As a Black woman, I exist at this intersection of race and gender. I am oppressed by my racial and gender identity simultaneously, yet my struggles are constantly dismissed and invalidated. I am invisible to white feminists, and I am invisible to Black men, yet both groups feel entitled to my labor. White feminists want Black feminists to be “woman first” and Black men want Black women to be race first, but we’re not privileged in either identity so we cannot toss one aside in our fight for equality. These groups only recognize me when they need someone to exert power over, they only recognize me when they need me to mule for their benefit and I am fed up.
It is very apparent in conversations with white women who claim to be feminists that they only want to talk about the gender oppression that affects them, there’s this “omg why’d you have to bring race into it” sentiment when I bring up gender oppression that is specific to Black women. It’s almost like they’re annoyed that my experience reminds them that they have white privilege. They don’t want to see themselves as oppressors and they especially don’t like to be reminded that they, as women, can oppress men of color. This brings me to the Tik Tok my classmate Nicole Guidetti shared which talks about white women’s specific brand of white privilege. White supremacist patriarchy paints white woman as damsels in need of saving and white women have historically weaponized this against Black and other people of color. This costed Emmett Till and many others their lives, and it’s still being used to harm people of color today. We’ve seen so many “karens” in the last couple of years, its disturbing. Please note that they are not just weaponizing whiteness, they are weaponizing white womanhood. Black women are not afforded femininity, we are seen as aggressive and manlike, which makes it easy for white women to weaponize their tears and false victimhood against us. Too often the black woman in the karen situation is the one being victimized, and the white woman uses their privilege to escape accountability. There’s no woman solidarity between white women and women of color. Too often white women side with their whiteness, we saw this with the white female vote for trump. White women constantly fall back on their privilege, which begs the question, do they want equality, or do they just want white male privilege?
Male privilege is a hard topic to bring up but it’s especially hard to bring up within the Black community. Black men similarly to white women don’t want to see themselves as oppressors. It’s hard for them to recognize themselves as privileged because they are oppressed by their race and greatly at that. Every time I bring up misogyny with Black men, they deflect by bringing up racism. At the height of the BLM protests in 2020, I pointed out the centering of Black males despite the movement being created by Black women. I was told that Black women don’t go through as much as Black men do. But Breonna Taylor was murdered by police in her sleep, yet they weren’t marching for her, they were marching for George Floyd. Black men have the privilege of being the face of Blackness, their issues are well known and fought for, but Black women don’t receive that same privilege. In “Oppression” Marilyn Frye states, “If a man has little to no material or political power, or achieves little of what he wants to achieve, his being male has no part of the explanation. Being male is something he has going for him.” Black men fail to realize this. In white corporate America Black men are more likely to be promoted over Black women, in the Black community and predominantly Black countries their male privilege benefits more extensively. Black men are more likely to be promoted in their careers over a Black woman; Black music genres are Black male dominated; Black activism centers Black men. Black men barely recognize the racial violence that Black women experience, of course they also refuse to acknowledge the misogyny they inflict on us. Black male rapists are protected in the Black community, is that not male privilege allowing them to escape accountability? This begs the question; do they want equality, or do they just want white privilege?
It’s a painful existence when communities you are supposed to be a part of invalidate your experiences. I get no comfort or solidarity from white or even other women of color. I get no comfort or solidarity from Black men. White female privilege is seeing your featured be represented as beautiful, I want that. Black male privilege is having your plight be recognized, it’s not having to worry about catcalled or being sexually assaulted if you’re out too late, I wish I had that. Like Peggy Macintosh says in “White Privilege: unpacking the invisible knapsack” “not all of the privileges [are] inevitably damaging. Some like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you, or that your race doesn’t count against you in court, should be the norm in society”. The parts of male privilege and white privilege that I want are the parts that every human should have by default, the right to be human, the right to be seen, the right to be an individual, etc. I don’t care for the rest because the rest are damaging, no one should have the power to harm others and get away with it.
