Intersectionality and inclusive feminism

[Amelanchier]

I have been reading comments on another thread and it has raised some questions for me. I ask these from a position seeking to understand different perspectives and consider how that changes my thoughts and behaviour.

I consider myself a feminist. I am white. I recognise that women of colour (is that just a US term or is it the preferred term in UK also now? If not then apologies, no wish to offend) experience racism and sexism. Both are wrong. Dealing with racism and sexism together must compound the difficulties WoC experience make life - I get that. What else do I need to know? What is it about modern feminism that excludes WoC? How can I behave differently to ensure my feminism includes WoC? Any recommended reading, for a UK rather than US perspective?

So what do you think is the way forward? It was mentioned earlier that WEP met at a place with £4 drinks and that excluded a lot of people. Books are a significant barrier to many, due to cost, literacy and - significantly - time. I have been campaigning for a different oppressed group and I would have got nowhere telling politicians, council workers or journalists to read a book. Lots of people have campaigned before me for minimal gains, any local changes we have managed to instigate are minimal and often barely keeping things standing still. I just don't know what the alternative is?

@Lovelyricepudding I know that you probably don't mean it this way but it's coming across a bit like you are blaming black women for their own oppression because they haven't tried hard enough. But I will assume good faith here.

Listen to black women. You don't need to read books, there is a wealth of free information out there even on Instagram and Tik Tok.

Start noticing the fact that when feminist panels talk they are often all white. Raise this with the organizers.

Notice when there is a room of women and all but one are white. Reflect on how it feels for you in a room where you are the only woman. Use your empathetic reaction to work out how you help this woman have a voice.

White women often assume that, as the "default" women, all women share their experience and talk over women of colour and tell their experience is not real. Men often do this to women so I am sure you are familiar with how frustrating this is. Learn to recognise when you do this and stop.

If a person has enough data.on thier fadget to start a debate on mn, they will have enough data to Google different articles they can read online.
They will.not have to buy books

Only "they" want change? Here's the thing. The majority group needs to decide that change is wanted. Until then, no matter how much minority groups create awareness, write books, agitate, and protest, nothing changes.

By the way, there is a lot of awareness of issues affecting women of colour out there already, you just need to have your eyes open and see them. Create your own awareness. But there's not a great big reason to do it, is there? Your life is different and apart.

Only "they" want change? Here's the thing. The majority group needs to decide that change is wanted. Until then, no matter how much minority groups create awareness, write books, agitate, and protest, nothing changes.

Exactly and I think @Lovelyricepudding's post has exposed a big issue. Their feminism doesn't want to change things for black women enough for them to make the effort. Therefore their feminism does not include me.

@KylieKoKo The fact that I have had this very similar conversation for the last three full decades, in both the US and UK contexts, shows how slowly this kind of change happens. I read This Bridge Called My Back at a summer study programme in the early 1990s. I dare anyone of any ethnicity to read that collection of writing and come away claiming they can't see why women of colour feel the different ways they do. Empathy is required.

@Amelanchier Knowing and caring is what is needed. You asked this question, so I take that as caring. As a woman of mixed ethnicities and a few times an immigrant, I have had to acclimate to majority cultures and figure out how to survive and thrive in them. That is hard work, and I am exhausted. You never belong, you can be an object of curiosity. And yes, I feel bitterness about the fact that the world that I have to navigate prefers people who don't look like me, because it was made by people who don't look like me. And still, some of those people are asking me to make them aware of me. Exhausting. So I choose to focus on the people who actually care about me and read these kinds of threads so that I can prepare my children to be tolerant and ready for living as a minority. I hope it will be different for them, but it seems like it will be more of the same. The story of Child Q horrified me to the core. That could happen to my girls. Yet it's a fine line, knowing that I have to prepare them for this in life yet we encourage them to live a whole life, unencumbered. My dearest friend in the UK is a white woman. We are sisters. She cares about me and my family in a genuine way. She doesn't understand how some things feel different to me than they do to her, but she cares that I feel differently. Our daughters are best friends, and just this morning, my DD has said to me that there is no difference between me and X except our skin colour and our hair texture. Now imagine if those colours and textures were truly "equal". That would be something.

The fact that I have had this very similar conversation for the last three full decades, in both the US and UK contexts, shows how slowly this kind of change happens.
I feel you @OuttaBabylon its exhausting. Yet there seems to be an expectation that we need to keep repeating ourselves despite the fact that what we say is generally ignored. I feel at this stage it is willful ignorance so white people don't have to change.

Yet there seems to be an expectation that we need to keep repeating ourselves despite the fact that what we say is generally ignored. I feel at this stage it is willful ignorance so white people don't have to change.

This is the thing. This is absolutely correct. The very goal of racism is to keep you from doing your work. If I have to stop to keep re-living my trauma and re-explaining myself to those who have no intention to listen to me then I will become exhausted and give up on making any meaningful change. This suits white people brilliantly because not only can they appear to care but they simultaneously can maintain the status quo. This is what racism in modern society looks like.