The Black "We" and the White "I"

[chenildieu]

16. When I try to understand the POC viewpoint

I fall back on my own experiences as a woman. I imagine how I would feel if, instead of BLM charging into Netroots, it had been angry loud proud feminists demanding accountability for the murders, rapes, at-home beatings, fear, intimidation, ridicule, sexual harassment, and just plain disrespect females face every day.

What I come up with is: while I might, among feminist friends, criticize an angry disruptive demonstration as being nonproductive or making the cause look bad, I could never tolerate a male (other than a committed, proven women's activist) criticize a feminist protest. After a lifetime of being threatened, abducted, abused, and repeatedly "put in my place" by many of the non-females in my life, when I hear any male non-feminist criticize feminism I just wanna scream "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW ABOUT HOW WE FEEL AND WHAT WE SUFFER? How dare you toss out your opinion about what we "should" do or how we "should" behave We are getting targeted for violence and humiliation every effing day - and you have no goddamn idea what it's like, so don't wag your goddamn finger at us!"

And it's funny, because that is exactly what a lot of DU black posters are saying when Bernie supporters say - probably with fine intentions - "I wish BLM had done things differently at Netroots."

So what's the moral? People in a downtrodden group don't want to hear any "Well, but, you people should... Blah blah blah" stuff from an outsider -- most especially from an outsider who comes from the dominant group (the group that has always sailed above the oppressed group's suffering enjoying their total safety without a second thought, and whose comrades have happily inflicted said suffering on the oppressed group).

I dunno, maybe if we all kept in mind that some groups bear open wounds, things would go more smoothly and respectfully? I am actually not a big fan of 'tiptoeing political correctness,' especially when it comes to ideologies and religions - But when it comes to understandable human emotions, it is pretty natural that people who have spent their lives being kicked around by People Like Me, don't want to hear me criticize their way of looking at things.

(Which, I admit, does make dialogue hard. I have no easy answers. Just tossing out my thoughts.)