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sheshe2

(83,746 posts) Fri Apr 3, 2015, 08:24 PM Apr 2015

Change Agents of 2014: Black Women on Social Media

When herstory reflects on the year 2014, the many ways in which black women used their social media influence to address pivotal issues will be front and center.

In the tradition of iconic feminist scholar Audre Lorde, the year 2014 found black women positioning self-preservation as an act of political warfare on both individual and institutional levels. Whether addressing intraracial domestic violence and the perpetuation of rape culture or the pervasiveness of street harassment, negative media depictions and political marginalization, black women were not followers on social media; they were and remain leaders.

Among those leaders is Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor at Columbia University and founder of the African American Policy Forum. Crenshaw spearheaded the #WhyWeCantWait movement to protest the exclusion of women and girls of color from President Barack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative. Her refusal to allow the erasure of black women from conversations on dismantling structural racism was met with wide criticism from many in the African-American community who attributed #WhyWeCantWait to feminists run amok—but that didn’t stop the AAPF.

Organizers launched a social media blitz, drafting a letter to President Obama that was signed by more than 1,000 women—including writer Alice Walker, actress Rosario Dawson and legendary activist Angela Davis. Activists highlighted their assertion that President Obama outsourced concern for black women and girls to his staff, as opposed to including them in his strongest racial initiative to date. The flawed and sexist logic that positions the empowerment of black women as adjacent or secondary to that of black men is one the AAPF continues to challenge on social media and beyond.

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