Years ago, I told my brother that we would have a Black man as president before we had a white woman. He disagreed. This was the late 80s or early 90s and society’s fear of the Black man, the mythological superpredator, was at a point of mass hysteria. In other words, business as usual. I turned out to be right.* Misogyny, misogynoir, patriarchy, white supremacy, all are a very interwoven and complex reality for most of us in the world today and the US is no exception. Black men participate in the patriarchy. White women participate in upholding white supremacy. This is one reason why over fifty percent of them voted for Trump in 2016.**
When people talk about things being intersectional, they are talking about the intersecting, overlapping forms of both oppression and privilege. I am a fat, middle aged, Black woman. My parents were raised under Jim Crow and my parent’s grandparents were born into slavery. On the other hand, I was born into the middle class with two parents who went to college. It was simply assumed I would go as well and when I chose art as a major, they were supportive. My first (and only) language is English which enabled a decade long career that allowed me to travel the world. Which I could do more easily due to the passport I hold. I have privileges. I have obstacles. Most of us have to deal with a combination thereof.
White feminism tends to focus only on those things that affect “all women”. This means it tends to ignore issues of poverty, of racism, sexual orientation, and all those issues that middle classed white women feel they are unaffected by. White feminism is Hadley Freeman writing in the Guardian that “People of colour should describe their experiences of racism in whatever language works for them. But women should also be free to point out when a trope has become mired in sexism.” Apparently, in Hadley Freeman’s world women only come in one shade.
In the previous post I quoted Yoko Ono’s infamous “women are the n-words of the world”. In researching it, I came across an article written in defense of the modern useage of the quote. The article likened it to Black, female, author Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in which she wrote “De ni–er woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see.” The article was written by a white man, but it is a ready example of the inability to see what is clearly right in the open: That the first quote erases Black womanhood while the second centers it.
Black women felt so sidelined by mainstream feminism that activist, poet, and author Alice Walker created womanism. Then another Black woman, lawyer and Colombia University professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, coined the term intersectionality*** in 1989 which eventually birthed intersectional feminism. Intersectional feminism centers specifically on where the inequalities; poverty, caste systems, domestic abuse, unequal pay, racism, sexism, and more intersect. It ties together both modern and historical context. Intersectional feminism recognizes the histories of violence and systematic discrimination that have created deep inequities in our society.
The need for an intersectional view is clearly illustrated in the case of DeGraffenreid v GM. Until around 1970 GM hired no Black women save a lone janitor. They did, however, hire white women and Black men. In 1974 GM had a massive layoff that impacted mostly those hired after 1968. Every Black woman but the janitor was let go. A few of the ladies filed suit. But the court decided that since Black men were still at GM that the firing of the Black women could not be racist. And that since white women were still at GM the firing could not be classed as sexist. Therefore, the women had no legal case. In a February 2020 interview with Time Kimberlé Crenshaw described intersectional feminism as, “a prism for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other”. She expands upon this to say, “All inequality is not created equal.”
Poverty, caste systems, domestic abuse, unequal pay, racism, sexism, trans rights- these all may seem like unrelated issues. As Professor Crenshaw put it, “We tend to talk about race inequality as separate from inequality based on gender, class, sexuality or immigrant status. What’s often missing is how some people are subject to all of these, and the experience is not just the sum of its parts.” All fights for justice, for liberation are linked. The Powers that Be know this which is why they tend to get extremely nervous when disparate groups start working together to build inclusive movements to solve interconnected or overlapping realities of discrimination.
Karen is a white feminist. When Black women suggest that white allies talk less and listen more to women of color Karen’s response is to plug her ears and shout louder about how she’s the real victim. Karen is here to teach women of color about feminism, about sexism, about being a woman. Karens are colorblind, so they can’t be racist. As I mentioned in Karen, Karens are active participants in the white supremacist patriarchy but they are not, necessarily, aware of it. Karens can have Asian spouses and Black children (or vice versa) whom they genuinely love and still not see them as multidimensional human beings with real desires and conflicting emotions.****
The Karen meme portrays white supremacy as the norm but also points out how ludicrous that is. It can help us laugh at ourselves and ease cultural tensions while also bringing up haunting history from Emmett Till to the Central Park 5. Karen is also easy. Karens are obvious. It’s very comfortable to watch and laugh because it’s hard to imagine behaving that way.
When I sent out my resume using my quite common middle name versus my more unique first name my response rate increased by over fifty percent. A guy I worked with back in the day was beaten and the police treated him as if he deserved it. He was gay. A woman in one of my mom groups put up a video of a white nurse patronizingly telling a Black woman in labor that the pain she was having between contractions was not notable. The US has the highest rate of maternal mortality of any developed country, but the death rate of Black women is three times that of white women.
Cancelling Karen is easy. Change is hard.
*I also think that our first woman president, if she is elected, will be a conservative. Liberals, men and women, will not vote for a female president. But Conservatives will most definitely vote for a woman who works to keep other women down.
**There were other reasons. Your one issue voters, your never Hilary voters. But this is also a reason why I think that there needs to be a gap in the polls of at least 20% before I stop saying Trump has a solid chance at reelection.
*** Crenshaw invented the term in a legal academic environment while the current debate over intersectionality covers this, its use by activists, and the conservative response.
****People within the same race do this to each other as well.
Sources
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/who-karen-and-why-does-she-keep-calling-police-black-men-on-the-media
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/891177904, https://www.npr.org/2020/07/14/891177904/whats-in-a-karen
https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2020/6/explainer-intersectional-feminism-what-it-means-and-why-it-matters
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/karen-n-word-racism-white-women-julie-bindel-coronavirus-a9453201.html
https://www.npr.org/2017/01/21/510986874/intersectional-feminism-representation-in-saturdays-womens-marches
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2020-07-09/the-karen-video-what-it-means-commentary
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/05/22/white-feminism-karen-alison-phipps-me-too-sex-work-trans-rights-middle-class/
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/20/18542843/intersectionality-conservatism-law-race-gender-discrimination
https://blackballad.co.uk/views-voices/dear-karen-your-class-and-gender-cannot-excuse-the-racism-you-partake-in
https://blavity.com/blavity-original/how-alice-walker-created-womanism-the-movement-that-meets-black-women-where-feminism-misses-the-mark?category1=Books
https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/59149490add7b049345bf04d