Pippa Fleming: a Lesbian Butch Truth-teller

photo of Pippa Fleming is from here

I will not waste your time with many of my words here today. What I just realised, in a kind of palm-to-forehead way, is this: 30 years ago I used to say I was woman-identified, and more lesbian-identified than gay-identified. That was always a statement of political allegiance and affectional affiliation, not ever a demand for others (who I structurally oppress due to male privilege) to include me in their groups as one of them.

Now, I simply want to introduce you to a wonderful person. Pippa Fleming is "a long-time Performance Artist, Actor, Poet, Writer, DJ, Vocalist, Athletic Coach, Shapeshifting Lesbian = A force to be reckoned with!"

Below I hope there appear some working links to some video posts on Facebook.

I welcome you to listen thoughtfully, to take her words to heart, and to share them as acts of honoring and respecting Lesbians, their communities, and herstories.

1. https://www.facebook.com/pippa.fleming.18/videos/10203874688811751/

2. https://www.facebook.com/pippa.fleming.18/videos/10208915234662247/

3. https://www.facebook.com/pippa.fleming.18/videos/10203874688811751/

For more, please visit Pippa's YouTube channel.

Why do some white folks ask what we should do, to be an ally, when a Black woman is being abused in public by a Black man?

image is from here

This post is in response to a discussion over to Crunk Feminist Collective. You can read that post and the comments there first if you want, but it's not necessary. But to do so, click on the title of that post just below:

On Black Men Showing Up for Black Women at the Scene of the Crime

The reason it's not necessary is because white folks are asking questions there what white folks ask far too often in the wrong spaces: What should I do to be a good ally to people of color? Usually this assumes people of color exist to educate whites about how to be anti-racist/anti-sexist. And usually in contexts where people of color are not there to teach whites anything. (I mean, like not in a classroom with bell hooks as the professor teaching a course to people of color and whites on how to support one another across various political struggles.)

Too often, in PoC spaces or in conversations led by people of color about something awful that happened to someone, white comments become a white-centered distraction from the main issues.

But related to the post above, I wonder to what extent the Brecht Center is a white-majority or white-run space, an academic space. I wonder how that contributed to the lack of response from the audience to Crunktastic being intimidated, threatened, and assaulted at a progressive political panel discussion, by a well-known Black male activist, Kazembe Balagun. My experience of white and class-privileged academic spaces is that there is an expectation that audiences remain passive witnesses to what's going on (or down) onstage. That to do otherwise is to break the unwritten cultural rules of (non)engagement. I wonder if that's part of this story.

But there are always plenty of explanations for why folks don't intervene on violence against women, including racist misogyny (rarely identified as such). It shows up in male-bonding rituals. It shows up in the refusal of the public to see the harassment, disrespect, disregard, harassment, violation, and abuse of women of color as violence. Other dynamics are described later on in this post.

At issue is our collective response-ability to co-create anti-colonial, anti-patriarchal spaces in which to organise and, well, just live with dignity and relative safety. I've seen response-ability shut down by anti-activist liberal white and male self-reflection. "What can I do that won't be seen as racist or sexist?" is a question in service to white male supremacy. Because "how privileged folks are perceived" already presumes the issue is the image of the oppressors, not the harm done to the oppressed.

I'm making space here, at a white person's blog, for some of that discussion. A white woman at CFC left a comment, which I'm excerpting just below. The reason I'm copying and pasting it here is because she acknowledges this is a conversation that maybe shouldn't happen there and then, at CFC. And I agree. Other whites on that comments page appear to me to be making this about liberal white guilt and the matter of whether we should do anything, rather than about what we must do to intervene when we witness violence occurring right before us in social spaces.

I can’t pretend that the dynamics of my interactions with black women aren’t colored by our different races. I do not want to presume to act or speak for a black woman who is perfectly capable of acting or speaking for herself. Nor do I want to appear to be attempting to exert authority over a space for black people based on my white skin. It can be difficult at times to decide whether my intervention in a tense situation would be seen as welcome support or as hijacking. In this situation, I think the answer is clear (both from my own judgment and from the message of the post), but it’s not always.

Obviously, how a white woman would have felt/what she should have done should not be the center of the discussion here. What happened should be. But there seems to be a substantial discussion going on around that, and thus probably room for a thread or two on this point: that is, how SHOULD an ally best respond in this situation? There may actually be a different answer for other black men, for white women, for white men, etc.

Should whites respond differently to violence happening when the aggressor is a Black man and the person harmed is a Black woman? Are the responsibilities of a white ally to a Black woman facing male supremacist hostility from a Black man (or from a white man, or a man of color who isn't Black) different than the responsibilities of an ally to a white woman facing male supremacist hostility--from a white or Black man, or another man of color?

Beyond, "Don't do something racist", I don't think so. 

But it is, unfortunately, the case that we whites can be confused about what it is to be racist.

One way racism shows up is whites thinking that intervening when a Black woman is being abused by a Black man is in and of itself racist. When, in fact, not intervening is the act of racism, and sexism.

This was going to be my reply at CFC but I've decided to put it here instead and link to this post over there.
 

Dynamics are raced, yes. Always. And gendered. Whatever I did there, if I were there, would have been the actions of a white male. But our race and gender doesn't mean we're not capable of responding to other humans as human beings. 
 

I read another comment, in response to the one quoted above, stating clearly that the woman assaulted is a human being and ought to be responded to as the human being that she is. 
 

I thought about how whites use our whiteness as a way (and too often an excuse) to not do something we'd do if it were happening to someone white. We don't tend to ask ourselves, when in an all-white forum or social space, "How might my whiteness be a problem here, in possibly intervening when a white man is harming a white woman?" I'm just as white in all-white spaces too. That whole way of responding or not and acting or not is white supremacist to me. 

Black, Brown, white, female, trans, male: if I'm a person in the room, and I see someone being assaulted, I intervene, if I care and if I can. I do what I can do, given my own limitations, strengths, privileges, and experiences of trauma and resistance.  
 

One thing I've seen play out far too often is that whites assume a Black woman (a particular Black woman, any Black woman, or all Black women) is strong enough to handle things on her own. While whites often want someone (of color) to have our back, it is assumed by whites that a Black woman has her own back and doesn't need anything more. The misogynist-racist Super-woman stereotype. There's the issue of Black woman-as-mammy whose only role is to take care of whites. In such a racist imagination, how could she possibly need whites to emotionally or physically take care of her? In reality, in what spaces would whites do so at all without expecting public or private props?
 

I've seen how Black women's womanness is erased and how Black women's Blackness is eraced. Each of which contributes to how Black women's humanity is made invisible socially by white and male supremacy.
 

When women's liberation is discussed in white spaces, the talk often assumes an alleged common denominator of white experience. So Black women, and other women of color, are assumed to be part of that struggle--to be "women"--only to the extent that they share the experiences, analysis, and agendas of whites. Usually unasked and unanswered in such spaces is this question: how could white experience be a common denominator for all women, most of whom are not white?) In my experience, when women of color assert their womanness not in white or colonial terms, or outside a white frame of experience, whites often claim they are being divisive, disruptive, or collaborators with patriarchy. (In truth, whites invisibilising whiteness is always in service to colonial patriarchy.)

  

When Black liberation is discussed in Black spaces, the talk often assumes a common denominator of Black men's experience. So Black women, again, are assumed to be part of the struggle only to the extent that their lives and struggles match up with men's. When Black women assert their own experiences as distinct from men's, the men often rebuke, retaliate, and revolt against the women, proving the point far too predictably.

What gets lost, obviously, is the humanity of Black women as Black, as women, and as Black Women whose lives, however personally complex and culturally dissimilar, do not and cannot only mirror the struggles Black men and white women face, in part because Black women are oppressed by both groups and by white men too.
 

I open the post to comments and conversation.

Trayvon Martin and the on-going Genocide of Black and Brown People

image of the late Trayvon Martin is from here

I suggest we ought to understand what happened to Trayvon Martin--his murder at the hands and gun of known serial criminal son-of-a-judge* George Zimmerman (see here, and here: trigger warning for details of child sexual abuse)--through much broader lenses than those used by white male-owned corporate media.  I view such an injustice and grievous act, another loss added to the millions of others, in the context of seeing how many Black and Brown people around the world are allowed to die an unnatural death from the following:

--gross economic discrimination, violence, and terrorism,

--pollution, theft, and destruction of water systems and other natural resources,

--imperialist invasion and occupation,

--wrongful/unjust incarceration alongside serial and mass murder inside and outside the criminal justice system owned and operated by white men and supported by white women

--willful media and medical abuse, negligence, and neglect,

-- coerced and forced indebtedness and dependence on white/colonial societies,

--sexual trafficking and sexual and economic slavery,

--many other forms of well-organised and institutionalised inhumanity leading to disease, depression, and premature death

I come to the conclusion that what happened to Trayvon Martin, including the injustice his family has to endure from a white-majority jury, is neither accidental, aberrant, or anecdotal. (Not, really, that there was any doubt.)

What happened to him is what happens in many different ways to Black and Brown people globally: being targeted for harassment, assault, and death both one at a time and en masse.

If and to whatever extent Trayvon had the courage and will to fight back, it surely wasn't sufficient to save his own life or to take the life of his stalker. We can only hope Black and Brown people prevail. Chances for survival and success beyond survival would greatly and dramatically increase if whites would organise to release the institutional strangling grip of economic, social, and interpersonal murder.

*Thanks to Carolyn Gage for publicly pointing out the particular political significance of this with regard to why he's never been found guilty of anything he's done that is criminal--including messing with a cop, and more recently this murder of a youth.

May Trayvon Martin, and all the other murdered Black and Brown women, men, and children, rest in a kind of peace not socially offered or available while alive.

I close with this statement about the killer, by bell hooks:

"White supremacy has taught him that all people of color are threats irrespective of their behavior. Capitalism has taught him that, at all costs, his property can and must be protected. Patriarchy has taught him that his masculinity has to be proved by the willingness to conquer fear through aggression; that it would be unmanly to ask questions before taking action. Mass media then brings us the news of this in a newspeak manner that sounds almost jocular and celebratory, as though no tragedy has happened, as though the sacrifice of a young life was necessary to uphold property values and white patriarchal honor. Viewers are encouraged to feel sympathy for the white male home owner who made a mistake. The fact that this mistake led to the violent death of an innocent young man does not register; the narrative is worded in a manner that encourages viewers to identify with the one who made the mistake by doing what we are led to feel we might all do to “protect our property at all costs from any sense of perceived threat." This is what the worship of death looks like.

- bell hooks on the Zimmerman verdict    

Writings by Audre Lorde, including "Man-Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist Response" and "A Litany For Survival". Also, a new book of Lorde's writings, I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde !!

image of book cover is from here

Revised on the 26th , 29th, and 30th of August 2012, and December 2, 2015.

I just found a website that has a photocopy of Audre Lorde's classic essay from Sister Outsider, titled: "Man-Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist Response". If you haven't yet, I encourage you to read it and to read the whole book along with it. Here is the URL and link to that one chapter: http://www.scribd.com/doc/103750751/Audre-Lorde-Man-Child.

I have been saddened to see how many younger people online believe that radical feminist = white woman. I know that many, but not all, of the people publicly naming themselves radical feminist or the more contemporary and racially narrow term, rad fem, are white women. I've written about how I don't equate the terms: radical feminist and rad fem. I've hopefully respectfully challenged the white supremacy of white-majority and white-led organising by people who identify as rad fem *here* in an earlier post.

Of course most of the whites who organise politically are not feminists. They are anti-feminists, racists, and misogynists, protecting white male power at all costs. But unlike anti-feminists and other misogynists, rad fems and I share a lot in common: our critique of pornography and prostitution as male-protected and mass produced forms of men raping and enslaving women and girls; a serious analysis of human sexuality as it is constructed and acted out in heterosexist and male supremacist contexts; and a de-marginalising of male supremacy and patriarchy when analysing and challenging increasingly globalised systems of oppressive, terroristic, and deadly power.

In fact, many of the people who claim to be the definitive example of "human" are white men. And we certainly know that even though white men write most Western history books--that have systematically left out or distorted the accomplishments, the history, of white women, women of color, and men of color--that surely doesn't mean only white men are human. Nor is it the case that only white women are radical feminists, lesbian or not. Many of my role models growing up through my early adulthood were Black and Brown radical lesbian feminists.

My focus, here at this blog, on women of color is seen by some whites and many men as divisive. Some view this centralising of women of color at a pro-feminist website as one way to focus on the differences between women rather than the similarities. I hardly see how focusing on women of color is divisive. Nor do I see it as divisive to point out where white supremacy lives and breathes. Whites want to keep white power all to ourselves thereby dividing humanity into raced "haves" and "have nots". Exposing and challenging white supremacy is an effort to end divisions of social power among humans; its aim is to equalise the control of and the access to resources among humans, including intellectual resources.

Another way to approach the issue would be to ask: Is focusing primarily or entirely only on the written and other activist work of whites divisive? Because that's what most whites do, often thinking they are representing "all men" or "all women" or "all queer people" when doing so. So it comes across to me as problematic when a white person, in my case a white male, who doesn't wish to marginalise women of color is seen as promoting divisions among women. Why isn't this blog seen as unifying women by focusing on the work of women of color? And, if whites wish to deal with our white supremacy in public ways, how does identifying where it lives further divide humanity?

I'd argue that routinely and systematically ignoring, tokenising, or marginalising the activist work of women of color is divisive. It maintains white supremacy and male supremacy. So too does using terms like "radical" by whites who don't include "white" when naming ourselves. The name of this blog certainly participates in that pattern. It would visibilise (and challenge) whiteness more if I termed it "A Radical White Profeminist". It would also serve to make it visible as a particular and non-universal political condition.

I now consider any white person refusing or neglecting to name our structural location by race when we describe our political position, as supporting and reinforcing white supremacy. Were I to start my blog now, I'd name it with "white" being in the title.

I have grown up hearing Audre Lorde and Barbara Smith be regularly identified by whites as Radical Black Feminists or Black Lesbian Feminists. Mary Daly and Sheila Jeffreys have only ever been identified by whites as "Radical Feminists" or "Lesbian Feminists". I hope it's clear how that way of naming white people reinforces whiteness as somehow not worth mentioning. But the "worth", or value, of not mentioning it is the white power that is so well-protected in the practice of whites not naming ourselves with that term. This is a crucial, and often enough unconscious, practice of protecting the very brutal power underlying and enforcing unnamed whiteness. The brutality is aimed squarely at people of color, with especially horrific forms leveled against women of color.

Conscious or not, it is an undenibly political decision to not mention our whiteness as a structural place of power in a white male supremacist system. (This is not, as some have indicated, primarily an issue of naming one's "identity"; this writing isn't advocating what is sometimes termed "identity politics".) If it is not deemed collectively necessary for whites who name ourselves as "radical" to also name and own our own whiteness as a political reality, how do we practice being responsible and accountable to those we structurally oppress by race?

It's not a radical practice for white folks to "disappear" our whiteness in our writings and other work, in my opinion which has been informed by dozens of radical activists of color, most of them feminist. It's not even liberal. It's politically conservative; it has many of the same effects as mainstream neo-Conservative and more publicly marginalised White Nationalist agendas.

White males making our race invisible but our gender visible serves white and male supremacy because the two systems, particularly in the West, are inextricably linked and are mutually reinforcing. Both work together to oppress and destroy women of color. Put another way: let's consider white radical Andrea Dworkin's definition of "feminist" which has been summarised as follows: if it hurts women, feminists are against it. Surely white supremacy as well as male supremacy hurts women (of color). So to ignore race in one's feminist and pro-feminist work is to participate in the deeply racist practice of pretending women of color are not "women"--unless they, too, are somehow presented as unraced. Ironically, whites are very reluctant to do that. Only whiteness is to be systematically ignored-while-protected.

The same is true for men of color who name their race as a structural position of marginalisation and oppression but not their gender as a structural position of power over all women. Men of color not identifying their gender as a structural source of oppressive power serves not only male supremacy, but also white supremacy. Because protecting any male power, as such, bolsters white men's power as men, but particularly as white men.

As I see it and hear about it from radical and feminist women of color, those two systems of power--male and white supremacy--together with capitalism, are the main dividers of humans into--according to power elites--those who are meant to survive and those who are not.

This matter is addressed in those terms in at least two pieces of writing by Audre Lorde. One is in a speech in the book Sister Outsider titled "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action". This is also contained in another book discussed below. Another discussion of this theme is in a poem titled "A Litany for Survival", which may be read in full, along with several other of Lorde's poems, here.

Finally, I offer a link to a relatively new book (2009 hardcover, 2011 paperback), of Audre Lorde's work. The book is titled: "I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde", edited by Rudolph P. Byrd, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall.

 I have had the pleasure of hearing Johnnetta Cole speak, many years ago. Calling the three editors only "editors" would not be to understand their role in the creation of this book. Rudolph Byrd offers a significant introduction of the works contained in the volume. Johnnetta Cole offers a chapter in the section of the book called "Reflections", which also contain chapters by Alice Walker, bell hooks, and Gloria I. Joseph. Beverly Guy-Sheftall closes the book with her epilogue.

Fall 2012 Screening Schedule for "Audre Lorde - The Berlin Years"

This is being cross-posted, in full, from here: http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/fall-screening-schedule-for-audre-lorde-the-berlin-years-home-video-release-info?nl_success=true#nlform

You may also click on the title below to link back to the source website.

With thanks to Tambay A. Obenson!

Fall Screening Schedule For 'Audre Lorde - The Berlin Years' + Home Video Release Info

News

by Tambay A. Obenson
August 12, 2012 1:12 PM

• |

Previously profiled on S&A, it made its world premiere in the Panorama Documentary section at the Berlin Film Festival in February, and last screened at the Blackstar Film Festival in Philly last week.

Now Dagmar Shultz's Audre Lorde - The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992 will continue its screening tour, and specific dates and locations have been provided for upcoming screenings over the next few months, in the USA.

So if you're interested in seeing it, take a look at the schedule below and find out if it'll be coming to your neck of the woods. I especially encourage you folks in the USS to attend these screenings if in you're area, and if you're interested in seeing the film, because, a message posted on the film's Facebook page yesterday stated that:

Home video distribution in North America is not clear yet, but will follow soon after.

"Soon after" being after Third World Newsreel releases the film to the education market in September. So, if you don't see it at one of the below screenings, it may end up being some time before you are actually able to, since it's not clear when it'll become available on home video for you to rent or purchase.

It's stated that the DVD will have some special features including Audre reflecting on her work two months before her passing, Audre in conversation with Ellen Kuzwayo, deleted scenes and more. 

As a recap... the film focuses on...

Audre Lorde's years in Berlin in which she catalyzed the first movement of Black Germans to claim their identity as Afro-Germans with pride. As she was inspiring Afro-Germans she was also encouraging the White German feminists to look at their own racism

The trailer for the film is embedded below; and underneath the trailer, see the upcoming USA screening schedule:

---

Fall 2012 USA Audre Lorde Film & Cultural Festival tour

University of Hawai’i	The complete program of the Festival Contact: Prof. Christina Gerhardt	Sept. 20 & 21
University of California, Berkeley	Reading by Ika Hügel-Marshall from Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germanyand screening of “Audre Lorde – the Berlin Years 1984 to 1992” Contact: Alisa Bierria	Sept. 25
Sonoma State University	Reading by Ika Hügel-Marshall from Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany and screening of “Audre Lorde – the Berlin Years 1984 to 1992” Contact: Prof. Michaela Grobbel	Sept. 27
Goethe-Institut, San Francisco “Berlin and Beyond” film festival	Reading by Ika Hügel-Marshall from Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germanyand screening of “Audre Lorde – the Berlin Years 1984 to 1992” Film: Director Sabine Erlenwein, Geothe-Insititut Reading: Dr. Marion Gerlind, Gerlind Insititute for Cultural Studies	Sept. 29
University of Illinois at Chicago	Reading by Ika Hügel-Marshall from Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany Contact: Proof. Elizabeth Loentz	Oct. 2
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois	The complete program of the Festival Contact: Proof. Anna Parkinson	Oct. 3 & 4
Harvard University, DuBois Institute	Reading by Ika Hügel-Marshall from Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany and screening of “Audre Lorde – the Berlin Years 1984 to 1992” Contact: Dr. Abby Wolf	Oct. 9
University of Massachusetts	Reading by Ika Hügel-Marshall from Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany and screening of “Audre Lorde – the Berlin Years 1984 to 1992” Contact: Proof. Sara Lennox	Oct. 10 - Reading Oct. 11 - Screening
Hunter College, NY	Reading by Ika Hügel-Marshall from Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany and screening of “Audre Lorde – the Berlin Years 1984 to 1992” Contact: Rupal Oza	Oct. 16
www.audrelorde-theberlinyears.com www.ika-huegel-marshall.de www.dagmarschultz.com (click here to download this schedule)	The complete Program of the festival includes: The films: A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde by Ada Griffin and Michelle Parkinson The Edge of Each Other's Battles: The Vision of Audre Lorde by Jennifer Abod Hope in My Heart: The May Ayim Story by Maria Binder Audre Lorde - The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992 by Dagmar Schultz The reading by Ika Hügel-Marshall from Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany

"Audre Lorde - The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992" gets UK premiere on April 14th, 2012

What follows is being cross-posted from *here*. I am so excited about seeing this documentary!!!! (And it annoys the piss out of me when Lesbian and Gay, or LGBTIQA films are categorised as only "Gay". But whatever. They didn't ask me, nor should they.)

"Audre Lorde - The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992" Gets UK Premiere Date - April 14th

News by Tambay | April 2, 2012 12:04 PM | 0 Comments

photo of Audre Lorde is from here

Previously profiled on S&A, it made its world premiere in the Panorama Documentary section at the Berlin Film Festival in February; and now Dagmar Shultz's Audre Lorde - The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992 is scheduled to make its UK premiere on April 14th at Fringe Film Gay Film Festival which takes place at the Rich Mix (35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA) in East London.

It's being screened as part of the Fringe Film Gay film Festival.

Courtesy of Third World Newsreel, who acquired the 84-minute film, it made its USA premiere it at The Brecht Forum in New York City last week Monday, and will be out on DVD sometime this spring.

Specifically, the film focuses on...

Audre Lorde's years in Berlin in which she catalyzed the first movement of Black Germans to claim their identity as Afro-Germans with pride. As she was inspiring Afro-Germans she was also encouraging the White German feminists to look at their own racism

The film will serve as a historical document for future generations of Germans, which profiles and highlights, from the roots, the African presence in Germany, and the origins of the anti-racist movement before and after the German reunification, as well as facillitates an analysis and an understanding of present debates on identity and racism in Germany.

So UK folks, now you'll have your chance to check out the doc. Info on tickets can be found HERE.

A trailer for the film is [available to be viewed] below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mPEkqykAik&feature=player_embedded

The Lynching of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman: a perspective

image of George Zimmerman (left) and Trayvon Martin (right) is from here

What follows was written by Carolyn Edgar of CNN and by Michael Skolnick of GlobalGrind. I found these excerpts posted together at Racialicious. I have inserted my own commentary in bold and brackets.

Trayvon Martin was a teenaged boy who was walking home from a convenience store. He was not engaged in an unlawful activity. [Other than being Black in the US and walking in a place where non-Blacks live.] He was in a place where he had a right to be – near the home of his father’s fiancée. [He should have had the right to be there.] George Zimmerman followed him [read: stalked him with the intention of doing harm], even after being told by the 911 dispatcher not to. [His fragrant disregard for the counsel of the 911 dispatcher demonstrates to me that he was wanting some form of public attention, or applause, for what he was about to do.] Zimmerman left his vehicle holding a loaded gun and began pursuing Martin on foot. It is plausible to infer that Zimmerman, not Martin, initiated the attack. The tapes indicate that Zimmerman may have been the aggressor in initiating contact with Martin. ["Plausible"? "May have been"? In what moral universe does disregarding the advice of someone trained to deal with crime and crisis, and instead stalking--with a deadly weapon--an innocent person, NOT constitute "initiating an attack"? How could a boy walking from a store where he purchased Skittles to the home of family constitute, and then screaming for help when his live was threatened, constitute "intitiating an attack"? The boy, by all accounts, was not seeking to engage in any way with the virulently white supremacist George Zimmerman. Would anyone think that a Black or Brown man similarly going after a white boy armed with Skittles would be regarded as anything other than behaving with an intent to kill?] Assuming the published reports are true, Martin, not Zimmerman, was exercising his lawful right to “stand his ground and meet force with force” by engaging in an altercation with Zimmerman. [Florida apparently has a law which allows (wealthier and whiter) people to murder (poorer and darker) people who are in their neighborhood if deemed "threatening". But last I heard, carrying Skittles and minding one's own business, such as by talking with a girlfriend on the phone, isn't threatening behavior to residents of a neighborhood.]

By questioning why Martin didn’t simply stop and answer Zimmerman’s questions, and characterizing Martin as the aggressor [aren't we supposed to teach kids not to talk to strangers?], Sanford Police Department Chief Bill Lee Jr. appears to have assessed the Martin case using the standards that apply to law enforcement officers. [This puts aside the rather unavoidable issue of white supremacist police forces systematically harassing and mass murdering people of color in the US.] This is wrong. Martin was under no legal duty to obey or to cooperate with Zimmerman in being questioned, because George Zimmerman is not a law enforcement officer. [And if he were? What right should a law enforcement officer have to stop such a youth?]

Being the local neighborhood watch captain [read: assassin or cold-blooded killer] does not elevate him to that status. Nor was Zimmerman asked by any law enforcement officer to assist in detaining Martin – in fact, he was specifically told not to follow Martin. Zimmerman is entitled to none of the presumptions available to law enforcement officers under Florida law. The presumptions of acting in good faith that are afforded to law enforcement officers do not apply to Zimmerman. [The presumption of acting in good faith should not apply to armed members of racist police forces.]
- Carolyn Edgar, CNN

I got a lot of emails about Trayvon. I have read a lot of articles. I have seen a lot of television segments. The message is consistent. Most of the commentators, writers, op-ed pages agree. Something went wrong. Trayvon was murdered. Racially profiled. Race. America’s [uber-white] elephant that never seems to leave the room. But, the part that doesn’t sit well with me is that all of the messengers of this message are all black too. I mean, it was only two weeks ago when almost every white person I knew was tweeting about stopping a brutal African warlord from killing more innocent children. [Yeah, about that: white celebs and news people, and their followers, are upset about human rights atrocities when whites don't commit them against Black and Brown people; let's see George Clooney speak out against white and male supremacy in the U.S.A.] And they even took thirty minutes out of their busy schedules to watch a movie about dude. They bought t-shirts. Some bracelets. Even tweeted at Rihanna to take a stance. But, a 17 year old American kid is followed and then ultimately killed by a neighborhood vigilante who happens to be carrying a semi-automatic weapon and my white friends are quiet. Eerily quiet. Not even a trending topic for the young man. [Thank you. And in a report about two kids who very negligently threw a shopping cart over a railing, causing a white woman below to be seriously injured, I took note of how many whites made sure to characterize the two youth as "thugs". The first comment on this story at Huffington Post reads as follows:

"WhatIThinkIs

2 Fans

05:24 PM on 11/04/2011

Charge them as adults with attempted murder. At 12 years old they should have known they could hurt someone. The severity of the charges must fit the severity of the crime."]

We’ve heard the 911 calls. We seen the 13 year old witness. We’ve read the letter from the alleged killer’s father. We listened to the anger of the family’s attorney. We’ve felt the pain of Trayvon’s mother. For heaven’s sake, for 24 hours he was a deceased John Doe at the hospital because even the police couldn’t believe that maybe he LIVES in the community.

There are still some facts to figure out. There are still some questions to be answered. But, let’s be clear. Let’s be very, very clear. Before the neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman, started following him against the better judgement of the 911 dispatcher. Before any altercation. Before any self-defense claim. Before Travyon’s cries for help were heard on the 911 tapes. Before the bullet hit him dead in the chest. Before all of this. He was suspicious. He was suspicious. suspicious. And you know, like I know, it wasn’t because of the hoodie or the jeans or the sneakers. Cause I had on that same outfit yesterday and no one called 911 saying I was just wandering around their neighborhood. It was because of one thing and one thing only. Trayvon is black.

- Michael Skolnick, GlobalGrind

Again, thank you, Michael.

See also *here* and *here* for more on some of these stories at Democracy Now!

What I take from all of this is that the genocide of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people is on-going without relief across the Americas, across Central Asia (including the mass murder of an Afghan family by Sgt. Robert Bales), and across the globe, by wealthy white male supremacists and their imperialist militias. We know, too, that millions of women and girls will be raped, tortured, and murdered by men again this year, for the "crime" of being female, and that the gynocide will not be reported or understood in these terms. 

 

 

The issue of what constitutes crime (including hate crime), terrorism, and human rights violation and who is immune from any and all laws supporting human rights, will not likely be discussed by the most structurally powerful members of my society who engage in criminal and violating behavior. What will be defended in court by supremely well-paid attorneys is the rights of militias and rich folks and whites--disproportionately male--to threaten, harass, terrorise, and mass murder Black, Brown, and Indigenous people by any means "necessary" to sustain and affirm het white male and imperialist corporate power.

To sign the petition calling for the arrest of the assassin of Trayvon Martin, please see *here*.

June Jordan: speaking about the 99% and the 1% in 1995 as if it was today

portrait of June Jordan is from here

[T]he quest for white male supremacy jeopardizes most of America. And, to a horrifying extent, our common enemies need to do little more than stand aside and watch the rest of us sink into mistaken animosities. [...]

Since 1964, race has been redefined by millions and millions of new arrivals who have begged or borrowed their way onto these shores. Black and white formulations have begun to yield, as they must, to demographic facts of a multiplicity of colors, languages, and legacies, brightening our continental landscape, and our horizons. Correspondingly, our definitions of racist convictions and behavior must be re-examined--and expanded as well: Beyond white hatred for people of African descent, the push for white supremacy punishes, and hopes to extirpate, every people that is not "white" and, also, "Christian." Of course, this necessary redefinition identifies most human beings as members of a hatefully composed target population.

That's the down-side. The good news is that we, the undesirable, vastly outnumber what is, in fact, a national and international minority of dangerous, hyperactive true believers.

Since 1964, issues specific to female life have emerged from traditional invisibility and sorry realms of isolated individual pain. Difficult questions about the meaning and the purpose of female identity have surfaced from fearsome areas of our collective consciousness. And a unifying, global awareness may yet ignite into an overdue, a successful, majority crusade for our fully realized, and liberated, human being.

Sexuality has become an openly political battleground. And class considerations increasingly compel our acknowledgement and response, even while Marxist forms of analysis retain very little of their practical and/or theoretical credibility.

As a Black woman living with change and beset by continuing situations of peril, I am the same and I am different, now. For me, winning has become the point. I have known and I have seen too many people dead, absolutely dead and gone, to settle for resistance or struggle: I am working to win.

Thirty-one years ago death did not seem or feel like anything relevant or decisive. But now whenever somebody dies in spirit or in flesh, I have learned to count that as an inconsolable irreplaceable loss. I am fighting to enlighten and protect my life by joining forces with my students, my comrades, and my colleagues for the enlightenment and rescue of all sociable and tender qualities of human life everywhere.

Hatred kills people. Cruelty kills people. Greed kills people. Egomania kills people. Stupidity kills people and trees and water supplies and systems of public education.

But I have come to understand that I am not surrounded by enemies. I teach and I write and I walk and I talk among people who want what I want: Good health, safety, a fair chance at happiness, and a growing environment of friends. I am clear about this: Most folks are really okay, not demonic or heartless or closed. But then it's the powerful few--forever on camera/on microphone--the powerful few who forever keep us inaudible and unknown to each other, or else all the while they disseminate scary information.

[...] [T]here is a hideous, neo-Nazi world view loose on the land. And adherents to that hatred aim to subjugate, or exterminate, everything and everybody who is not Christian and white and male and heterosexual.     -- June Jordan, in the new introduction of her book of essays, Civil Wars, April 27, 1995

A Discussion about White Men's Hostility to Black Women: where ThatOneGuy proves he's a white guy just like all the other racist-misgoynist white guys

image of a white guy is from here

A friend sent me a link to a discussion at Racism Review about white het men's racist-misogyny when it comes to deciding which women to hit on (too often in obnoxious and oppressive ways, imo). Please click on the title just below to link to that full discussion.

White Men’s Hostility to Black Women: A Deeper Look

By Brittany

That post has many comments following it, including this by some white dood naming himself "ThatOneGuy". Warning: it's fucking obnoxious.

ThatOneGuy says:

June 1, 2011 at 12:54 am

I am white man who has dated women of every ethnic group, and no Swan it wasn’t because I was on an “exotic adventure” or assuming they were “hyper-sexual”. In both cases they were black women I worked with who I knew and who had made it clear that they dated white men.

That being said what I know is that the number of black women who will date a white man is small and to get to them I have to deal with black women like you. Who see me as “WHITE” before you see me as a man, who blame me personally for any negative thing that has ever happened to any black person. Your cousin is in prison for robing a Korean store owner-> my fault. Your sister’s baby’s daddy hasn’t sent her child support EVER-> my fault again he would if he wasn’t being held down by yours truly. Your Grandma died of a heart attack-> me again I was probably feeding her poison. Skipping over the fact that most of my family were Russian miners that came over after WWI but that is irrelevant to you. What is important is remembering that I am the root of all that is evil in the universe. In fact I am so powerful that according to you lesser creatures like non-white men have to be criminals they have no choice I-ME-THIS GUY RIGHT HERE forced them into it, that is how powerful I am.

On the other hand if I date Carmen or Nhung or Yuko are they going to tell me that the current state of their brothers, cousins, and fathers is my fault? No for good or bad, and in turn I don’t blame Carmen for acts of the Catholic Church, I don’t tell Yuko that Japanese Imperialism caused much of WWII that devastated my ancestral homeland? No I don’t it wasn’t her and she had no part in it.

So no it isn’t the racism of white men against black women that keeps men like me from approaching a black women. It is the hostility that so many black women, like you, have towards anyone with a white penis that does that.

So, at that website I responded as follows:

To ThatOneGuy who acts a whole lot like so many other white guys,

As a white male, I find your comment woefully soaked and bloated with white male supremacist (sexist and racist) assumptions about how you should be treated relative to people without your (and my) race and gender privileges, position, advantages, and status in white male-dominated and ruled societies. I'll delineate a bit of what I find troubling in what you wrote.

Your apparent offence at being treated as "one of those WHITE dudes, just like all the others" (rather than as the not-so-sensitive white guy you appear to be here?), reveals you are generally and usually being seen and treated as an individual. I'd argue that this usual experience being only occasionally interrupted by exceptional, atypical experiences is the cause for you even registering this as a significant offence. Your offence rests on your socially protected right to be seen as only an individual, even while your race and gender privileges have little to do with your individuality.

Let me speak to you for a moment as a gay person: I don't experience that level of "being seen as only an individual" as a gay person. I am seen as someone who probably has too much sex (while I choose to have none, in fact), and as someone who exists to entertain white het people: evidenced in the terribly problematic hit series, Modern Family, just last night.

Every woman of color I know doesn't have the luxury of wallowing in offence of being treated as "not an individual", for to do so would render anyone experiencing so much systematic, unceasing objectification and bigotry just plain exhausted. No Black woman I know assumes she'll be treated as "just a person" or "only an individual" by any man or by anyone white. You and I--and people like us, with regard to race and gender--can see ourselves written into history as "important individuals who shaped the world", while people of color across gender are seen as obstacles to white men getting all the freedoms we want. And our capacity to want things, people, land, and "resources" that don't belong to us knows no bounds.

Women across race are only seen by white het men as things to be sexually conquered, to take care of whites and men emotionally. Het men, meanwhile, carry the "manifest destiny" and "imminent domain" myths into the bedroom and bar room, dance club, and motel and hotel room. 

Your comments miss or ignore the reality that there are people out in the world--most people, in fact--who not hardly ever (or are never) socially regarded by our über-privileged, structurally advantaged people as "only individuals". People who are not male and white are rarely-to-never presumed by us to be deserving of being seen as individuals, except on an exceptional basis. And when we regard someone--a woman of any color, or a man of color, as "an actual individual person" we expect to be patted on the back and rewarded for doing so.

At the same time that we may oh-so-generously recognise a few people of color, a few women, as "just an individual", we only ever regard white men as individuals--without exception, but privately or unconsciously know our relative status and wealth-acquisition (and ability to hoard wealth and resources) has nothing to do with individuality and everything to do with social custom and legal policy.

We white guys carry around an absurdly apolitical, socially ignorant assumption that being white and male means nothing other than that "we're [just] human". We are human, of course, but so too are we carriers of white and male supremacist assumptions, attitudes, actions that do, in fact, oppress other people. Want to check out how much that's the case, economically? See this website and take the test:

http://slaveryfootprint.org/

You and I support white and male supremacy in society in myriad ways. Please don't respond with the ubiquitous and predictable "Dude, you don't even KNOW me!" line. I've seen what you've written here and you've revealed far more about yourself than you perhaps wished.

I'm from European immigrant stock too--I'm first generation on one side of my family, and both sides of my white, arrived-poor family benefited greatly from being taken into this society as "white". My family wouldn't have made it into the middle class in one generation if they weren't received here as white. And whatever your class background is, it would be poorer if your parents or grandparents had come here being received socially and economically as not-white people.

You state, "I am white man who has dated women of every ethnic group, and no Swan it wasn’t because I was on an 'exotic adventure' or assuming they were 'hyper-sexual'", as if we should applaud you or massage your feet, or get you something cool or warm to drink. Or as if to prove that white men don't do *exactly that* most of the time. Your plea for exceptionalism is akin to the men who are offended when women on the street swiftly move to the other side when approached, as if "that man should be regarded as the only non-rapist of the bunch". Where in the world does such a keen ability to discern danger among unknown men come in handy? It comes in handy only for men who rape women but want to be perceived as non-rapists. Meanwhile, most men do jack sh-t to end rape, or, even, to call out the men who speak misogynistically about women they know and don't know.

I found your wording here especially revealing of the privileges you carry as a white person and a man:

"That being said what I know is that the number of black women who will date a white man is small and to get to them I have to deal with black women like you."

Yes, you are raised to think you have a right to "get to" anyone you want, for whatever reasons you want to have access to them. Denial of access by women offends men greatly, because our pro-rape society teaches all men to assume we can take what we want and any rejection is reason enough to insult her and further oppress all women by calling the rejecting woman the b-word, among other expletives; by beating her up, especially if she's in a "romantic" relationship; and by murdering her, especially if she has the audacity to leave his sorry abusive ass.

Let's consider who has to endure more: you, Mr. White Man, who has to be allegedly insulted and offended by being seen as WHITE by a few people you have the choice to surround yourself with interpersonally and intimately. Or women of color, who, particularly in the US, have to endure unending non-human status by whites, by men, by media, by politicians, and by most people ("individuals") who are more privileged. I know very few women of color who can afford to NOT be around whites or men. I know many white men who choose to be intimately involved only with other whites--and those who break out of that racist mold want plenty of kudos for being so open-minded. White men, socially and in workplaces, also choose to be predominantly with other men.

You choose to engage women of color from a position of privilege and power that no woman of color structurally has, relative to you, in the US. And you conveniently forget *that* when you are offended. It's surely your privilege to do so.

You seem to expect or want or need to not have the past actions of your people, who have committed all manner of terroristic or "only insulting and degrading" atrocities against girls and women of color in the US and internationally. Why, exactly, should anyone give you that pass without knowing you? Do you distinguish yourself as exceptional by demonstrating a fiercely public and private commitment to anti-sexism and anti-racism work? (And, even then, anti-racism and anti-sexism activist men are notoriously and grievously racist and misogynistic.)

If you don't distinguish yourself in those ways, why ought anyone regard you as anti-racist and anti-sexist when you take it upon yourself to approach them? Why don't you create around yourself a welcoming space and wait for women to approach you? Is it because your learned ways of being a man impel you to be the assertive initiator, socially?

White men continue to commit these horrible acts--with few to no white men opposing it publicly.  Most white men don't interrupt the other white men or the throw wrenches in the white and male supremacist machinery that keeps pressing down on the lives of people who are neither male nor white; white men benefit greatly from this lack of white-brotherly interference.

That's one typically white male supremacist aspect of your comment here: you are quick to note what's offencive to *you*, but are woefully silent on the matter of what white men do--including you, historically or presently--that warrants any individual woman of color being very (read: appropriately) leery of you and your intentions in approaching her.

As you make a worse-than-weak case for being treated as just an individual, when you grossly reinforce racism and misogyny, rattling off your scenarios of your own alleged dehumanisation in their eyes:

"Your cousin is in prison for robing a Korean store owner-> my fault. Your sister’s baby’s daddy hasn’t sent her child support EVER-> my fault again he would if he wasn’t being held down by yours truly. Your Grandma died of a heart attack-> me again I was probably feeding her poison."

Why should anyone reading what your wrote above want to make time to learn of your family's background as Russian miners that came over after WWI? Why ought such details be relevant in the face of such glaring, unrecognised oppressive bigotry and obnoxiousness? 

You go on:

"What is important is remembering that I am the root of all that is evil in the universe. In fact I am so powerful that according to you lesser creatures like non-white men have to be criminals they have no choice I-ME-THIS GUY RIGHT HERE forced them into it, that is how powerful I am."

Again with your demands to be seen as exceptional. In the US and in many other countries, structurally and institutionally--and also often enough interpersonally and intimately, white men do oppress women of all colors.

You, who don't have post-traumatic stress due to how you are mistreated daily by whites and men, get to preach from a truly arrogant and self-centered position:

"On the other hand if I date Carmen or Nhung or Yuko are they going to tell me that the current state of their brothers, cousins, and fathers is my fault? No for good or bad, and in turn I don’t blame Carmen for acts of the Catholic Church, I don’t tell Yuko that Japanese Imperialism caused much of WWII that devastated my ancestral homeland? No I don’t it wasn’t her and she had no part in it."

But European men are implicated, quite directly, in the past and in the present, with most militarised and otherwise violent conflicts around the world, either by instilling in those places our economic systems, weaponry, or by subverting and destroying their cultures with religion or cultural practices and values. To read about how this has been done historically, please read Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior by Dr. Marimba Ani.

There's a damn good reason why some African-descended and Indigenous people in the Americas refer to "The White Man" in such terms. There's little reason to distinguish among us, if The White Man is stealing or invading and militarily occupying your ancestral land while also attempting and, by the millions, effectively destroying the people who are not white.

You go on:

"So no it isn’t the racism of white men against black women that keeps men like me from approaching a black women. It is the hostility that so many black women, like you, have towards anyone with a white penis that does that."

As noted elsewhere in this discussion, you are quick to name reasoned, appropriate criticism or analysis as "hostility" without recognising or being responsible for the gross hostility in your own words here. How typically white and male of you, ThatOneGuy who is not so very different from all the others.

On Whether "Patriarchy" is the Root of All Other Oppressions. Q: Who benefits from this perspective? A: Rich folks and whites

This post exists to support, in an unsolicited way, of a series of posts by Lb over to The Vagina Conspiracy, a radical feminist blog by a Black woman. (See *here* and also below for that series.)

White radical feminists, historically and presently, often promote an idea and it is this: "patriarchy" (seemingly unraced or beyond race or inclusive of all races) is the root problem, the root oppression, and, from a radical/root perspective, activism focused on eradication patriarchy is sufficient to liberate women from the systemic oppressive realities that confine, subjugate, dominate, and destroy them. I'll address my problems with this perspective in a moment. Lb addresses her problems with it here:


The Root from Lb'rashon Breed on Vimeo.



The Root 2 from Lb'rashon Breed on Vimeo.



The Root - Clarification from Lb'rashon Breed on Vimeo.



Before I go on, I'll note that many white radical feminists arrived at this perspective in part because of their long-standing frustrations and dead-ends with radical activist and Leftist men across race conveniently "forgetting" to address patriarchy, misogyny, sexism, and male supremacy in their own ranks, among their own groups, in their own agendas, in theory and in practice. I have argued with more white anti-Capitalist men than I can count--some of whom are marxists--about the glaring omission of "patriarchy" in their understanding of what needs to be radically challenged socially. Across the last several decades and to this very day it is beyond rare to find any man (across race, region, sexuality, class, and age) who takes patriarchy seriously as an oppressive social-political-economic form (often termed by men: "civilisation" or "society" or "capitalism" but never managing to appropriately identify how and where men are in charge). Patriarchy exists to place women beneath men in every way patriarchs can.

Also, Liberalism as a political frame that historically comes from white Europe and has specific form in North America, the UK, Australia, and in other places globally, ignores patriarchy as a system of atrocity and oppression when it comes to presenting plans of so-called progressive personal-political action. Liberalism tends towards obfuscating systems of oppression. It does this in several ways and detailing those ways is beyond the focus of this post. But basically, Liberals contend with systems of harm--when they do so--by pretending that unorganised individual action is sufficient to bring about adequate social change. Liberals also pretend that ideas or thoughts alone carry as much weight as economic, social, and political acts of force, aggression, hostility, colonisation, and dominance.

Practitioners of White and Western forms of Liberalism (including its more restrictive and repressive cousins, White and Western forms of Conservatism) don't publicly acknowledge they are operating out of a Liberal framework. They also don't usually address most forms of violating and lethal oppressive force, actually, but the fact that it doesn't deal with patriarchy and has no plan of action to eradicate it from social-political-economic worlds, doesn't excuse it from taking this matter on, seriously and systematically, with organised revolutionary vision.

Part of how systems of oppression achieve success is by rendering the oppressed only capable of attempting to survive the harms promulgated by the inhumane systems. If one is dealing with depression, poverty, PTSD, and hateful aggression directed against oneself and one's people daily, it may be difficult to find time, will, and energy to fight the larger systems in organised ways with larger groups of people. That said, most radical and revolutionary activists are not privileged by wealth, lack of warfare, or by race, class, and gender. But most people are not race- and class-privileged, after all.

In countries that value corporate or State-funded academic learning as a site of "primary knowledge", we find that class- and education-privileged people are often assumed to possess the best qualifications to lead the rest of us out of trouble and into a better world. I probably used to believe this was the case to some degree at least: that only the "best and brightest" as determined by CRAP, could know what we need to do to end all forms of oppression. I not only don't believe that any more, but I also believe that the generally Liberal Academy has its own agenda and accomplishing anti-patriarchal, anti-racist, economically humane revolution for all women it is not.

Jessica Yee has edited a book that deals with this in much more detail. I hope in the coming months to discuss that book titled Feminism FOR REAL: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism. You may link to it *here*.

Across the last several decades, radical and feminist women of color have challenged many assumptions that are white supremacist and that are seemingly intransigently enthenched in white radical feminism and white liberal feminism. The white supremacy is entrenched, in part, by "radical feminists" who don't own or behave responsibly (meaning here: accountably to women of color) with the race-privilege, race-entitlement, and race-power loaded into their perspectives and courses of proposed or practiced action.

After publishing a recent post on this subject (see *here* for that), someone posted a comment which will not be published at this blog as it violates my Comments Policy: it's grossly racist, for one thing. It was submitted by someone who calls themself "Unknown". In it, there was an assumption that me challenging or naming the racism in white radical feminism was a divisive maneuver, was highly manipulative, and is an anti-feminist thing to do. What is often forgotten by whites is exactly how divisive and anti-feminist racism is in white radical feminism (and in white anti-radical, anti-feminist circles too). Typically, whites see the naming of our power and privileges as whites as "divisive" and the divisions they unintentionally highlight are those among white people.Whites don't relish having our collective power diminished, among all of us or among various constituencies of white people, including among conservatives, liberals, radicals.

The critique in the unpublished comment I suppose was sent in order to shame or silence me and others who name white power as such. That I am male (and white) is supposed to be cause for me to never name racism in any group other than white men. To clarify: that's not my politic (and is obviously not my practice), any more than it is my politic to not name sexism in any group other than white men. This blog exists to call out, name, challenge, analyse, and support activism fighting all forms of heterosexism, racism, and misogyny: including the racist misogyny that is so unchecked and unchallenged generally by white women, by white men, and by men of color--all across barriers of class, region, and sexuality.

So if you're not comfortable with me doing that, don't read the posts at this blog. My powers are incredibly limited due to not being part of any major industry, any academic institution, or any political office. I also don't own or control any media franchises, religious institutions, or tech software. But if you come here, please expect to see any expressions of classism, xenophobia, genocide, racism, heterosexism, and misogyny that I encounter socially called out for what it is and for what it does.

We can recall that anyone across race and gender who calls out white power as the destructive racist-misogynist force that it is, will be told to shut up by someone who is uncomfortable having a light shone on it. And so whether it is by a woman of color, a man of color, a white woman, or a white man (or male), I expect to see silencing tactics--rather than respectful tactics of mutual engagement--be employed. "Unknown" did a fine job of illustrating the knee-jerk reactive defence of white power, cloaked as being anti-feminist in this instance, that anyone challenging it is likely to experience. Sad but true. But beyond sad it is dangerous.

The danger is the important thing to not forget. For ideas, thoughts, and ideologies that are liberal, white supremacist, male supremacist, and heterosexist, all are powerful to the extent that they are practiced systematically, are structured into social systems, and are politically protected as speech and action both.

I support radical and feminist women of color challenging male and white supremacy in every environment they are in, endure, and fight against. I support anyone doing so in ways that are not, in and of themselves, misogynistic and racist.

From Herstory to History: What Happened to the News of the Girl Who (according to very few news reports) Sparked the Riots in London?

This is a cross post from The Vagina Conspiracy. Thank you, Lb'rashon Breed.


London Riots from Lb'rashon Breed on Vimeo.

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, and David Cameron, Prime Minister of the UK, are Conservative White Het Male Supremacists

photo of Boris Johnson and David Cameron is from here

Violence erupting among young poor Black men in London is a necessary response to all the violence against the Black community in England, committed by the capitalists, media, politicians, economic theorists, and military.

Anyone who argues otherwise is perpetuating lethal anti-Black activism in the form of well-organised systems of racist oppression and human destruction.

When will the racist thugs among the white het male-dominated police forces, white het male-dominated political leaders, WHM supremacist media (including that owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch), be held to account for the violence against Black people that they routinely and commonly commit?

Globalised Western corporate capitalism has produced unprecedented horrific poverty among people of color, grotesquely unjust and unearned wealth among whites, and the disparity between the two groups necessitates violence against the WHM supremacist State. Nothing short of violent retaliation will get anyone's attention. Nothing short of violent retaliation will get the media's attention. That violence by the poor will always be seen as more dangerous than the on-going violence of the white rich against the poor is something that is a fact of life in a white supremacist nation-state.

We see the same thing in the US and in every other country where male supremacy, white supremacy, and corporate capitalism are ideologically and institutionally fused to one another in the behavior and values of white wealthy mass murderers of the poor. We must keep in mind that multiracial regions globally, regionally, and in so many places locally where people of color live with (or near) whites, “the poor” are always disproportionately children and women of color. The poor may also be men of color, white women, and white men and children. But the poverty of whites is a by-product of racist/misogynist corporate capitalism: it is very specifically and deliberately designed to commit genocide and gynocide without media and elected politicians ever bothering to notice.