White Feminism

[Brefugee]

suggested from another thread, is this something we should talk about. At the risk of being accused of being a TAAT it isn't that.

But on another thread a black MNer said that at a conference she had experienced racist comments from a panel, and she was the only one who pointed it out. And had been the only black person in the room.

The reason i brought up White Feminism on that thread was that the poster was instantly dismissed as a potential derailing troll. Which is... well not sure if the person dismissing the poster is white or not, but it was pretty much the very same treatment. Immediately written off as insignificant.

I've seen comments on the FWR board before that White Feminism rears its ugly head a lot, and that black mumsnetters don't feel comfortable on the board.

I find that shocking. But I'm not black or of any other minority. I'm a white 2nd waver - and i hope that i don't make racist comments or dismiss black women's experiences. I do hope that if i did, they would point that out to me. (and I'd be sorry they have to do that work)

So - should we talk about this? I do think it causes rifts where we should have bridges.

@Rummikub I empathise.

Thanks @NewNameNigel

whilst waiting in hospital
waiting rooms I do see the difference in how people are treated.

But every country with publicly funded social systems has to decide how to fund them. They depend on the nation's productivity to do that. That's the case whether they are all paying individually through taxes, or you have large employers or the rich paying more, however you set it up. It's productivity that funds it.

The nation as a whole of course includes people who aren't productive, children and the elderly who will at some point be productive, and then a certain number of people who are unable to contribute, but we provide for them anyway because they are citizens, and that's the deal.

But we draw limits around that - no nation can afford to support the whole world. That doesn't mean that we don't believe those people deserve healthcare.

For people who come to a new country, it's always going to be a question of how to give them access if they are not citizens, or have another special status that entitles them In most cases, those involve paying into the economic system, with the idea that the person's productivity will contribute. We do make some provision for people like refugees who can't work, on a humanitarian basis.

But as far as people like tourists, students, people who are on temporary work visas, - the most common approach is to require these people who won't be paying in long term to purchase some kind of private health insurance. In some places they can opt into state schemes.

I don't know any country that just lets anyone who shows up use social systems without becoming integrated into the larger economic system. It's not economically feasible.

At which point do something become deliberate though? At what point is 'unconscious bias' actually just racist. We need to call things what they are in order to make progress. We can't be so scared of hurting white peoples feelings that we are not clear on what is what. Unconscious bias is racist. Whether intended or not. White feminism hurt black women, whether intended or not. The outcomes for non whites is discriminatory suffering. It does not matter really what the intent was (this is easy to fabricate too).

disclaimer: posting as white ally

No. Racism transcends feminism. We see examples of this, on this board, more frequently than I my heart can take.
I can not phantom how women who are so clued up on gender discrimination can be so utterly blind to the discrimination of black and brown people.

It literally says people were charged incorrectly. So all the puff about boundaries being needed is irrelevant. We have the limits in place. Some women within the limit we drew are being incorrectly seen as outside the limit and charged with very negative consequence. It seems highly probable that race is relevant to the women within the limit being seen as outside of it and being chased erroneously.

Aaah, but these are brown women. And they are not "contributing" sufficiently so it's.not unreasonable to assume they actually don't have the right to access. <sarcasm alert for people at rhe back>

IME most women who are caught by maternity charging came to the UK on a family visa to join a husband or partner who is British or who has indefinite leave to remain. She will have paid £1,048 (or £1,538 if applying from outside the UK) for a visa that lasts 2.5 years, plus £624 per year healthcare surcharge. This is now being hiked to £1,035 per year which the government says is to pay for public sector wage increases.

https://www.jcwi.org.uk/unions-migrant-organisations-statement-public-sector-pay-rise

If she brought dependent children with her she will have paid the same for each of them.

Then after 2.5 years she has to find that money all over again to renew her & her children's visas for another 2.5 years. That is a LOT of money to find, especially as she will have no recourse to public funds, so no UC to top up low wages, no help with rent.

She can apply for fee waivers but will need to show her family is actually destitute and there is a lot of ground between destitution and not having several £K spare every couple of years.

Inevitably some families simply can't afford to renew their visas and the home office does not do payment plans. So they become 'overstayers', subjected to the full force of the 'hostile environment', including NHS charging, which is deliberately set to be punitive, at twice what the treatment costs to the NHS.

These women are 'integrated into the larger economic system' - they are working, frequently within the same public services they have no right to use. They are paying tax and NI. Very often the child they are giving birth to will be British.

Regardless of your views on immigration, the fact that there is a group of overwhelmingly black and brown women who are too scared to access antenatal care for fear of being landed with a debt that they cannot pay, and which will affect future visa applications, cannot be ignored when considering what is causing racial disparities in maternity care.

I had a sarcasm alert but doesn't seem to have appeared. I was being sarcastic, in case that's not clear.

Are NHS employees racist?
I don't know where your hospital is, but when I've attended hospital in London a good majority of the staff I saw weren't white.

Yes, I did laugh at the everyday feminism link.

Old thread here:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/2922503-Everyday-Feminism-may-be-closing

Unity smacks more of authoritarianism though, can feminism not be “A Broad Church”‘where differences are ago?

I don't think we can just draw that conclusion. I think hospital and medically billing situations are very prone to being incorrectly done, it's easy to make errors, and they aren't picked up, and I think it happens a lot.

It's always going to happen mainly to people who aren't regular users of the NHS, and within that group, to people who have poorer English or otherwise are less able to navigate the system. Because they won't be as able to keep an eye on whether things are being done correctly.

So I wouldn't be at all surprised that you would in that group have a much higher proportion of people from outside Europe.

Again - "racism" isn't a material cause. You can't do anything about a problem without understanding the concrete mechanisms. If the material cause is - people don't understand how they are supposed to be billing, or there isn't enough help for non-English speakers, or even, people are nefariously charging non-white people the wrong way on purpose, that's a material cause. All with different potential solutions.

Just noting disparities in itself is just not that useful, and calling all disparities racism, in the way people like Kendi does, tends to lead to poor solutions. Especially given that often, it's not really even race based - if you break racial groups down by ethnicity, class, language abilities, education, you often see there is significant variation.

That's a lot of words to basically say that people might be charged incorrectly, but the fact that they're black and brown is just a coincidence, and is very unlikely to be with institutional racism.

I despair.

My cousin almost died due to institutional racism in the nhs.
She has ab ectopic pregnancy and nearly bled to death because her internal bleeding was missed due to her lips not being blue - black people's lips do not go blue. She is only alive today because she was spotted leaving the hospital by a black doctor who noticed she had a grey tinge. Her stomach was filling up with blood.

This is not an isolated incident. Many black women have died. Whether or not the individual staff are racist is irrelevant.

Asian kids consistently outperform white and black kids. Is that to do with racism?

You dont understand what racism is.

Yes, that is a clear example of black women being failed at a structural level and across the institutions that train staff. Whether or not the individual staff are racist is indeed irrelevant - it is a specific failing that should be readily fixable.

However, I was responding specifically to Rummikub's remark that whilst waiting in hospital waiting rooms they see the difference in how people are treated by NHS staff.

It's not arguing with a black woman, it's about saying these are equally offensive "to you". We all have our prisms and our priorities. For me it's radical feminism.

I would really urge Black women as a whole to avoid engaging in these matters with white women. Reni Eddo-Lodge wrote about it in a manner far more articulately than I could ever muster but that's really the long and short of it. White women as a class are really not your allies.

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/30/why-im-no-longer-talking-to-white-people-about-race

Just read this article about Reni Eddo-Lodge’s book and it pretty much summed up all the reasons that this thread is pointless.

This is not to say that there are not some lovely white people in this conversation who have made some excellent in tune points but…

@DojaPhat Thank you for preventing me from wasting anymore time on this thread. Peace out ✌🏾

I’m sorry you feel that way Doja. I’m a white woman and I wish brown and black women well. This thread was first posted on sex and gender and it seems to me that women of all skin tones have a common interest in keeping male bodied people out of women’s single sex spaces, whether those are prisons, rape crisis centres, our and our daughters’ changing rooms etc. we also have a common interest in protecting our children from the unnecessary medicalisation that sometimes goes with GI. Allison Bailey is an ally to me, if I can switch it round. I hope prominent white GC people (like JKR) are allies to her.

@DojaPhat I’m tapping out too. Thanks for the much needed reminder. Exhausting and pointless.

Thanks @DojaPhat