brownfemipower, blank page
Saturday, April 12th, 2008brownfemipower has taken her blog down.
I know it’s not her job or responsibility to educate me about my privilege or about the racism and sexism that women of color face. It’s not her responsibility to educate me about the problems with white feminism. At the same time, I have learned so much from her blog. And in concert with the class I took last semester - Race in Latin America and the Caribbean, taught by Winnifred Brown Glaude (hands down, best professor I have ever had) I’ve at least begun to build a framework where I can begin to understand these issues better. I have a very long way to go, but I credit these two women with helping me to even begin to comprehend these issues on a deeper level.
brownfemipower’s posts routinely blew me away and it’s hard to describe the loss. I know it’s nothing compared to those who had built a relationship with her over the years she had blogged. I won’t be taking any of the links to her in my own posts down in the selfish hope that she may reinstate her blog and resume posting, though the chances look slim to none.
There is a post at Feministe that gathers a number of posts together to explain what happened. From what I’ve read concerning the matter it is the one that has been the most constructive in trying to look at the larger issue. A short explanation rather lacking in eloquence - that when white women are given an opportunity to speak “for” women of color, they have a tendency to appropriate WOC work as their own and do not give credit where it is due. It erases people and their experiences, and it allows for this structure that privileges certain voices over others - that it is news when a white person says it, nothing important when a person of color (who has been working on the issue for years) says it - to continue.
It makes me cringe that mainstream feminism often regards the issues that women of color face as “special interest” and only worthy of coverage “when there’s time” or if they can get a “marketable” white woman to cover it. Sounds rather familiar, in that it is the same bullshit way that patriarchy devalues the issues women face as a whole.
