by Catherine Saunders

Angela White, the public figure known to many as Blac Chyna, has maintained a consistent place in contemporary media because of her relationship with Robert “Rob” Kardashian Jr..

Kardashian, unlike his famous family, has spent much of the last few years out of the limelight. Kardashian has become somewhat of a recluse after gaining a significant amount of weight and appearing far less confident than supporters of the franchise recall from his early days in the spotlight.

Rob’s return to the spotlight could not have been more dramatic. Last year, he emerged from his sisters’ shadow with the former lover of his little sister’s then boyfriend, Black Chyna,  on his arm.

Their drama appeared made for television, and it was. The drama fueled more wealth and attention to the Kardashian brand via a Keeping up with the Kardashians spinoff, Rob & Chyna.

Now the very public breakup of the couple few were rooting for in the first place has the contemporary media in a frenzy. The responses, are predictably damning for Chyna, labeling her a money-hungry whore who alienated Kardashian after getting what she wanted—his child and the glory of birthing the sole Kardashian grandchild to bear the family name.

My question for all those critical of Chyna is the following:

What makes Chyna different from the Kardashian women?
The comparison between Chyna and former friend Kim is obvious. Kim, a woman who became a public figure when her private moments surfaced online over a decade ago, is the white version of Chyna. Both women have ample derrieres, full bosoms, long hair, and long eyelashes—aiming to capture a universal beauty with multicultural attributes. Yet, despite their appropriation of black beauty to season conventional western attributes, both Chyna and Kim desire to attain white female supremacy.

While the similarity between Chyna and the most popular Kardashian sister may be conspicuous, less overt is the comparison between Chyna and the Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner. Now, the author notes that Jenner and the elder Robert Kardashian were married for a decade before her indiscretion.

The author also notes that to many Jenner loved her first husband, contrary to how most conceptualize Chyna’s sentiments towards the younger Kardashian. This post however, solely gages the similarity of women who endure romantic relationships with conventionally successful men. The attribute of conventional success makes it difficult to measure the motives of any party involved, but the connotation that accompanies  black bodies leads many to label Chyna what they would hesitate to label a white woman.

Marriage does mean something, but white women have always been granted a legitimacy withheld from the black female body. This illegitimacy also functions as it did during slavery, to the detriment of the black woman not the white man who planted her seed in her womb without the conjugal sanctity of marriage.  Furthermore, Chyna exhibits similar behavior to the Kardashian matriarch in a dissolved loyalty for a man who funded her lavish lifestyle. These actions, while similar, stem from vastly different motives.

The motive for the Kardashians sexuality is dominance. Black female sexuality, on the other hand, is a matter of life and death. Chyna’s actions function as a means to overcome racists an sexist conflicts. Her attempts however are thwarted by white ex-lover Robert Kardashian who desecrates the temple she so desperately worked to deify, by airing her dirty laundry and genitalia for the world to cast their eyes and criticism.

The black female body, of course, is innately sexualized by the white male gaze. Whether an academic, astronaut, cook, dentist, doctor, or lawyer the black female is a presumably hyper sexual agent. As bell hooks says in Ain’t I a Woman, “Baby, you could be Jesus in drag—but if you’re brown they’re sure you’re selling” (hooks 58)!

So despite the distance many black women maintain from Blac Chyna and her behavior, to the western gaze, Blac Chyna is the black woman in her fullest and most raw form.

The most prevalent difference between Chyna and the Kardashians is of course race.
Yet coverage corresponding to the Rob and Chyna drama deflects from race, and uses the black female plight to consummate womanhood to push the feminist agenda—an agenda that will solely benefit white women. To clarify, feminism despite what modifying adjective precedes the term is for those solely marginalized by gender. To the being who stands at the intersectionality of race and gender, feminism hands you gloves in the freezing cold leaving your head, feet and torso frigid in the harsh cold air of global racism.

It is the feminist agenda that paints the KKK (The Kardashian Clan) as women simply trying to survive in a male dominated world, and Chyna as a white-washed jezebel incongruent to domesticity.

It is the feminist agenda that duplicates women like Blac Chyna, black females who seek to reap benefits for bearing female genitals. But as demonstrated in Rob’s actions, the black female body is inevitably destined for desecration in exposure and systemic mutilation.

Turning a racist matter into a solely sexist issue is yet another attempt of the western world to push other minority issues but ignore racism. Dissolving homophobia, sexism, ageism, and capitalism causes subjugated whites to elevate but still allows for racism to foment. As bell hooks boldly asserted in Ain’t I a Woman “ Systematic devaluation of black womanhood was not simply a direct consequence of race hatred, it was a calculated method of social control” (hooks 59).
Feminists maintain racist control as white female supremacists-- soliciting black female advocacy and support simultaneously steering attention away from black issues that consume those bearing the burden of both blackness and femininity.

It is the western desire to maintain global supremacy through racism that allow issues like feminism and gay rights to dominate contemporary conversations regarding change without engaging the intersectionalities that exists in these factions. Blac Chyna may seem insignificant in the larger portrait of issues plaguing the black collective, but she illustrates the systemic deflection that awaits the modern black body still bruised by traditional ideologies of whiteness.

To be clear, I in no way feel sorry for Blac Chyna. In fact, I do not see anything “black” about her besides her [altered] phenotype. However, whether willing or unwilling, she is a part of the black female collective and a viable tool in thwarting our progress.

Moreover, may her sexual relationship and fall out with a white man who fathered her child admonish those seduced by the temptation to dilute black pain with interracial sex. May Kardashian’s white male rage prompted by seeing seeing Chyna sexually engaged with black men remind the black collective of the brutal and often fatal consequences our ancestors faced for identical actions.

The KKK and their black accessories color the contemporary world with the red blood of the African holocaust, illustrating the danger of miscegenation and “keeping up” with klansmen (and women) who wear black culture as tokens of conquest.

Catherine is a doctoral student an the pen behind the perspective at whispersofawomanist.com.

by Ashley Daniels


I have this thing. Whenever someone is talking to me about a subject that requires a bit of thought, I'll think of a song that applies to the question, as I'm thinking of an answer. For example, when asked, "Are you a feminist?" I think of Mya, while searching my brain for an answer: I'm so confused / I don't know what to do.

I have an answer, but it’s not as direct or simple as the question.

Growing up watching BET, MTV, and VH1 (before they became the holy ratchet television trinity), I only understood feminism to be three things: white, angry, and mostly lesbian. I watched scores of white women on a field wearing sundresses and combat boots holding hands with other white women wearing buzz cuts and flannel shirts, swaying to the spellbinding sounds of the Indigo Girls and Melissa Etheridge at Lilith Fair. I listened as Meredith Brooks told the world how she was a bitch, a lover, a child, and a mother. The news showed hundreds of White college coed girls with megaphones, candles, and makeshift signs in an effort to "take back the night."

All these sounds and images bonded together in my pre-adolescent understanding of one word: feminism.
From hearing that word tossed around in interviews and news reports, I developed an associative understanding of feminism. But because I rarely saw faces that looked like mine in these spaces, I didn't think that feminism was a "thing" for a little Black girl like me. Every once in a while I would catch a glimpse of artists like Tracy Chapman or Meshell Ndegeocello on MTV or VH1, but I was more in awe of their Blackness on a predominately white music network than their feminism. It would not be until my sophomore year of college where my mind would change (sort of).

Every year, my aunt gives me a book as part of my Christmas gifts. In tenth grade, I received Kevin Powell's Step Into A World: A Global Anthology of New Black Literature. I skimmed through the book but hadn't really read it until I was in my dorm room one boring snowy Saturday years later. Flipping through the writings of Robin D.G. Kelly, Ras Baraka, and dream hampton, I happened upon an essay by a writer named Joan Morgan, who introduced me to the concept of hip-hop feminism.

When reflecting on the treatment of women during the Million Man March with Farrakhan banishing us from the National Mall to our kitchens to "cook for our warriors" as noted by Kristal Brent-Zooks, Morgan cited the need for a new kind of feminism that is relevant to Black women of the present 20th Century (the essay was written in 1999). She understood that not too many Black women were checking for "the f-word" due to deep-rooted racism from White women. But honestly, that wasn't the part that resonated with me. What drew me was the idea of being a "hip hop feminist."

Despite knowing all the words to "Bittersweet Symphony" and "You Oughta Know" thanks to binge-watching MTV and VH1, I'm still an avid rap and hip-hop fan. Trips to class were included background tracks from A Tribe Called Quest, The Roots, or Missy Elliot in my ears. I can knowledgeably discuss the Roxanne Wars, the Bridge Wars, and how the Biggie/Tupac beef fucked all that up. I could tell you about the Zulu Nation and the significance of Afrika Bambaataa. So of course the notion of hip-hop feminism intrigued me.

But as a young Black woman, I was conflicted. This was around the time when sisters at Spelman were protesting Nelly's appearance on their campus after the infamous “Tip Drill” video. I applauded those sisters for standing up against the misogynoir that flooded our radio stations on a daily basis. But as a lover of rap and hip-hop, I questioned if I even allowed to do such a thing?

True, I wasn't constantly checking for songs that said Black women were nothing more than ass and titties wrapped in a quick weave. But I won't lie and pretend that my bitty booty doesn't automatically get ready to twerk a lil' sumthin' when I hear that Cash Money is taking over for the 99 and the 2000. Joan Morgan let me know that I was not alone. That there was a space (or there needed to be) where this intersected. We needed a kind of feminism that "was brave enough to fuck with the grays," as Joan Morgan writes in her classic text, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down. As Morgan writes, we needed a feminism that understands how "truth can't be found in the voice of any one rapper, but in the juxtaposition of many… they lie at the magical intersection where those contrary voices meet—the juncture where 'truth' is no longer black and white, but subtle, intriguing shades of gray."

As part of my quest to find such a feminism, I ordered more books about Black feminism including those by Patricia Hill Collins and bell hooks. I perused through essays by Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Barbara Smith. I read feminist studies on the writings of Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston.

Feminism and I formed a “situationship.” Where in a relationship you relate to the other party involved, I could appreciate learning about Black feminism… but I still couldn't seem to shake the idea of how “white” it was. While Morgan, Guy-Sheftall, Smith, hooks, and Collins helped me see myself in the mirror of feminism, its reflection was still fuzzy. I found myself still in search of an ideology that I could relate to. Not knowing of anything else at the time, I reluctantly linked up with feminism.

As I read more about the history of feminism, I understood my apathy. Doing research prior to joining my sorority, I learned that the founders of Delta Sigma Theta were regulated to march in the back of the processional, because of their race during the 1913 Women's Suffrage March. When doing a paper on the history of Black women voting, I learned that the rift in the alliance between Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony was caused with the decision to either support voting rights for Black men or White women. While I wasn’t really trying to claim feminism, historically it wasn’t claiming me either. The situationship lasted for the remainder of my undergraduate tenure up until my second year of doctoral school.

That's when I met Womanism.

Props must go to my Black Political Theory professor. In a discussion with him about what I wanted to study regarding Black women, he suggested that I check out Dr. Clenora Hudson Weems's 1993 classic Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves. This book too was like looking in a mirror, but with a clearer reflection. Here was an ideal whose founding roots shared my own: being a woman of African descent in America. It was something I could relate to, therefore form a relationship with. I had dreamed of a "feminism" that didn't reluctantly acknowledge the racist roots of feminism, but that called it out on its bullshit. Dr. Weems did just that in her definition:

Africana Womanism is a term I coined and defined in 1987 after nearly two years of publicly debating the importance of self-naming for Africana woman. Why the term "Africana Womanism?" Upon concluding that the term "Black Womanism" was not quite the terminology to include the total meaning desired for this concept, I decided that "Africana Womanism," a natural evolution in naming, was the ideal terminology for two basic reasons. The first part of the coinage, Africana, identifies the ethnicity of the woman being considered, and this reference to her ethnicity, establishing her cultural identity, relates directly to her ancestry and land base: Africa. The second part of the term, Womanism, recalls Sojourner Truth's powerful impromptu speech "Ain't I A Woman," one in which she battles with the dominant alienating forces in her life as a struggling Africana woman, questioning the accepted idea of womanhood. Without question, she is the flip side of the coin, the co-partner in the struggle for her people, one who, unlike the White woman, has received no special privileges in American society.

As good as feminism could be, it still fails to address how intersectionalities—like race and gender—further complicated the realities of women of color. (An example of this is the recent discussions around closing the wage gap that white women like Patricia Arquette champion, without acknowledging that Black women make even less.)

Womanism does a better job at this, but it’s not perfect either. We have our beef, too. First there is a sense of exclusiveness, even among Black people. In reading about other Womanist works, there is a strong emphasis on spirituality and religion. By centering the concept around a particular religious belief, we are pretty much guilty of the same crime we accuse White feminists of committing: leaving folks out. I'm reminded of the approach Malcolm X proposed in his speech, “The Ballot or the Bullet.” Regardless of our backgrounds, we must all come together to realize that we are catching the same two kinds of hell in America constantly: being Black and being woman. We cannot afford to ostracize anybody from our cause—no matter how religious affiliation, sexual identity, class, or education background. Every type of Black woman is necessary and should be represented in our fight for liberation. It makes no sense that we vote at the highest rate of all voters, yet our social progress is still among the lowest.

There is strength in solidarity and inclusiveness.

Second, I take issue with Womanism being a belief more so than an ideology. A belief is based on faith or perspective. It is what a person thinks or perceives. As noted by Karl Mannehiem in Idelology and Utopia, “an ideology is a vehicle used to mobilize a belief.”

Womanism still lags behind feminism in its ability to mobilize around womanist beliefs. From modern feminism’s early origins within the Suffrage Movement, women mobilized around the issues they believed in by forming organizations such as National American Women's Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and the National Organization for Women (NOW). As history has tells us, these mobilization efforts have done a pretty decent job thus far.
Africana Womanism, to me, has not yet reached that level of influence yet. We still need a vehicle to move our agenda forward, and we still need to create a centralized agenda on our own terms. We need to be our own champions, and not rely on the examples set for us by white women or Black men. We need to move from the trajectory of margin to center, as bell hooks, famed Black feminist, would tell us.

So am I a Black feminist? Yes and no. Am I a Womanist? Yes and no.

I guess I'm like Joan Morgan, in a sense. I have a need. I need a Womanism that encompasses the spirit and passion of Black feminism. I need a Black feminism that truly advocates for us, understanding that Black women are quick to get lost in the shuffle of other issues.

I need "the intriguing shades of gray" of both, I suppose.
Ashley Daniels (also known as Ashfronomenal) is a third year Ph.D. student in Political Science program at Howard University in Washington, D.C. She is currently featured in the book, "The Miseducation of..." from the Ignorant Intellectuals. To purchase, please email ignorantintellectuals@gmail.com.

by Kimberly Foster @KimberlyNFoster




Kimberly Foster is the founder and editor-in-chief of For Harriet. Email or Follow @KimberlyNFoster

By Jaimee A. Swift

Uh-oh. One of your white faves done effed up as white feminism strikes again.

By Shannon M. Houston for Salon

I’ve never liked the word “revolution.” It brings to mind the act of going around in a circle. Or, as a friend of mine used to say, it’s exactly the thing to do if one wants to end up right back where you started. For that reason, I hope what’s happening in America right now is not, exactly, revolutionary.

 The weight that a single word can carry is thrilling, and sometimes terrifying. Literature lovers—even non-believers—can’t help but get a tingle of delight at the start of the Book of John: “In the beginning was the Word…” Forget Adam and Eve, the Heavens and the Earth—for some of us, language is the genesis and the revelation, and the words we use are, for that reason, never arbitrary. This is especially true for the words we use to describe a movement, or words used to self-identify. “Feminist” is one of those words that carries a lot of weight, but it’s almost laughable how so many people—especially women—are repelled by it. In a recent interview with Vulture, the great Emma Thompson broke it down like this:

By Jaimee Swift

As seen in historical manifestations, the proverbial white feminine hierarchical complex on the ideals of Black women and Black beauty has reared its ugly head once again. And of course, the target of such criticism is none other than one of the most powerful Black women in the world: Beyoncé.

While sifting through the latest updates on my Facebook feed earlier this week, I saw the first mention of a horrible “joke” from a show in which Amy Poehler is the executive producer. Poehler, whose rise to fame included a regular spot on the Saturday Night Live series and Parks and Recreation, has also created a feminist organization called Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls. However, in her latest role as a producer of Hulu’s show Difficult People, she made a painfully careless choice.

By Barbara Gonzalez

The internet recently broke with love and adoration for Disney Channel sweetheart Rowan Blanchard. On August 22nd, Rowan took to Instagram and posted three screenshots of a Tumblr post in which she responded to a question asking how she feels about the term “white feminism” and how common feminism might exclude women of color and non cis/queer women. She responded with a very well thought out answer, addressing the fact that the ways in which women of color and trans women experience feminism are completely excluded from white feminism. She talked about wage inequality, police brutality, Sandra Bland, India Clarke, and Amandla Stenberg. White feminists and mainstream media outlets alike poured sugary-sweet adoration into their coverage of the starlet, using strong adjectives like “powerful” and “engaging.”

by Jenn M. Jackson

“You do realize that I am capable of complex human emotion, right?”

I have said this more times than I should ever have to. I have said it to men of all races and ethnicities. I have said it to White women. I have said it to multi-racial coworkers. Usually, it is in reaction to the idea that, as a Black woman, I need to focus my attention and energy on what is “really” important. And, that other people somehow determine exactly what “important” should mean to me.

by Kesiena Boom

White women’s mediocrity and propensity for wanting credit where none is due are the background noise of basic-ass feminism. This low level buzzing of bullshit is annoying as hell, but I’ve mainly gotten used to it and can usually go about my business without paying it much mind. Sometimes, however, the buzz becomes so high pitched and ridiculous that I feel compelled to comment.

by Inda Lauryn

When Nicki Minaj went on Twitter to express her dissatisfaction with the VH1 Music Awards' snub of her video for "Anaconda" for a Video of the Year nod, she spoke of a criticism many Black artists have had with mainstream recognition of their work. Her criticism more specifically addressed Black women's struggle to be accepted on their artistic merit and their contributions to pop culture. The criticism, aimed directly at MTV, explained that if she were a different kind of artist, "Anaconda" would have been nominated for VOTY as well as best choreography and stated that videos that celebrate women with very thin bodies get VOTY nominations.

by Chanequa Walker-Barnes


Last week, I watched a stark racial divide develop among my social media friends, many of whom are progressive clergy members, academics, and social justice activists. The divide in itself was not unusual. I have noticed it each time that some major social justice concern has occurred, whether it is the impending execution of a White woman, the video recording of police killing an unarmed Black person, or the unjust conviction and sentencing of a Black woman defending herself from an abusive partner. Just like most of U.S. society, social justice concerns tend to be divided along racial, ethnic, and class lines. So the mostly White activists organizing on behalf of Kelly Gissandaner were largely silent about Marissa Alexander. And the mostly Black female crowd organizing on behalf of Marissa is largely silent about Kelly.



But the latest issue that divided my Facebook and Twitter pals was not a social justice issue. It was Mother's Day. (Yes, the holiday.) For some reason this year, the holiday engendered some vigorous antipathy. There was a proliferation of anti-Mother's Day articles, with Anne Lamott's 2010 Salon article, "Why I Hate Mother's Day," seemingly starting a new genre of writing. Several writers joined their voices with hers to lament the holiday that celebrates mothers to the exclusion of non-mothers. One writer agreed with Lamott's disdain for the holiday, but had many different reasons for doing so—including the way it dictates how we’re supposed to showcase our emotions. Another argued that Mother's Day "is not a liturgical holiday."

Every article had some variation of the same argument: Mother's Day is bad because it makes too big a deal of mothers.

It was bizarre that so many people spent time complaining about a day they think receives too much attention. It was even more bizarre that it was mostly my White feminist friends who kept posting these articles on social media, with comments such as, "This writer says everything I ever thought about Mother's Day." In contrast, my Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American friends and acquaintances were largely silent on the issue.

Actually, they were not silent. They were posting photos of and tributes to the women who have mothered them, to those whose mothering they admire, and even to the children who have made them mothers. They posted articles about women of color whose rights to mother were taken away by hospitals and Christian missionaries who stole their babies, by states who forcibly sterilized them, and by a society that undervalues them.



They reminded us to pray for the “exclusive mothers' club” whose membership consists of women whose unarmed Black and Latino children have been killed by police or white civilians. They grieved along with people who are motherless or childless for a number of reasons—death, neglect, abuse, or possibly infertility. They acknowledged that all mothering is not good and that many people have complicated relationships with their mothers. In the best traditions of womanist, mujerista, and Native and Asian American feminist thought, women and men of color both celebrated Mother's Day and lamented the sources of individual and systemic pain that the day can bring.

I suppose it's much easier to denigrate a day that venerates motherhood when it is your culture's ideal of motherhood that's being elevated, when your right and capacity to mother have never been systemically questioned, threatened, or denied. But for some of us, motherhood has not always been a crystal stair.

by Brianna Cox


Patricia Arquette roused many feelings after she spoke about women’s equality at the Academy Awards last Sunday. But her call for wage equality was also an age-old call sounded by many a white feminist throughout history.

In her acceptance speech, Arquette thanked her loved ones and the cast and crew of Boyhood, before saying:

To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights! It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America!

This seems innocuous, perhaps, to the untrained ear, or to someone who likes to throw out the problematic baby in the proverbial bathwater. She continued afterwards, telling the press:

It’s time for women. Equal means equal. The truth is the older women get, the less money they make. The highest percentage of children living in poverty are in female-headed households. It’s inexcusable that we go around the world and we talk about equal rights for women in other countries and we don’t. One of those superior court justices said two years ago in a law speech at a university that we don’t have equal rights for women in America, and we don’t because when they wrote Constitution, they didn’t intend it for women. So the truth is even though we sort of feel like we have equal rights in America, right under the surface there are huge issues at play that really do affect women. It’s time for all the women in America, and all the men that love women and all the gay people and all the people of color that we’ve all fought for — to fight for us now!

Arquette started out strong – she really did. Nothing in the first section and leading up to this is untrue. However, the Constitution was not written for black people (who were slaves at the time) or LGBTQ people (whose sexuality were often criminalized) either. So, yes, there are absolutely inequalities that affect women because of the white heteropatriarchy that founded our society, but those issues also affect people of color and queer people, just as much—if not more.

“It’s time for all the women in America, and all the men that love women and all the gay people and all the people of color that we’ve all fought for — to fight for us now!”

This is a doozy. It is absolutely time that both men and women alike understand the necessity for gender equality, including the need for equal pay. However, this recognition of sexism should not and cannot come at the expense of the issues of queer, gay, and transgender folks, or black women and other women of color (who may also identify as LGBT).

Luckily, there have been many women—particularly Black women—who have been very public about expressing why Arquette's speech missed the mark on being a true feminist call to action: its lack of intersectionality and inclusivity. On Thursday night's episode of The Nightly Show, Larry Wilmore gathered a panel of Black women to discuss the problematic nature of Arquette's sentiments: writer and content producer Issa Rae, professor and author Christine Greer, comedian Marina Franklin, and New York Live co-host Jacque Reid.



As Patricia Arquette's speech centered on closing the pay gap, the four panelists discussed their experiences as Black women in work place (who traditionally make even less than white women, something Arquette doesn't seem to acknowledge).

This is why an understanding of history, coded language, and intersectionality of identities are all imperative when having honest discussions about gender equality.

History

Greer brings up how the inequality of black women in the workplace has historical roots by bringing up FDR's New Deal: "[FDR] had to make some concessions with white Southerners, and so he excluded black domestics. If you exclude black domestics… then we know over time, there's a lack of wealth that's been able to be built. Decade after decade, black people—black women in particular—were paid less."

White feminists also have a hard time accepting how their own heroes for women's equality in the U.S. left out and promoted the oppression of women of color. Suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton fought for the voting rights of white cisgender straight women… and not for very much else. As Angela Davis notes in her book Women, Race, and Class, Anthony and Stanton fought for the rights of white cisgender straight women like themselves, at the expense of black men getting the vote (whom in their speeches they denigrate by calling them "niggers" and "sambos," and question their intelligence), and at the complete omission of black women.

Additionally, from Angela Davis to the Wages for Housework Movement in the 1970s to the present-day, both black women/women of color and queer women have always sought equality for all women in their movements (be that wage equality, reproductive rights, or whatever else). Arquette’s assumption and implication that women of color and queer women have only been focusing on issues that affect one particular aspect of their identity is 100% false, and quite misguided.

Coded Language

Christine Greer brings up the way code words and language are used to discriminate against women of color in the work place, in a way where white people don't have to take responsibility for the problematic nature of what they're saying. Coded language means implying something with your words while not actually saying it.

"We know with Patricia Arquette, when she says 'women,' she actually means white women," Greer explained about the troubling nature of the actress's speech.

Arquette may not have realized how her words came across, but her sentiments basically boiled down to: Because straight white women have helped fight for the rights of gay people and black people (even though, historically, they have not always done so), those other oppressed groups should put down their ongoing battles in order to help white women (who, again, have not always helped them). In addition, this is asking black women to choose their gender over their race, or asking gay people to choose their gender over their sexual orientation, which is nearly impossible to do.

When speaking on the unique issues that African-American women might face in the workplace, Reid expressed, "I had a manager tell me one time that she was afraid of me. And anybody who knows me, knows I'm not [coming] in with a gun or gang signs or anything like that. I'm just, you know, a typical black girl. And she told me she was afraid of me because I'm a strong woman, I'm opinionated, and I say what I feel needs to be said."

This point is particularly important, as Patricia Arquette failed to recognize the way that white women can sometimes make it uncomfortable or unwelcoming for women of color in the workplace, which also affects our ability to advance professionally and close the pay gap.

Intersectionality

Intersectionality, or how differing identities intersect, is important as well. Often, white feminists speak about their own experiences, not understanding how their race or class affords them privilege not experienced by other women.

Jacque Reid brings up the focus on "leaning in," Sheryl Sandberg's philosophy of how women can push back against the glass ceiling. "Black women, we've been leaning in forever. The problem is no one is letting us advance… we get pushed back."

Black women and other women of color, due to their racial identities, have less societal privilege than white women. Queer and gay people have differing privilege as well. While some of them may be white, and are therefore afforded racial privilege, the heteronormitivity of our culture—or the fact that being heterosexual is seen as the status quo—makes them oppressed in that regard. Essentially, women of color, queer women, and queer women of color face multiple discriminations. Thus, when people speak about the need to understand of intersectionality when talking about "fighting for equal rights", these layered discriminations are often ignored, as Patricia Arquette did in her speech. What this does is imply that the struggles of people of color and queer people do not exist, and that (straight) white women are the gate keepers and experts of what all other women need.
These reasons are the issues many queer women and women of color took with Patricia Arquette’s speech: not because we thought she was mean-spirited, not because we like to be argumentative. But because letting non-inclusive white feminism slide leads to more perpetuation of oppressive systems—and if one is in the fight for equality, they should fight for the equality for everyone.

by Inda Lauryn


When Kesenia Boom wrote “Sh*t White Feminists Say to Black Feminists (And How to Counter Them),” she recognized the ways in which white feminists dismiss the valid concerns and issues unique to Black women. When Jessica Williams announced she would not seek the hosting position on The Daily Show, much to the disappointment of her fans, white feminism took it upon itself to diagnose Williams as having impostor syndrome. In a post for The Billfold, Ester Bloom writes:

by Casey Bruce

The fact remains, LGBTQ and women of color are not included in feminism.

I watched the 87th Academy Awards with the understanding of who would be celebrated that night—white men.

by Briana Perry

A few weeks ago, I came across an article on my newsfeed titled “Women, We Need to Stop Arguing About Privilege.” The author, Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani, felt compelled to write the piece because of the emerging “Check Your Privilege” campaign that is sweeping social media, especially Twitter. According to the author, feminists who use the phrase are “well-intentioned and are making an attempt to maintain the sanctity of the feminist movement”; however, conversations about privilege “threaten to cut off the legs of the feminist movement before it can even crawl.” The author’s solution to the supposed privilege policing is to curb the conversations, since everyone has some form of privilege, and get to working on securing the rights “that we all want afforded to each other.” She ends by calling for a new hashtag on social media; instead of #CheckMyPrivilege we should utilize #CheckMyWork.