Don’t Just Pick One: Fighting For All Causes
Hi friends,
Sorry to have missed you all last week. It was finals! I’m done with this semester!
Here’s a link to one of my term projects. Let me know what you think!
Thank you for understanding my absence! A lot is happening in the USA so let’s elegantly roast the past week and our favorite white feminists.
To note: If you’re new here, welcome, I’m miserable and insufferable, which creates the best writing. Thank you and enjoy.
First, I have to mention how bad we’ve been as we forget the truth about Roe v. Wade, it is a battle we will always fight as racism and white supremacy exist battles will continue. It has been challenged non-stop for the past 46 years. A challenge Black and Indigenous communities have been fighting for longer than 46 years. Let’s start by saying abortions fall into healthcare, and which groups in our society receive the worst healthcare? We’re all friends here don’t be shy… yes, You guessed it! Black and brown folks!
Pretend I’m a white feminist, I know, just stay with me on this.
I’m putting on my designer outfit, I can’t forget my hat that miraculously fits tiny words ‘hands off my uterus’ Oh, and the shoes ahh yes, my protest heels.
Then I make an oopsie, I ask Black and POC women to join me in protest.
Here’s the thing before our white feminist friends, ask for help for the one cause they’re fighting for, we must know our history, that everything we fight for is connected, if we’re going to fight for this we have to look at everything else in front of it, all of what we’ve ignored or left behind simply because it doesn’t “affect us”
Florynce Kennedy a Black feminist lawyer and activist (who taught Gloria Steinem all she knows) challenged New York State, in federal court, where it became the first state in the nation to legalize abortion.
It’s not so much that Florence Kennedy isn’t brought up in today’s political climate or that she is ignored, it’s that we’ve made other people who don’t look like Flo the hero.
Asking marginalized people to fight with you, when you sit on the sidelines and watch them fight for everything under the sun, fighting and pushing bills that will benefit their oppressors before themselves is may I say… poorly audacious, gutsy in the worse way.
Asking Black and Indigenous women to come to your side and be an aide to your fight when you are not at their side for other fights… listen there is a privilege to choose which fight to fight for, and there is a privilege in selecting the “right” kind of fight to express outrage.
I worry that our fights will only be awarded by viral moments, re-shares, likes, and follows. That without the knowledge of our history we will have blind spots we will miss our target because we aren’t paying attention to the Flo Kennedy of our generation the ones who left behind their framework for us to study.
Abortion is just one part of how the rights of reproductive lives are under attack and desperate to be controlled. Black women and women of color experience different worlds than white feminists, and with this difference, the way we achieve liberation is different.
Today a white feminist’s framework is either fueled by optics via social media which won’t be successful or a copy of a civil rights framework that is exclusive. Which also will not be successful.
I don’t think we’ll be able to dissect the moves the white feminist model makes we don't have that much time, but this isn’t even a get to the back and shut up and listen to Black women kind of essay, no that’s boring, it’s about the defeat we’re okay with receiving due to who we look up to and give power to when handling our issues within our nation, replacing male white supremacy with white supremacy that wears designer dresses or white supremacy that checks off our diversity box. It is never the everyday person, the people in Mississippi who only have one abortion clinic left.
Black bodies have been exploited experimented on and a list of other horrific things for centuries, looking past these histories that continue today leaves us with no room to fight properly for today’s issues.
Black activists like Flo Kennedy had to fight against those within their communities and party, just to demand liberation for the human body.
Black feminists and womanists like
Flo Kennedy, Toni Cade Bambara, Alice Walker, Barbara Smith Shirley Chisom Maxine Waters, and Dorothy Height… have fought for equality in reproductive issues, that disproportionately affect Black and brown communities. Black people have never been allowed choice in regards to their bodies. Find your local Black and brown groups and donate to them to support their ongoing fight against all injustices. As this is not a woman’s issue, this is a Black and brown indigenous, poverty-centered issue this is a location issue.
Sexism and racism are connected, others know what it is like to not have a choice, we can’t fight for one issue while ignoring the others, the cycle will never end with this kind of approach to freedom.
Anyway, I’m sorry I poked fun at our feminist friends earlier, let’s keep our protest heels, I’m sure they will come in handy for the next fight we’ll hijack. Okay, I’m done, sorry that one just slipped out.
Here is the link to We Remember - African American Women Are For Reproductive Freedom, take a blast in the past and read about choice for African American Women.
-Christy