From One Survivor to Another

Carlin Ross.

Black women DID join the feminist movement but they were marginalized by the white women in the movement who wanted to specifically address their issues. They did not want to address the racism within the movement and when they were confronted by it, they ignored it. Suffragists, Alice Paul, stated race was not a feminist issue. She also worked tirelessly to get the Equal Rights Amendment, which she wrote, passed. The ERA was part of the second wave movement. Within the suffrage movement/first wave, black women were pushed to the side and created their own suffrage organizations. Ida B Wells went head to head with Alice during the Parade in Washington because Alice insisted the black women march in the back so they wouldn’t upset the southern white women. Ida B Wells was devastated by Alice Pauls racism, even though she was not surprised, and ended up marching in the front anyways as a ‘fuck you.’ Black women called white suffragists out on their racism many times and white women ignored them. Same thing happened in the second wave movement and is still happening today. Black women in the second wave movement created their own organizations so they could focus on the issues that affected them and their communities. Third wave feminist have gotten better at addressing racism and intersectionality but the movement is still problematic. Your quote just proves how they are still being marginalized by the movement in 2011 and how their work/activism is over looked.

(via feministslut)

It disgusts me to *have to* tell ya’ll: BLACK WOMEN WERE “the feminist movement”. The white suffragists and further white-centric feminist movement, the so-called “mainstream movement”, ONLY exist because of the work that done by Black and other non-white women FIRST. And I still contend that the mainstream feminist movement was a *reaction to* upper class white women being pissed off that non-white women had “rights”, voices, and power within our own communities that white women did not have within theirs, and it was sheer jealousy that women that they looked down on would dare to have those rights anywhere that spurred white women on. And yes, from the very beginning of feminism, it was *designed* to exclude poor white women and non-white women. How else could the nice white ladies organize if they didn’t have women who were subordinate to them to watch their children and keep up their homes while they went out? Feminism as we know it, the mainstream of it, was precisely created to ensure that hierarchy of keeping class and race strictly segregated.

(via diggingforroots)

i just want diggingforroots’ commentary here.

(via theoceanandthesky)

As above. Black Feminism has been the backbone for most of the analysis of privilege, race, gender, class, and other intersections that the third wave hinges itself upon. Without Black Feminists there would be no modern Feminist movement— or, at least, it would still be irrelevant to most people.

(Source: lipsredasroses)