Before I begin this post, I want to clarify that I am no professional in feminist thinking. In the words of my absolute favourite podcast, I’m a guilty feminist. I’m okay with this, because accepting guilt, and accepting my privilege, has been quintessential to my exploration of intersectional feminisms. Relinquishing guilt means opening up a new space for learning; we’re all learning, and that’s okay. It’s the best thing we can do.
One of the first books I read in 2018 was Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race. What an endlessly important book. This book taught me the lesson that I needed to hear, but didn’t want to ask because it is not black people’s responsibility to make me woke. Most significantly, I unlearned vital prejudices which I had been conditioned to believe, and my mind felt blown at the realisation. I confess I was someone who would say ‘I don’t see colour’, thinking it meant I don’t discriminate. Now, I know how wildly ignorant, exclusionary and privileged that is. To “not see colour” is to be at the ultimate level of privilege. Realising this, I felt ashamed.
Reni Eddo-Lodge
Colour-blindness does not accept the legitimacy of structural racism or a history of white racial dominance.
When I first read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists, I immediately declared it amongst my favourite reads and felt positively about the fact that I was championing the work of a WOC. For a brief, naive, ignorant moment, I thought that was my role as a white ‘intersectional feminist’ – simply to celebrate both black and white women. If We Should All Be Feminists was launched me through a canon of self-empowerment, Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race was the brick wall I quickly crashed into; bringing me back down to the ground. I felt affronted, guilty, defensive. I thought I’d always been doing things right. My conception of feminism radically and suddenly turned from a well-intended (albeit shallowly educated) passion for equality, to a conscious lesson of the structural discriminations that intersect with feminism. It’s not all girl power, it’s recognising the social, economic and political disadvantage that POC face every day.
In the weeks and months after I read Eddo-Lodge’s book, I thought a lot about how to be a good intersectional feminist. I realised I didn’t want my feminism to inflate my ego to allow me to fly through that canon – I wanted to look at the people around me every day and march this fight with them. (That isn’t in any way a negation of the importance of Adichie’s text for me; it fills me with uncontainable passion on my darkest days and emotionally equips me to fight for the feminist agenda). As part of this desire, I decided first to look at what information I take in. Or, who do I follow on social media? The answer was at least 99% white women (not an exaggeration). I didn’t even mean for this to happen. How could I only be following white women? Why didn’t I follow more WOC? Well, that’s a whole different discussion. Social media, like every other industry, rewards white people who present the same skills as POC. White and black influencers with the same skills appear to have a vastly different following, and I simply hadn’t come across many influences who were WOC. There – another moment of me trying to excuse myself. It’s not my fault, I try and tell myself. No, it’s not my fault that industries structurally discriminate against POC, but it is certainly my responsibility as an intersectional feminist to seek out and listen to black voices.
So that’s what I did. I discovered the wondrous Shona Virtue to fuel my fitness motivation, the hilarious Receipts Podcast to listen to as they chat all things life, and the informative and stimulating Mostly Lit podcast to satisfy my bookish needs. POC are in every industry. They simply aren’t afforded the same opportunity, exposure or privilege that white people inherently receive.
Six months into the year and there I was; conscious of my place and privilege, and pleased with myself for making the effort to seek out more influence from POC. (Part of me is worrying that that sentence is not appropriate, and now I feel stressed). I started thinking more and more about race, and how I could be an ally to POC. Should I promote these wonderful influencers who I love so much? Or does that make me some kind of attempted “white saviour” talking over POC? How much can I talk about how much I love these POC? Or should I only be listening? But then how can I be an ally if I’m not spreading their work? These questions still haunt me. I’m still navigating this complex space and learning as I go. Sometimes, it stresses me out, and I’m terrified of saying or doing the wrong thing, because I only mean well (ref. back to previous brackets – still stressing if this sounds like I’m making championing POC an entitled form of self-gratification). Then I realised – again, like a brick wall right in my face – is this really the summary of my problems? Worrying if I’m saying the right thing? Having to think about my language? Reminding myself of the cases described in Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race, I realised how laughably small this ‘dilemma’ is. To worry about the language I use and be ever-conscious of this is, much like many other parts of my life, a privilege.
It’s nearly the end of 2018 and I’m still learning. I’ll always be learning, because intersectional feminism is not one textbook that you can read front to back; it is an inexhaustible topic. Immediately, I’m asking myself, ‘why does this post only talk about race as an intersection with feminism? what about queerness, transgender, disability, etc.?’ In reality, I’m talking about race in this post because it relates to my person experience, i.e. I read a compelling book about race and therefore wanted to discuss race. It makes sense. I will not reprimand this post for discussing race alone as an intersection. Instead, I will remind myself of this and use it to fuel more learning. I will use it when thinking of future blog post ideas, and when finding new people to follow. I will continue to try my best, and hopefully for now that is enough.
freadom 