In a world that doesn't really care about women WHEN it chooses to care, it is only for white women. You scream feminism but only fight for those who look like you. Y'all have been shielded from culpability all your lives and through history and been able to move in the system of oppression without getting blame when you have been active participants in the denigration of people of color and marginalized people. You have been the Damsel in Distress even as you've been the source of chaos. But still, you are protected above other women, because the way racism is set up, folks have been convinced that you are the default in womanhood. And part of what comes with that is you haven't learned to trust yourself. You didn't trust HRC to lead because you don't trust YOURSELF to lead.
COLLECTIVELY, y'all messed up on Tuesday.
So yes. You will sit in this discomfort and this shame. And you might choose to whine about it. What you should do is commit yourself to doing better. Look inward and see what part you've played.
Then we can move forward. For now, though, I'ma get these jokes off at your expense.
P.S. Read chapter 9 of my book (titled I'M JUDGING YOU). It's called "Nobody Wins at the Feminism Olympics.'"
Ajayi is an important writer to begin with and this is a very important sentiment.
To be clear: I'm not on the HRC bandwagon but I also did not and do not support trump. Just to get that straight.
I'm watching this election and the ensuing grief, fear, and bewilderment with my own trepidation, interest, and wonder. One of the things that gives me courage is that no one is allowed to be innocent.
None of us are allowed to be innocent.
I've tried to write about the place of white women as an idea, an archetype, in the cultural imagination before. I want to do this because I am a real, living, breathing white woman. Also, because I find ideas of white manhood and all that it entails-- unearned privilege, unearned pressures, etc. I find ideas of black manhood and all that entails-- undeserved criminalization, unrecognized humanity. I find ideas of black womanhood and all that entails-- unending pressures and responsibilities, unshared burdens. White women always feel a bit like a blank space. Unformed.
White women en masse love Oprah. White women en masse love Michelle Obama. White women voted for Trump.
White women were the excuses for lynchings of Black men. The accusation of looking at a white woman was enough to kill a Black man.
Helen of Troy was a white woman. As Ajayi wrote, "you have been the damsel in distress... and the source of chaos." That false innocence, that innocuousness has also meant lack of accountability. Along with lack of accountability, it means denial of responsibility, lack of agency, and power.
It's bullshit.
I'm not innocent. I never was. But I felt like I got a pass.
On Wednesday, after trump became president elect, when I walked down the rain soaked streets I passed a Black man who looked at me like, "Was it you, Judas?" And I wanted to pull out my radical ally card and beg my innocence, "It wasn't me! I swear!" And I thought, "This. This will be another side effect of this moment. This betrayal. My past actions don't matter. My current actions do." To be trustworthy, I have to be accountable. I have to keep showing up. I have to be culpable and also accountable. I have to have as much blood on my hands as anyone else, and I also have to have ownership.
And that means I get to belong.
Part of the myth of innocence is not being a part of the whole, not making decisions, not having a seat at the table, not showing up. I don't get to be innocent and I also don't abnegate my own power.
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