Reply #158: Yeah, how dare an AA man be articulate and smart?!? How dare he challenge Miss Hilly.

[ShortnFiery]

White Prividlege perspectives are alive and well with HRC Supporters.

Shinin' the Lite on White Privilege

http://www.prisonactivist.org/cws/sharon.html


In 1920, white women got the vote after 100 years of struggle. But they got it by promising Southern segregationists that they would use the vote to support white supremacy. Today, a divided women's movement still lacks the power to enact mandatory maternity leave for all working parents, despite the fact that women are more than 50% of all voters.

In 1973, abortion finally became legal in the U.S. But white middle class women, the main beneficiaries of Roe v. Wade, did not wield their organizing power to oppose the Hyde Amendment (which restricted abortions for women on welfare) or the sterilization of Puerto Rican and other poor women of color. So when the Right rolled back abortion rights in the 1980's, there was no powerful multi-racial feminist movement to stop it. Today, 80% of U.S. counties are without abortion services.

The legacy of 'the strategy of the slave owners' demonstrates that when oppressed whites protest against their own oppression, while refusing to simultaneously challenge racial oppression and white privilege, they can win short term victories (a union, legislative reform, a constitutional amendment, etc.) But when they organize in this way, they themselves become oppressors of people of color. Their silence is consent to racial oppression and white privilege.

And they sacrifice the possibilities for building coalitions with activists of color which could challenge the power of the descendants of the slave owners -- the capitalist power which oppresses all of us today.