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The Revolution Will Be Complicated
Out on the margins of normal sex, in the gender of disfavor, with the privilege of insulation, we're here to say white-and-Black don't cut it. Your oversimplification in "Not So Fast: Freedom and the Black Revolution" (May 1999) is astounding and dangerous, even if the point of the editorial was laudable. "The privileges of the white skin blind people to their real interests more than any other single factor?" Obviously whiteness is a serious force in the now, here, us of amerikkka, but race only works as a tool of oppression because class does. And class only works because gender does. And gender only works because sexuality does. They all work together. We are compelled by much of the incisive criticism and new vision offered by new abolitionism. We have been working hard for over a year with an Abolitionist action group in New York. Given our commitment to abolishing the white race, we are seriously concerned about a series of public statements put forth as New Abolitionist/Race Traitor thought. These statements assume that race is the most significant form of oppression and advocate a binary understanding of race. Both positions reproduce whiteness and undermine essential connections with people of color who do not identify as Black. Women of color have been pushing us to see beyond our tiny white privileged feminism for decades. Collins, Lorde, Smith, Anzaldua, Lugones, and many others have been schooling us in the complexity of oppression, the intersection of oppression, the matrix of oppression, the interlocking nature of oppressions. A perspective, such as that of the editors, that ignores the intersection of oppression leads to the reproduction of a demeaning and old image of the Black woman in "Not So Fast." First, she is depicted as the cleaning woman. Then, her power in her storefront church is found not in her self or in her equal humanness with others in her congregation, but in her cooking... a sweet potato pie no less. It is easy to perpetuate a sexist stereotype when all that matters is that she is Black. Ask African American women-who are severely underrepresented at the pulpit-how egalitarian the Black church is. The "most democratic" institution? By focusing exclusively on blackness, the editors erase people oppressed for the color of their skin who do not identify as Black. The statement, "The black community... is the most advanced outpost of the society we seek to build," idealizes a monolithic community-a highly contested notion itself-and erases all others. What about the rest of the struggling, resisting, oppressed communities in amerikkka? The Latino communities? The Chinese communities? The Native American communities? The Black community is more "advanced" than they??? Stereotyping and erasing are primary tools for reproducing whiteness. When a group of mostly white men reproduce a sexist, racist image, they take part in racialized gender oppression and reproduce their racialized, gendered power. When persons with white skin-"so-called" whites or not, abolitionists or not-insist on a binary view, making a claim over the real life experience of other human beings, they reproduce their power, they reproduce whiteness. Those of us who understand oppression through the concept of the intersection of oppressions do not necessarily ascribe to multiculturalism (especially how it is generally understood as "can't we all just get along"). We aim to get rid of whiteness by toppling one of the tools power uses to oppress all of us. To do so, we must understand how whiteness is linked to class, heterosexuality, and gender in order to make complicated links with other allies. Destroying whiteness entails understanding that whiteness operates differently at different intersections of oppression. Finally, if the revolution embraced by the editors is a Black revolution, the complex, energetic movement of people of color (including those who identify as Black) is being ignored. Reported on in issue after issue of Colorlines (published by the Applied Research Center and the Center for Third World Organizing), the movement fights all forms of supremacy and focuses on building power among oppressed communities of color. It shapes our thinking; others may find it useful as well. Editor's note: The editorial board of the New Abolitionist will publish a reply to Billies and Harvey in our next issue. |
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