I wanted to be a good young woman. I wanted to be able to tell the future generations about how I was apart of a movement that rocked the world. But there was one problem: the movement wasn't apart of me.
I went out on Saturday on the National Mall with the expectation that women from all over would come out in droves and protest satan's incarnate who had just taken the highest office in America just 24 hours before. I went with the expectation that I would see witty signs with overly-’punned’ slogans that would make anti-women, anti-LGBTQ rights, "pro-choice", oppositionists quiver in disgust. But back to that problem of the movement not being apart of me.
Intersectionality— a phrase coined by scholar Kimbelé Williams Crenshaw that describes the word as:
The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.
You hear intersectionality a lot when talking about topics such as feminism (an oxymoronic term that applies to only a fraction of women— specifically white women). But nevertheless after going to Saturday's assembly, I have just a couple of discrepancies:
First, can we acknowledge the fact that this march ignored the concerns of some women? I mean, maybe, initially the naming process may have been in good faith, but it had very excluding qualities. The initial name for the now "Women's March on Washington" (WMW) was originally named "Million Women March" after the 1997 march consisting of majority Black women in Philadelphia in response to Black women not being represented and recognized. When people expressed their uncertainty with the organizer's choice of title basically appropriating the original name of a March meant for Black women, the organizers gave a little pushback, but eventually changed the name. The second name, however, wasn't so hot. The "Women's March on Washington" appropriated the name of a historic movement that was meant to solidify rights for Black Americans during the Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and, once again, the organizers received pushback, but this time their response was a little different. From individual claims, some people acknowledged how they were blocked and "uninvited" from the WMW Facebook page after expressing their discomfort of the "March on Washington" name to be recycled. And to me, this response from the organizers seems like a complete repudiation of acknowledging 'all' women's concerns.
Secondly, can we acknowledge the idea of "sisterhood" as it applies to "all women". Allow me to say this: BLACK WOMEN HELD DOWN THEIR RESPONSIBILITY TO GET HILLARY CLINTON ELECTED INTO OFFICE. 94% of us to be exact.
Forewarning: I will be as candid as possible (as far as my pseudo-intellectual Twitter A&M education will take me)
As a Black woman, I feel like this march was asking for Black Women to foot the bill for a meal that we didn't even eat, let alone, were invited to. This march didn't have to be for us. This march wasn't our responsibility because we did our job as Black women when it came to the voting polls. So it baffles me when I hear that women "have a responsibility" to work for women's rights because we’re told time and time again that our issues as black women aren’t a priority. Sisterhood was a BIG reoccurring theme for the WMW. I even saw a sign that read "women must support each other". The problem is that this "sisterhood" isn't interchangeable. Where was this sisterhood when Sandra Bland was thrown to the ground forcefully, arrested illegally, and presumably killed? Instead of compassion people asked why she was being "combative"? Or when Rekia Boyd was wrongfully shot and killed by an officer ? Or when seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley Jones was recklessly shot and killed on her grandmother's couch? Or even recently when Leslie Jones was subject of racist and misogynoiric attacks on social media and her private life? Or how there was a massive silence on the 27 transgendered people killed in 2016? If the movement were really intersectional, someone would’ve openly criticised Scarlett Johansson’s stance on Donald Trump on how she ‘wants to support him, but he has to support her first’. Oh the joys of white non-intersectional feminism, when your whiteness allows you to overlook the awful things he’s said and done to LGBTQ, Latinos, Muslims, disabled etc. The point of intersectional feminism is so that it makes sure that everybody has a seat at the table (dun-dun-tsk). Another thing, why are Black women always told we’re being “divisive” when bringing up issues within the feminist community? What’s divisive about airing our problems in a movement that doesn’t recognize them as problems? Intersectional feminism isn't leaving thank you notes on the cars of police officers, and high-fiving them for being nice to you at your march, while completely ignoring that if this march had been BLM, law enforcement would conduct themselves with hostility. If only you’d seen how the chants went to murmurs when it was time to say “Black Lives Matter” or "refugees are welcome here!". Ignoring these very facts alone is the root of the problem when it comes to feminism.
So, in essence, yesterday’s march was somewhat successful when forcing people to recognize the strength of women united. But the problem doesn’t just lie in talking about intersectionality alone. We also have to have discussion about that 53% of White women who voted for Trump. But that’s another conversation for another day.