turn our white asses around and say “BUT NOT ALL WHITE WOMEN.”
