This is something I’ve wanted to say to well-meaning liberal white women who are in senior positions for a while. I’m saying it now because my voice has been freed after winning the book award recently.
Dear liberal white women: I know that often you try to support and promote women of color as part of your commitment to #antiracism. It is great that you do this, but:
You need to understand that women of color are not a monolith, and that white supremacy in many institutions makes some women of color fight against others women of color to gain the attention, validation and praise of senior white people.
These women of color (woc) who do this are often aiding and abetting continuing white supremacy in your institution, because they know their proximity to whiteness will serve them well in a white supremacist institution.
Often, these opportunistic people will squash all other woc around them, bully others and step on them in order to get a leg up closer to whiteness and institutional power.
Not making a distinction between woc means you often end up promoting those of us who use sociopathic means and rely on white supremacy to climb the ladder. When you do this, you’re unfortunately perpetuating the system you think you’re unraveling.
We women of color are not the same. And treating us interchangeably, thinking by supporting some of us you’re supporting all of us, is naive thinking that actually does the opposite of what you desire.
To be truly antiracist is to see us all as individuals within a larger field and its dynamics, much like you are an individual within a field and its dynamics too. Promoting one of us does not mean you’re antiracist.
In fact if you don’t pay close attention to how one of us treats other woc, you may end up hurting the cause of antiracism rather than promoting it.
I do not say this to shame, but rather to call out clearly things that have happened in my former career that led me to leave and to also suffer from a very very long debilitating depression.
It is my hope that some of you reading this will not take offense, but try to take to heart what I am saying and to see how this can apply in your own sphere of influence.
Thank you for reading.
#highered #feminism #womensupportingwomen #academia #leavingacademia #dei #quitting
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