After participating in the Women’s March on Washington after Trump’s inauguration and seeing other’s reactions online, a few things have been made painstakingly clear to me. Was the march successful? Yes, it attracted ridiculous, record-setting crowds. Did it give me, and other women around the country, some feelings of hope after a historically bad day? Yes, it was overwhelmingly positive.
But it was also overwhelmingly white.
This realization should make white feminists interrogate their own feminism: am I contributing to the whitewashing of feminism? Am I doing anything to fight against it?
Historically, it is undeniable that the face of feminism has been white. Scholars organize the surges of feminist uprising in waves: the first in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which focused on women's suffrage. Women of color were completely excluded from the platform and goals of the movement, and Susan B Anthony hated the idea of any Black man or woman being granted their right to vote. Second wave feminism, too, focused only on the plight of white, middle class women who were rejecting the stay at home narrative that kept them from working outside of the home. This completely ignored the experience of women of color in America, women who were already working to support their families, and were (as they, embarrassingly, still are) the lowest paid members of the work force. It wasn’t until the third wave feminism of the 1990’s when intersectionality was recognized as vital in the study of feminism, and scholars like Patricia Hill Collins stressed the importance of acknowledging the culmination of race, sexuality, and socioeconomic status when studying feminist discourse.
Hopefully, the ongoing feminist movement (which, admittedly, is something that shouldn't necessarily be reduced in three waves that can be neatly put into little boxes) can ride on the coattails of third wave feminism, acknowledging the different experiences of women and not universalizing their struggles. This would only result in universalizing white women's struggles. Again. The women’s marches around the country shed light on some really important issues, like reproductive rights and creating a culture more centered on consent. But however important these issues are, white feminists still have a lot more, and different, work to do.
The first is to stop saying that women of color are being “divisive” for calling out your exclusivity. When WOC do this, many of them are met with these kinds of accusations, and are told that women should be uniting as women. I say to that, your privilege is showing. As we saw in the 2016 election, more than half of white women chose their whiteness over their womanhood. That’s divisive. White women have been complicit in the exploitation of women of color since the country was founded, dating back to the pillaging of Native American land, to slavery, to Jim Crow, and now, in the era of mass incarceration.
I also say that you, white feminist, are a hypocrite. When women of color took to the streets to demand police departments around the country to STOP KILLING BLACK PEOPLE, where were you? I didn’t see anyone rallying behind your collective womanhood then. Which brings me the second request: show up. Is it true that women should be united around their womanhood, crossing racial lines, sexuality, and class? Absolutely. But asking women of color to do it first, to get behind your white feminism, which ignores their intersectional experience, is BS.
White women, we need to step up in solidarity with our sisters, and we need to do it now, because feminism without intersectionality isn't really feminism at all.
