Can white women be allies to BME women?

If you see your dream job and a black colleague says they're applying do you drop out because you know your white privilege gives you an unfair advantage? If not, what use is the handwringing.

I would like to address this question about a dream job.

My answer would be that context is everything.

Who is my “black colleague”?

Do they identify as a Nuwuabian and protest the innocence of the serial paedophile Dwight York aka Malachi Z. York aka countless other aliases?

Are they involved with the NOI and thus, by association the Co$?

Are they involved with the Black Hebrew Israelites?

Do they promote “sacred kink” and / or “sacred prostitution”?

Are they a life coach with multiple links to cults and MLM scams?

Are they a member of Spac Nation, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God or any other controversial church with a long history of allegations of abusing and exploiting their followers (most of whom are from ethnic minorities)?

Do they or others define them as “ thought leaders?” Are they involved with any LGATs or dubious wellness or New Thought movements?

Do they define themselves as a humanitarian, a global citizen or a conscious capitalist?

Are they involved in far-right political movements?

Are they part of a movement that promotes one ethnic minority while oppressing / appropriating another ethnic minority?

Do they have connections to controversial psychotherapy cults and mental health charities, especially those working with issues of trauma?

I mention the above simply as various sinister forces are using the pain of people who have suffered racism to appropriate and infiltrate various activist groups and it benefits nobody except the very powerful people who wish to divide us all - and it seems to me that most of these powerful people are very often (not always but usually) white men.

From the OP
It feels like while women want black women to prioritize their sex over their race as an identity and seem incapable of accepting that BME women have multiple identities.

It seems that there are several issues here. Obviously the category of BME women is a diverse category. Given that acronyms like BME, BAME, POC etc. are problematic, given that the category and word “black” is problematic and given that these words and acronyms mean different things to different people, there is thinking to do around what they mean, who is included and excluded before this conversation gets started.

However, if for the sake or argument we use the term BME, as it was used in the OP, can we agree that within the BME category there are many different perspectives and opposing views and opposing views?

I need to ask you for clarity here as I am unable to commit myself to pledging any kind of support or alliance with any group of category when I do not know what I am expressing support or alliance with.
Recent issues with the BLM movement and its appropriation and astroturfing by various sinister actors (which I think we can all agree on) is highly relevant.

Back to the issue of the hypothetical dream job. For the sake or argument, I would like to share a video of Kenneth Ray Stubbs, one of the authors of the disgusting Deer Tribe Manual, alongside his fellow promoter of sacred prostitution, Rev. Goddess Charmaine.

Interested readers may be interested In a visitor post to Rev. Goddess Charmaine’s fb page a white male with AGP expresses his appreciation for her videos and anatomy.
www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=425694451702256&set=p.425694451702256&type=3&theater

Should I drop out of applying for my ream job to allow Rev. Goddess Charmaine (or some other similar BME woman who is networked into sex cults that promote sex with children and sacred prostitution) to have a better chance of securing the job? Am I allowed to have concerns about Rev. Goddess Charmaine and other BME women with cultic associations? Am I allowed to ask for clarification about who this black person is that I am supposed to give way to?

I have a question for you. If I drop out of applying for my hypothetical dream job to allow Rev. Goddess Charmaine or some other minority woman who poses a danger to vulnerable women and girls, (and especially women and girls from ethnic minorities) and that woman then goes on to recruit vulnerable women and girls into a life of sex work and making porn videos for white men with AGP, what responsibility to I have for not conducting due diligence?

I am asking because in your post you say that “hand wringing”is not helpful. I agree. You say that in order to prove commitment to ant-racist causes and equality that white women should drop out if applying for a dream job to allow a black person to have a better chance. Do you not think that, especially given the astroturfing of BLM and other movements (e.g. NOI and the Co$), that the “blackness”of the competing job applicant is only one identifying factor?

Should we not be conducting due diligence?

I mean I could drop out of my hypothetical dream job to allow someone like Rev. Goddess Charmaine or Candace Owens to occupy a position in which they make use of the position to influence society in a way that oppresses vulnerable women from ethnic minorities.

The thing is that the sinister forces seeking to manipulate society use a “bait and switch” MO. This is what happened with BLM UK. The BLM movement was astroturfed by Russian trolls and bots in 2018 and 2019. This does not mean that BLM is unimportant or that the movement itself is without virtue or that it was not originally an important cause and still is.

I am quite intelligent (at least in some ways - I am neuro-atypical and am not so clever in others), and I have been got with the old bait and switch a few times. There is no shame in trying to support an anti-racist cause and then withdrawing when you discover that it isn’t what you thought it was.

In my personal experience the times when I have been most vulnerable to bait & switch have been times when my cognitive abilities have been compromised by exhaustion, sleep deprivation, trauma, loneliness etc. It is the same for everyone I think.

Thus at this time when pretty much everyone is stressed and vulnerable to being tricked we should all be vigilant not to endorse sinister movements and causes that astroturf real grass roots activism, would you agree?

Or do you think that white women should drop out of the dream job application process to allow a black woman to have a better chance regardless of this black woman’s associates, affiliations etc?

Also, for the avoidane of doubt - there are plenty of white women doing what Rev. Goddess Charmaine is doing. The man who founded the odious Deer Tribe cult was a white man falsely claiming to be native American and thus Rev. Goddess Charmaine, through her association with Kennth Ray Stubbs (a Deer Tribe recruiter and member) is potentially putting BME women and girls at risk of exploitation by a sexually abusive cult - a cult that real native Amercian people tell me is a white supremacist militia. for a short read this is informative
<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200706095743/www.vice.com/en_uk/article/zn5kny/a-to-z-of-sexual-history-quodoushka-another-bullshit-sex-cult" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20200706095743/www.vice.com/en_uk/article/zn5kny/a-to-z-of-sexual-history-quodoushka-another-bullshit-sex-cult

Nothing normal about being told your very presence is an ongoing trauma to black woman, a la Di Angelo.

However, mentoring like this seems to be exactly the kind of thing the OP is saying white women aren't doing enough.
I guess it is. I just feel that , sometimes, this and all the D & I stuff in the workplace often serves to single out people because of a characteristic.
I suppose I just think, as I said earlier, that actually getting to know people, as individuals, and listening, yes, but not in a head tilt "I'm listening" way, just having normal conversations, is what creates real change.

@Etinox

I have a practical question. Black colleague I've know for years and like a lot has just Private Messaged me a video on facebook and asked me to share. It's an uncredited (I can't see the source) video about Black Migrants in Libya being sold as slaves. Googling I can see it's possibly footage from 2017, but the main point is that as a white woman I think it'd look like 'Slavery- they do it themselves' if I reposted so I haven't reposted and messaged her back saying the same. What would others do/ have done?

Maybe they could post it on their Facebook feed with their own commentary on the video and you can like the post or comment on it if you feel it's appropriate.

I wish people would stop using the terms BAME and BME. Or at least explain what they mean.

It's an uncredited (I can't see the source) video about Black Migrants in Libya being sold as slaves. Googling I can see it's possibly footage from 2017, but the main point is that as a white woman I think it'd look like 'Slavery- they do it themselves'
So who are "they" in this sentence?
This could be taken as black people being enslaved by a different majority ethnicity. I think this is an example of the confusion caused by simplistic binary thinking. The OP referred to "white" and "BME"; all racial and ethnic categories and somewhat ill defined, and BME or BAME are particularly confusing. Does BME include ethnic groups who are not black? Does it include white ethnic minorities? What about places where the majority population is black? Could the majority Arab/Berber ethnicities of Lybia be considered white? Some of them have pale skins and blue eyes.

"I think if feminists can’t accept white privilege exists in the same way male privilege does" That's the basis of the original intersectionalism.

It makes sense. But it is difficult to unpick in real life given the UK is predominantly white and has vast areas where there are many ethnicities but hardly any BAME individuals.

Out of kilter with that, the most successful rural womens business network here is run by 2 BAME women. Not sure anyone notices, I only did now, because I am typing this!

I am guilty of not considering BAME womens experiences as separate or additional to my own. I have always just been an ardent feminist, trying to make changes for women. I was coming here to post exactly what @MacaroonMama posted. We are possibly of an age!

I have been told, here and in real life, that my 'colour blindness' is the worst kind of racism. That has been very vehemently expressed. I have thought about that. I understand it is the result of my "Kum ba yah" liberal / hippy schooling in the 70s.

Maybe this could be the start of a real discourse about the differences, the additional issues and how white women can better understand.

I have a practical question.
Black colleague I've know for years and like a lot has just Private Messaged me a video on facebook and asked me to share. It's an uncredited (I can't see the source) video about Black Migrants in Libya being sold as slaves. Googling I can see it's possibly footage from 2017, but the main point is that as a white woman I think it'd look like 'Slavery- they do it themselves' if I reposted
so I haven't reposted and messaged her back saying the same. What would others do/ have done?

That and the cringy way he and the other managers have started singling out black and brown colleagues for mentoring, it just feels so patronising. The "soft bigotry of low expectations" was it? That describes what I see perfectly actually.

However, mentoring like this seems to be exactly the kind of thing the OP is saying white women aren't doing enough.

I agree about the cringe factor but at the same time, these poor people can't win for losing. They are being told that what they've been doing wasn't enough, they are contributing to racism, and they need to do all this to show they are on-side, to be good people.

Come on get with the programme - nobody can tell if you read a book, but the important thing is to post a picture on instagram (hygge accessories in winter, beach body photo in summer) and talk about 'learning', as though it was impossible for any white person to notice racism until 25th May 2020. Then you can be an 'ally'.

Oh yes
I'm DYING at work when my white, male boss starts waffling on about how he is busy educating himself on the impact of racism and how he can be a better "ally". Like, he somehow made it to 50 years of age but didn't realise racism was a thing until it was on Insta??
That and the cringy way he and the other managers have started singling out black and brown colleagues for mentoring, it just feels so patronising. The "soft bigotry of low expectations" was it? That describes what I see perfectly actually.
Yes, there is a definite resistance and defensiveness on the part of a lot of white people to accept that racism is real, and that just because some black people are bankers and some white people are homeless that doesn't mean that playing field is level.
It is true that, for a long time, I was put off the FWR board because every time I popped my head in it felt like everyone was very academic and a high earning professional and their experiences maybe didn't tally with mine (similar to what bluebooby said about class) but then I guess that's why it's important that we all come to the table with our own experiences, we talk to each other and we learn from each other. Women are quite good at that generally I find.
I am bit suspiscious about the recent wave of putting down women's opinions because they are white, or middle class, or middle aged, or whatever. It's like, white men, still running the world, but it's those white feminists you've got to watch. Hmm.
Late night ramble. Off to bed!

Have you ever considered that some of what is labelled 'sexism' is actually just a recognition of natural biological differences, and differences that result out of that - such as child care responsibilities/strength differentials and so on?

@Justhadathought do you not think sexism exists?

Another way of expressing privilege is that whatever a white person's situation is, it would be worse if she were not white.

This is kind of bunk, and I mean that in the nicest way, but it's just not true. Being black or white or brown is not independent from people's situation like that.

There are people who are non-white who come from very privileged backgrounds, whose families have had money and power. Someone like Afua Hirsche, or Ta-nehisi Coates, you can't separate their success from their race, or say, they'd have been better off white. Being non-white might have contributed to having some less than great experiences but that is not the same thing. And if you compare them to some poor white person living in a trailer park, from a long line of what some would call "white trash" that is a designation that places them hierarchically well below black working class or middle class people ,for people who have that hierarchical mindset. Their whiteness is seen as connected to their social level because they are the wrong kind of white person.

If you say, well, poor white people are better off than poor black people, you are dividing up the whole category or class and then trying to use those smaller divisions to say something about the class as a whole - which is a little fraught in terms of looking at data.

People's history as a family and individual, and their place and advantages/disadvantages are obviously related to their ethnicity. If you are a black refugee from Ghana from a family that values education that has affected your life in many ways like any family history does. But individuals and families don't share a single history with all people with the same skin colour.

I get the feeling sometimes that many people feel they have to affirm the idea of white privilege, or it means they are bigoted or aren't taking people's experiences of bigotry seriously.

But it's possible to see disparate outcomes across groups without thinking that the concept of privilege is a good or accurate way of describing why that happens.

This is the basic argument by those who don't want to use those terms - they don't accurately account for what is actually happening, and as such it tends to distort analysis. Not really teasing out what is correlation vs causation, for example, or whether the groupings you've used to look at the data are giving the impression of a particular result. In my working days we used to call that "situating the estimate" which means the analytical tools tend to create or give the perception of a particular kind of result. Usually because you already have an idea of what result you expect, and so the development of the tools, or the ones chosen, will reflect that perception.

There is an article from The Socialist Register on this, from a few years ago, that is well worth reading - Race, Class, Crisis: The Discourse of Racial Disparity and its Analytical Discontents - it lays out very clearly why analysis of statistics has to be handled very carefully - it can be found online by Googling, IIRC it's in PDF form.

I think it's also worth pointing out that the idea of white privilege has changed - in its original use it applied to very specific situations to describe concrete actions, for example where separating the working class by race was used as a technique in order to union break. That's rather different than pointing to an abstraction like "white privilege" as if it is a causative thing that creates disparate outcomes among groups.

Beyond that, as a rhetorical tool for combatting racism, it's a poor one that tends to divide people who need to be unified for political action, and reinforce essentialist views of race.

There are all kinds of reasonable reasons someone might reject the concept and language of privilege.

It feels like many white feminists refuse to accept that they benefit from any privilege in society due to their race

Yup, it's a who's got it worst contest. I'm more oppressed than you are.

Listening is a two way street. I just find this thread heart breaking. Everything I did has now all but vanished. I was made redundant. Staff have been reduced, stock selection is now outsourced, internal expertise is gone.

Just wanted to say that I'm so sorry that you are in this situation.

I have endured much adversity in my life and it has been my experience that sometimes the darkest hour is just before the sunlight breaks through.

That sounds a bit "positive thinking" (which I hate) but it is true.

It is also true that it is often possible to turn extremely challenging and even catastrophic situaitons to your advantage if you can stay thinking. This is my specialist area in fact :)

Children's publishing is rubbish, the range of stock available is far less diverse.

Could this mean there is the potential for you to fill a gap in the market?

We need sane, rational, empowering children's books now like never before

Just a little snippet about Candace Owens

www.hopenothate.org.uk/2019/02/05/everything-need-know-launch-turning-point-uk/

Turning Point UK is fascinating but oh so many rabbit holes and so little time

So when some readers say that white women will choose to side with a BME woman whose views align with their own and dismiss those of BME women with opposing views they are correct and this is an issue worthy of creative and thoughtful reflection.

To the racists where I live Trevor Phillips is a hero and they feel that they can claim the "I'm not racist" position by saying that they agree with him.

I have not heard them opine on Candace Owens yet but give it time and she will join Trevor Phillips in the category of BME people you can claim to like to prove you are not racist. Or something.

Dianne Abbot on the other hand is the devil incarnate as far as they are concerned.

It seems to me that whoever you are there will be good and bad things about you. All human beings are complex and possess a mixture of good and bad traits. All people are vulnerable to being manipulated by cults, including politicians, royalty and other people of influence.

The bullying and shaming of people, including politicians, is horrible and part of the pendulum swing to and from the extremes of left and right. Robust criticism is one thing but people seem to feel at liberty to bully and attack public figures to a level that is cruel and can result if very serious consequences.

The wish to "purge" and no-platform academics and politicians is like a collective version of the wish to purge the unwanted aspects of the self which manifests in various damaging activities including the use of skin whitening creams, the use of betonite clay for "colon cleanses", the use of "yoni pearls", "jamu sticks" and lysol vaginal douches, self harming by cutting, FGM and (at least in some cases) "gender reassignment surgeries".

Apologies for the derail.

I’ve had many conversations with BAME friends along the lines of have you thought of, are you interested in? Similarly a much younger colleague has really championed me to do things I hadn’t thought of because I felt too old. Championing other women is really powerful and effective.

So have I. I've interviewed for posts, and encouraged, mentored young black women. I've run inset days for teachers on libraries and books from the diversity point of view as well as actually advising on library stock. I've lobbied publishers about representation of black people including bias on Africa and history.

I've monitored stock in public libraries and created databases to enable access to those books. Ensured black writers and storytellers were represented in any programmes of activities. (Throughout the entire county including the all white towns.) Bought books from small independent black publishers. Consulted and worked with community organisations.

I've also worked with a wide range of staff, some who I would call viscerally rascist and others anxious and fairly ignorant e.g. worried about daughter having black boyfriend. I have never ever called anyone racist and would never use the term white privilege because it's counterproductive. It's a blame game, win lose set up. It sets up an immediate resistance.
If someone makes a statement like that to me my immediate response is to ask if that is true and that means trying to disprove it. That is a normal intelligent response not just about race. You only accept the idea of white privilege once you've thoroughly interrogated it and found it broadly true. But it still leaves the question of is it useful? I just don't think it is useful.

Difficult conversations are absolutely essential but have to be nuanced.
Listening is a two way street. I just find this thread heart breaking. Everything I did has now all but vanished. I was made redundant. Staff have been reduced, stock selection is now outsourced, internal expertise is gone.
Children's publishing is rubbish, the range of stock available is far less diverse.

This does not mean I believe white privilege and male privilege exist.

Major Double negative fail there - meant to say that I do not believe they don’t exist.

Can white women be allies to BME women?

No, OP, white women can never be allies to BME women, just as middle class women can never be allies to the working class women and... Basically, no person who does not have the exact same life experience as the other person can be an ally to that other person.
It is impossible and we must - each single one - remain in our unique, highly individualized bubbles, so that we are easier to rule by the moneyed class, who inexplicably is the only group of people where being an ally to one another comes naturally, and who kindly educate us in the media how we plebs are all too different and too oppressive of one another to be allies.

I read the article. I read White Fragility.
I disagree with both.

I agree.

I saw some ‘educational material’ explaining why white people who only date within their ethnic group are racist. I’ve also seen ‘educational material’ informing white people that exclusively dating another ethnic group is fetishising and thus racist. It is more commonly known as ‘if she floats, she’s a witch’.

I’ve read up extensively on Whiteness and how it should be abolished in education settings. Apparently, STEM subjects are rife with Whiteness and should pretty much be abolished.

As long as modern day activism of any sort is grounded in divisive, retributive and scientifically illiterate ideas, I cannot be part of it.

This does not mean I believe white privilege and male privilege exist. They are observable, in much the same way that it can be seen that a giraffe has a long neck. However, in much the same way that the giraffe’s neck can be explained using the scientifically accepted theory of evolution through natural selection or by Lamarck’s alternative and incorrect explanation of acquired characteristics, privilege can be explained using ideas that do not stand up to academic scrutiny.

Whether we're tackling racism or tackling misogyny or tackling eg. homophobia, it's all important work tackling prejudice and discrimination. If we have time to tackle two or more of those at once, fantastic, but I accept that not everyone does.

Time spent berating others for not tackling both racism and misogyny is time that could be usefully spent tackling one or the other.

So yes, I'd rather this thread didn't exist as it just foments division between two groups of people both doing important work. And takes up time that could usefully be spent tackling either racism or misogyny, or both.

So I'll leave this thread. As racism and misogyny haven't gone away while people were calling feminists racist or while feminists were stressing they did care about racism!

I'm trying to educate myself on intersectionality.

Very relevant to this issue is the issue of "nodes", the internet influencers who influence across multiple networks / categories of campaigning and activist groups, very often groups that are oppressed in various ways.

In my research into cults they have definitely targeted influencers who are effectively nodes occupying influential spaces across multiple networks.

It is not just cults that do this. Political parties identify tribes and nodes of influence when they are devising election and other campaigns.

Basically if you can brainwash, influence or bribe the right person you can influence countless others.

This is something that needs to be understood, as does its relationship to intersectionality, which can, if due dilligence is not followed, morph into tokenism and worse.

Sorry, really have to go for now, but just wanted to comment on this point

I actually find all the white people on here rushing to say sorry, thank you for educating me a bit cringy, in much the way I'd find a man saying that about feminism a bit cringy. A senior woman at work wrote a blog like this about her white privilege. It was supposed to show how much the organisation cared, but all it did was show how the organisation didn't actually have any BAME people in senior positions they could get to write a blog on racism!

So I do agree that less time spent mea culpaing and more time actively doing things to tackle racism would be more helpful.

As an ethnic minority woman, I don't give a shit if someone says they feel bad for their white privilege or whatever. It doesn't help any BAME people at all.

If you actually care, don't bother posting this stuff, spend the same amount of time signing a petition or writing to your MP to take some kind of action. If you want to read a book, read a book, but don't feel you have to tell everyone you read it!