Just came across this article that Tim Wise wrote during the 2008 Presidential Campaign. It's an interesting proposition - he says that some White women were using feminism as a cover-up of their racist beliefs in their decision to support Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama.
Read it here:
Your Whiteness Is Showing
I know that for a long time I would default to my oppressed or vulnerable identity and ignore my dominant identities - something that, if I'm being honest, I still retreat to if I'm not checking myself. Did I hold on tighter to my bag when I was walking home at night because the man that passed me was Black? No, no, it's because I'm a woman! It's such an automatic response, something that along the way was ingrained in me. Even before I could name my Whiteness, I knew I should avoid it. How does that work? I've spoken with many individuals that do not share my White identification who also take part in this phenomena of ranking pieces of ourselves.
And to complicate the issue, it's sometimes difficult to discern which part of yourself really was responding in any given situation. This is the tension that arises when we attempt to compartmentalize our personalities or conceptions of self into independent, exclusive parts. My identity as a woman is irreversibly, undeniably impacted, defined, altered, and adhered to my identity as a White person, as a member of the "middle class", as a graduate student, as a victim and survivor of violence, of all of my many selves.
But recognizing the impossibility of separating our own identities does not always make it easier to stop asking others to do the same. And it certainly doesn't prevent us - even when we try to be aware - from periodically slipping up and calling on one part of ourselves to take precedence over another (maybe less desirable) piece.
What do you think - can a response to one ISM act as a guise for perpetrators of another ISM? Is it a conscious or unconscious action?
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