Feminists vs Women of Color
The story starts happy. Amanda Marcotte, a blogger at the well-read feminist blog Pandagon, gets a book contract. The title is IT’S A HUNGER OUT THERE: A FEMINIST’S SURVIVAL GUIDE TO POLITICALLY INHOSPITABLE ENVIRONMENTS.
The brouhaha isn’t about the contents of the book as much as the cover and illustrations. The original cover was a busty, blonde, white, me-Jane sort of superheroine in a retro cartoon style being held by a gorilla. The author got the original cover illustration changed, but failed to raise hell over the publisher/editor chosen inside book illustrations: Blonde chickie is surviving amongst the inhospital environment of darkie, savage-style natives. In one illustration she even gets to save a white dude from the bad brown folk.
I Guess It’s A Jungle In Here Too, Huh?
While I can see this theme working well for one of Ann Coulter’s tomes, these are not good illustrations for a feminist flavored book. The whole point of feminism is the struggle against male oppression. So is the message that darkie oppression is fine and dandy?
A black feminist blogger, Black Amazon, was disappointed in the racism of these feminists. She has since closed her blog. Sigh.
I understand closing down when the heat gets intense. I’ve done it myself on more than one occasion. The emotional blow of realizing just HOW racist people are, how clueless and self-satisfied in the face of their evil–is as if you’re punched in the stomach. I’ve dealt with romance racists are –some utterly clueless, mean, KKK-level bitches, and unlike the feminist racists–there is no support from any corner when dealing with them.
The liberal feminist black bloggers never seem to have had to stand alone in the storm as I have. They write about blogging from safe spaces and always, always at least one someone speaks up for them in the downpour of mean, racist ciritism, and usually more than one. I only hope that these very young, outspoken bloggers realize the amount of support they do have and are able to take up the battle again. Soon. Too many of us wither away in the face of racist blasts. This works in the racists’ favor. They know they can cow us and shut us up. They know only a very few of us will stand against them and their evil. But then again, why should we have to suffer and take the punishment? I suppose that’s their point. It’s a true one.
I’m done. My blog will go live again when I’m compiling stuff for my time to apply to gradschool but I am done for now.
I want to say that this is permaent or that this is just a small break but no , this is the beginning of a death knell.
…I think the point where I went fuck it , is when a law student, a couple writers, and a professor basically endorsed a book and MISSED in reading something they were ATTACHING their names to .
Racist comics, about MY PEOPLE. Yeah MY PEOPLE, being KILLED and destroyed to save a white man and give a white woman the “courage” she so desperately desires .
And people fell over themselves to excuse them . Cause they’re learning
You know what , fuck off.
Hey it’s no expectation you be responsible and careful with what you endorse, write and publish, because it’s a ” friend” right.
They get the benefit of the doubts, the benefit of not having to be called on their evil racist condescending crap.
…I can’t even fight it.
Salon picked up the story (as did Bitch and Jezebel, I do believe).
It all started with one comment — "Fuck Seal Press" — written at the end of a casual, stream-of-consciousness blog post by feminist blogger, Blackamazon. An anonymous reader later wrote in the post’s comments thread: "Seal Press has NOTHING on WOC [women of color]!!!" Then, Brooke Warner, a senior editor at the enduring feminist press, stepped into the comments thread: "Seal Press here. We WANT more WOC. Not a whole lotta proposals come our way, interestingly. Seems to me it would be more effective to inform us about what you’d like to see rather than hating."
It was the equivalent of a door opened on an oxygen-starved fire. Cue: Virtual backdraft. Blackamazon responded to Warner’s comment:
First and foremost how ever rude and disrespectful your entrance , welcome to MY blog. Secondly , considering you want more women of color I find it highly comical your response to a WOC is to tell her what it seems like to you is the best option for her experience. Because immediately my display of anger is met with a public call for what is essentially servitude …
Readers wrote in to second Blackamazon’s argument. Sylvia/M wrote: "Don’t try to reframe the situation as if I, a woman of color, should be giving explanations to you two about why you don’t publish more works by, for, and about women of color. That’s your problem." Sudy added: "In desiring something, does the burden of labor lay on the shoulders of the desired … or the ones desiring? I think the latter." So, Warner responded, again:
I appreciate the dialogue, ladies. First off, the blog feels very informal, and my language is in response to the language here:
1. You hate us.
2. We have nothing on WOC.I get that you all engage best through negative discourse, but I find that too bad. It’s not servitude when we pay our authors advances. And book publishing is not an industry of outreach as much as it is editors being presented with an idea and engaging would-be authors in creative co-creation. I just find it curious more than anything that you all are wasting your time hating (yes, purposeful reuse of the word) rather than actively engaging in changing something you find problematic …
That, of course, only stoked the fire. A flurry of angry responses followed; the thread currently has 89 comments and, as far as I can tell, Seal Press is the only one coming to its defense. – Salon, Seal Press Scandal
Unlike the black romance community, black feminists will actually speak out and support each other in the face of racial controversy. They ain’t hoping and dreaming about that House Negro position nor do they seem afraid to piss off nonblack folks.
Seal Press is a feminist press. As I wrote before, feminism is about the struggle against the oppressor and that makes their insensitivity toward the issue of oppression and people of color somewhat…hypocritical.
I have long realized that the liberal, supposedly hip, and feminist romance folks don’t give a frick about black oppression.
Then there’s Gloria Steinem, Erica Jong, Jessica Valenti, Amanda Marcotte, and any number of white feminists from the second and third wave that really ruin feminism for the rest of us. If they’re not insisting we put aside our “of color”-ness in favor of our woman-ness, they’re busy using their white privilege to marginalize, dismiss, silence, or otherwise treat us the way those pesky white men they’re so angry with do. — Angry Black Woman
This is the way it works within romance too. The genre is dissed by darn near everybody literari, basically because it’s a women’s genre with plenty of pulp type fiction–but pulp SFF and mystery genre fiction don’t get the same treatment. Romance by and for black folk is treated just as badly or worse within the romance genre as literary folk treat romance.
Many white and other feminists of color, sensitive to the hypocrisy, spoke up against the illustrations in Marcotte’s book. Seal Press took note and publicly apologized.
To Our Readers, Our Friends, Our Critics,
We are taking action immediately to remove the offensive images from It’s A Jungle Out There. We are currently reprinting, and we will make these changes now. We apologize for any pain or concern these images have caused.
We do not believe it is appropriate for a book about feminism, albeit a book of humor, to have any images or illustrations that are offensive to anyone.
Some have asked the valid question, "What were you thinking?"
Please know that neither the cover, nor the interior images, were meant to make any serious statement. We were hoping for a campy, retro package to complement the author’s humor. That is all. We were not thinking.
As an organization, we need to look seriously at the effects of white privilege. We will be looking for anti-racist trainings offered here in the Bay Area. We want to incorporate race analysis into our work.
A liberal, feminist press needs anti-racist training to get a clue? Sheesh. Shaking my head … Now if RWA would hold a large, mandatory anti-racist training session, I could easily see the need.
But within the nonblack feminist ranks, there is hope. Can you imagine a romance insider speaking out against the aceepted, protected and lauded romance racists on the behalf of black romance authors as this white feminist does? I can’t. I can’t even imagine someone else who’s a black romance insider having the courage to face the racist romance community as bluntly. We know they’d all be out in force throwing lynching ropes over the tree branches and supporting each other.
The following is an excerpt from a blog post by a feminist on this issue who stood up and spoke out. Dear White Feminists Quit Fucking Up
I also copied and pasted her quoted citations.
…How many dedicated women of color, who spend their lives fighting oppression, have to scream at us, or commit blogicide, or throw up their hands in disgust and abandon the label “feminist” before we actually take their comments at face value and LISTEN? In each of these posts WoC bloggers or allies express outrage at being hurt, slighted, ignored, disgusted, or silenced by the behavior of mainstream white feminists. Yet we white feminists keep claiming our innocence. We insist we’ve done nothing wrong, that Marcotte is being wrongly victimized, that Seal Press shouldn’t be blamed, that Full Frontal Feminism helps advance the cause for us all, that we should excuse Steinem and Ferraro for their racist remarks because they’re just old school, and so on and so forth all the way back to the first wave.
Women of color have spoken up again and again. But just look at some remarks that have been made by us in response on various feminist blogs:
“It’s [referring to criticism by WoC] a little scary; a little Stalinistic.”
“Contrary to some modern racist opinion, white perspective does not equal racist perspective.”
“what an incredible mean bunch of hyenas” [referring to WoC bloggers]
Not so many months ago I commented on the Angry Black Woman’s blog in a thread on feminism, expressing shock and dismay at the anger directed at white feminists. In my naivete I assumed that feminism = a struggle against ALL oppression, a movement inclusive of women of color. I could not understand why anybody would reject it.
Good lord was I wrong.
Interesting? I wonder how many feminist bloggers (many invested in being culturally and patriarchally correct as far as their reading material–they scream and run from the romance genre as a rule) know that commercial genre fiction in general, and the romance genre specifically, is strictly segregated towards blacks? It makes Seal Press’s bleating about how they can’t find any black authors–or how black authors aren’t commercially profitable–almost understandable once you’re familiar with that li’l fact, no?
Posted in Race and/or Politics |
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:13 pm
You know, I am more of a lurker than commenter on the white feminist blogs I read such as Feministe, Pandagon and on occasion Feministing. I have watched Amanda Marcotte as she flubbed and fucked up her way thru burka-gate, racist book cover-gate and now appropriation-gate. I’m not a blogger so I’m not hating. I’m not trying to get put on for a book deal. But all these charades remind me of something my grandma used to say: Be careful when you are dealing with white folks, because one day they wake up and realize they’re white and you ain’t. Truer words have never been spoken.
This is why this 34 year old black woman doesn’t call herself a feminist.
When it comes down to it, you white chicks, ya’ll really aren’t to be trusted.
Once again, I’ve been proven correct.