Pussy Hats, Witty Signs, and White Feminism Oh My!
The issue with the Women’s March and the intersectional lense of race and gender.
Everyone knows what feminism is, but many people are unaware of white feminism. As it becomes a growing topic, more and more women are realizing that in being white, they have the upper hand at fighting the patriarchy as opposed to the other types of women fighting for much more than just their rights as women. A recent show of this privilege is the Women’s March that took place the day after Trump’s Inauguration.
The Women’s March claimed to have the backs of all kinds of women from all different backgrounds. To their credit, many of them did and that was shown in the signs held up and in the words of the women organizing it. However, the main frustration was the police reaction because put a nice, white woman in a pink hat and suddenly it becomes a march and a fight for rights that people are all for. And why? Because white people could get behind it. The marches for Black Lives Matter protesters have much of the time resulted in police beating, fighting against, and arresting protestors who are protesting the fact that a system undermines them as human beings because of their skin color. Martin Luther King Jr. even stated, “These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.” But does the media look at it this way or even expose that quote? Of course not, it’s the white based media, duh! The first articles to pop up when typing in “Black Lives Matter Violence” on Google are all about how the movement is “undermining” itself with the violent approaches they are taking and the “disruptive ways” they have decided to protest. Oh no! Are protesters fighting for their basic human rights disrupting your everyday, privileged life? I can assure you that cannot compare to the way white supremacy has disrupted theirs.
Peggy McIntosh in her article “White Privilege and Male Privilege” acknowledges her privileges and racism as a white woman. She lists off her privileges she experiences in her everyday life that people of color automatically do not experience because they are not white. One of the privileges she even states that she can easily find a publisher to publish the piece on white privilege. That is probably the most meta thing about white privilege that can be said. This is the kind of fighting for women that needs to go down with white feminists. The kind of fighting that acknowledges the rights and privileges already had while fighting for those who do not have them so that these privileges may not longer be privileges.
In these Black Lives Matter protests are tons of women fighting for their rights as black and risking their safety against a system that will harm them in order to keep them in line. But you put these women in a march surrounded by white women in pretty hats with witty signs and there is suddenly a switch in police aggression. Coincidence? Nope. That is white supremacy at its finest. Not only were there women of color, but women of different religions, classes, and backgrounds. While they were all fighting for women’s rights, they also had other obstacles. Fighting for Muslim respect, fighting for Black Lives Matter, fighting against the wall. When women mentioned the wage gap, they did not mention the layered issues with it and did not look through the intersectional lenses of race and gender. They only describe the gap as a women making 78 cents to a man’s dollar. However, black women make less than that, and Hispanic women make the lowest amount to a man’s dollar: 65 cents.
All of these issue just touch the surface of the intersectionality of race and gender, and the topic touched mainly on white versus black. There are layers and lenses to be considered when fighting the patriarchy. The day those are considered is the day the Women’s March will truly be for ALL women.
