White women- it's all your fault

[WeldMeDaphne]

I will preface this by saying that I am indeed a white woman. And I realise this affords me a lot of privilege.
Among a lot of the rhetoric around the Events unfolding in the US (mostly Charlottesville), I've seen a number of open letters to white women about our complicity in the neo-nazi and white supremacist movement in the US and elsewhere. Clearly those women marching last week on the nazi side were white, but there was a lot of suggestion that those white women not marching but associated with men marching (wives girlfriends etc) were just as culpable as the men wielding torches and assault rifles. I guess I would like some help understanding how this is a white woman issue rather than the white men being responsible for their own actions? I get that one of those pieces said those men are going home to pie cooked by their doting wives but I just feel as though a man who holds those views and has no issue with demonstrating them publically is unlikely to be a caring loving husband?
I am fully prepared to listen to all view points and I totally understand that the people on these marches are white, but they're mostly men, right? Sonhow is this women's fault?

Ok, but it's not black men speaking to us here in this women's space, it's black women.

No more insulting than talking about male privilege. If we can't generalise people "as a class" then feminism can't exist.

Maybe they have been assaulting black women / WOC?

59% of the people proven to be wrongly convicted of sexual assaults in the US are black

I don't even know what that means. It could mean they did it, but the sexist / anti-woman court system overturned their cases on appeal.

It could mean that we need to bring the conviction rate of white men up, not that of black men down.

"Black people serving time for sexual assault are three-and-a-half times more likely to be innocent than white defendants that have been convicted of sexual assault. The bulk of the racial disparities in sexual assault convictions can be explained by white victims who mistakenly identify black assailants, said Gross, particularly when the victim is a white woman and the offender a black man.
Gross said white people are less likely to accurately identify black faces -- a concept known as "own race bias" in cross-racial identification."

From a CNN article about the study on enonerations. Some were exonerated by DNA or the real criminal being caught. White women aren't making up rapes but they are misidentifying black men in significant numbers.

And I would ask you: if racist views (in particular, a belief in essentialism) can be held by black men and women, are they also to blame for the racism seen in the world? To a degree yes. The internalised self hate projected onto other black people by other black People because of the effects of slavery and colonialism. It has become a means by which black people police one another to stay within those racist ideals/ideology. Within black people it would be known are colourism/colorism and not racism. Reason being black people would be categorised in the same race so it's the shade of black, brown, yellow born (not in the Chinese derogatory term but in lighter shade of preferred black people) and red born also preferred. This has all come down from racism and how each colour was viewed by white people during slavery as means of pricing black people.
It's a topic that is talked about a lot and features often in debates black people have because it's everywhere. Black people do acknowledge this and know it exist and tackling it together with racism it's almost impossible because the two go hand in hand.

I am going to go back to the title of the thread.
"White women it's all your fault" a possible explanation from the person's who might have said this would have been referring to how trump got into power. That is the context I have come across it. It's referring to the women who voted for trump. What white women on this thread have to understand is that it was expected that white men would vote for trump. What people didn't expect was the percentage and level or the number that would rather vote trump to Hilary a fellow woman to protect their race. Charlottesville is the result of trump being voted. The racial tension was already there but they feel that they can stand up now because of trumps approval. If you say we are in this together, which has become a song on threads like these, the question is, what happened to those women who voted trump? They couldn't have all been coerced. Which makes it not only a white mans problem but a white problematic racism always is.

When thinking about this just remember that white men are already the default racist with a misogynistic head of state who supports their ideals. Yesterday I seeing people who claiming they would dies for him on the news. If some white women think that they are not racist, the actions speaker louder than words and the American elections was one of them.

I am fully prepared to listen to all view points and I totally understand that the people on these marches are white, but they're mostly men, right? Sonhow is this women's fault? From the op. I guess most wanted white women views. This should have been stated earlier on and I would not have waisted my time and days off on this. Or was it for woc to come and pat you on the back and state how you are not part of racism. It's the menz only only issue and we are just riding along. We are oppressed to like you woc and we can't be oppressive. If I said something of a similar manor based on sexuality to a gay or lesbian persons it would be the dumbest thing ever, or a white gay or lesbian person saying the same to me about race.

I guess what the thread and tone wanted is for women to say it's because society view every issue women's fault. Held to a higher standard than men. The thing is the white men are not denying their part in racism. It's white women claiming they are not responsible for white men's racism (true) but that's not the issue. The issue is about the denials and claims that because you are disadvantaged you can't be part of the problem.

Ok - so if we accept something from CNN then what we know is that the white women did not make up the rape / sexual assault, the rape / sexual assault was by a black man, but the justice system screwed up and they got the wrong man. That's awful and a massive problem and unjust and all sorts of things. But no woman made up the rape.

What people didn't expect was the percentage and level or the number that would rather vote trump to Hilary a fellow woman to protect their race

I'm confused. How do we know it was to protect their race?

No more insulting than talking about male privilege. If we can't generalise people "as a class" then feminism can't exist

Different thing altogether. Women as a sex are inherently different from men as a sex. We don't need to generalise them as a class because they are actually already in a distinct separate grouping. Feminism can and does exist without generalising in arbitrary classes.

Separating ALL white women from ALL women of colour is a made up distinction without an objective basis.

Surely the vast majority of women being raped, battered and murdered by black men are also black?

I've seen 'white feminism' explained as white women failing to see extra pressures on black women such as higher rates of dv.

Which doesn't really seem to tally with white women wrongly accusing black men of violence.

I've read a lot about false imprisonment and the lives ruined by it. The problem is almost always elected legal departments trying to clean up crime by fitting up an easy suspect, which in some areas will often mean a person of colour. This is a huge human rights issue and a disgrace to the so called justice system, but for christ sake it isn't the fault of victims of male violence.

All white women belong to a privileged class? That's clearly ridiculous as a suggestion.

Well yes, just like men belong to a privileged class. It doesn't mean every white woman is privileged over every black woman just like not every man is privileged over every women but taken as a class, yes. I think it was clear that I was t talking about individual women all being privileged. This is another comment I made yesterday. People who look at arguments as broad as racism and sexism and think of it as "i" for oneself and not "we" the collective of what the argument is about. It loses the magnitude and significance of the issue and makes it trivial because the next person down the road is better than "I am " and they are black or Indian. In which case the argument must be void or baseless. What they haven't considered is the intricacies of views within those ideologies.

No, but when a white woman says "that man raped me" her words count for a lot more if that man is black rather than white. There is also obviously deeper racism at play because own race bias doesn't seem to lead to wrongful convictions in the same way when black women are raped by white men. A white woman's word counts for more in that legal system than the word of a black man or a black woman. These men are spending time in jail for crimes they didn't commit.

You've already said that you think black men are only interested in talking about racism (which will no doubt be the racism that most affects black men) and not sexism and many white women here seem to only want to talk about sexism and not racism, where does that leave black women?

No, they don't think I for oneself, they think WE for me and all the many women like me. To reduce a complicated and sophisticated issue to the binary state of white vs colour is as inane as it is unhelpful.
A woman living on the streets of Mumbai has about as much in common with a wealthy african-american woman in New York or a Saudi princess as I do with a kettle.

It's so simplistic. It's like a child's view point.

Morris, you are right. The majority of victims of black male violence are black women, but those cases are not resulting in miscarriages of justice at a rate that is different to when white women are victims of white male violence. Almost all of the difference in miscarriages of justice is made up of cases where the victim is white and the accused black.

not every man is privileged over every women

No... maybe not. My jury is actually out over that one. But I do think that men have physical and bodily privilege over women by virtue of having a penis and muscular strength. I've also been patronised, spoken down to and belittled by 'non-white' men in personal and professional contexts because they 'know' that as men they are superior to women. And my answering back and arguing has been called racist.

A woman living on the streets of Mumbai has about as much in common with a wealthy african-american woman in New York or a Saudi princess as I do with a kettle

All are oppressed and seen as second class to men. To different degrees all live in fear of rape and sexual assault. To different degrees all live in the knowledge that they could be faced with a life-threatening or unwanted pregnancy and all require access to birth-control. Not to the same degree or in the same way, but there are some shared issues there.

Almost all of the difference in miscarriages of justice is made up of cases where the victim is white and the accused black

Looked at a different way most of the miscarriages of justice happen when the victim is female and the rapist gets off.

Well, the disabled, black homeless guy with obvious mental health problems that I pass on the way to work as I leave the house I own, with my Starbucks coffee on my way to my secure, public-sector job certainly seems less privileged than me. I've come across black men in the workplace who were definitely more privileged than I am though. As I said, individual cases are individual and there are exceptions to the general pattern.

Ok I should have specified, you are right. But then you could also add any number of white women who they have much more in common with than other examples of women of colour. It isn't their colour that gives them anything in common, it's being women. None of the shared issues mentioned are shared by colour, they are shared by sex.

As I said, individual cases are individual and there are exceptions to the general pattern

Not when there isn't a general pattern.

So women are not, overall, less privileged than men? And POC are not, overall, less privileged than white people?

Well, the disabled, black homeless guy with obvious mental health problems that I pass on the way to work as I leave the house I own, with my Starbucks coffee on my way to my secure, public-sector job certainly seems less privileged than me

I came across one of these on the train the other day with the exception that he wasn't black. He was calling women a range of sexist names from 'love' to 'cunt' and leering at us. No one stopped him. We all knew our places and shuffled up the carriage to be as far away as possible. giving up our seats as we did so.

So women are not, overall, less privileged than men?

Yes, obviously.

*And POC are not, overall, less privileged than white people?

Much murkier. As you just said women are less privileged than men, yes? So you can't then say that men of colour are less priviliged than white women. The two can't both be true.
Men of colour around the world are far more privileged than a lot of white women around the world. Half the world at least is made of "people of colour", are you suggesting entire continents are less privileged?

You're starting to get quite racist once you get onto that tack....

Ok I should have specified, you are right. But then you could also add any number of white women who they have much more in common with than other examples of women of colour. It isn't their colour that gives them anything in common, it's being women. None of the shared issues mentioned are shared by colour, they are shared by sex

Agreed. I think I read you wrongly. My bad.

The guy that I pass has never done any of those things that I've seen and I see him at least a couple of times a week.

The guy that I pass has never done any of those things that I've seen and I see him at least a couple of times a week

But what does this prove? He could if he chose. The potential for that privilege as a man is still there.