I lived in #Egypt when Anita Hill testified in 1991. Being in the US as Christine Blasey Ford is testifying is making obvious what I’ve been thinking since we first heard from CBF. And this is going to be another of my threads about white American women.
I have to wonder # how many white American women in 1991 were able to distance themselves from Anita Hill because she is Black? Because now the woman testifying is white and blonde. And that is an essential Q to my threads: where have white women been all this time?
Because if you are just now horrified at the way patriarchy enables and protects sexual predators, what America have you been living in? Because white, rich patriarchy has enabled and protected sexual violence against Black women for centuries.
Anita Hill was a “perfect victim” in the same way that CBF is but the latter is white and blonde. The history of the USA is underwritten in the rape of Black women to terrorize them and to emasculate Black men while at same time Black men were lynched to “protect” white women.
Do they teach that in American schools? Read as just one example that tells part of that history Danielle L. McGuire’s At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power.
I moved to the US in 2000. I’m a sexual assault survivor. I’ve been angry forever. I know from living here that until white women express or feel something it isn’t considered real. The reason #ListenToBlackWomen should be everyone’s mantra is because if you did, we would be free
I’ve learned much more about racism in the US since I moved here. I’ve esp learned more about gendered racism that queer Black feminist Moya Bailey called Misogynoir. I’m still learning from Black feminists.Their activism - esp when it’s grounded w/queer lens, is THE revolution.
Read every word here by Kimberlé Crenshaw, expert on civil rights and Black feminist legal theory. She assisted Anita Hill’s legal team. She coined the term Intersectionality “for the urgent project of uniting the battles for race and gender justice” nytimes.com/2018/09/27/opi…
Today, knowing that many white women are reacting differently as they watch Christine Blasey Ford testimony than they did w/Anita Hill, a reminder: being white will not protect you from rich, white patriarchy on display; being footsoldiers of that patriarchy will not protect you.
I also want to ask what changed after Anita Hill? There has never been a GOP woman on the Senate Judiciary Committee, majority of white American women voters continue to vote GOP, patriarchy is bipartisan: witness Bill Clinton and startlingly low % of women in Congress, Trump,etc
This summer marked 18 years since I moved to the US. The longer I live here, the more obvious it is that it is destroys to continue ignoring gendered racism. The way white supremacy is so entangled with patriarchy drives so much in the US.
And as I have said several times already, regardless of how you vote, as a white American white supremacy works in your favour. But if you’re a white woman, patriarchy does not. I urge all white American women to remember that and to fight it by fighting gendered racism.
Because unless you’re targeting BOTH white supremacy and patriarchy, you’re seeing the US with just one eye open. Open both your eyes.
