My organization voted to become an anti racist institution. We have participated in antiracist training.
Today one white woman colleague has pulled out of the process saying if we cannot and do not address women's issues this is unjust. Further she feels she is the champion for 60% of the student body (black women) who face sexism in the church and life. The current and former administrators (two white women) share her view.
How do I address this as a male co-chair of the Anti Racism Team?
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Response from Margery Freeman:
I sympathize with your situation! It also is difficult for you, as a man, to respond effectively to the person(s) who insists that addressing sexism must be part of your institution becoming "antiracist."
What I have learned from PISAB (especially from David Billings) is that sexism in a race-constructed society is experienced differently by white people and people of color, that white women are and have been historically advantaged by virtue of our white status, even as we face institutional challenges because of our gender.
As white women, we have internalized the same racial superiority as white men: We universalize from our individual experiences to "all women" and "all men." We assume we have the right to be the experts on sexism, so we "speak for all women" without listening to women whose experiences are very different from ours. (That used to be played out in the mistress/maid dialogue when the mistress would speak of the maid as "one of the family" and the maid would express her agonized experiences of being treated as a "less than" person in a home where she served).
The only place where white people are not able to be "experts" is @ racism. Thus we become very discomfited by racism and want to do whatever we can to enlarge the discussion. White women press institutions to include sexism as often as necessary in order to remain in charge.
We also know that women of color, particularly those who have become professionalized in white institutional culture, frequently adopt white viewpoints about men (whether this is a form of internalized racial inferiority that is played out as mimicking or assimilation, would need to be spoken to by women of color). So, where many Black women are studying to become professional church leaders in white institutions, there may be a tendency to go along when white women with important status (deans, leaders) say "we will not address racism unless we address sexism too."
It's been my experience that when Black (and Latino) women feel safe and affirmed in conversations about racism, they will acknowledge that racism is the foremost dynamic defining their lives. If they speak about sexism, they may have ample reasons to criticize male behavior (both black and white), but they are equally clear that Black men inhabit a completely different universe from white men and so "men's" experience cannot be collectivized any more than women's experiences can.
I believe your best bet in dealing with the situation is to have informal conversations (to begin with) with some of the women of color there. If you are able to organize a collective voice among at least some of the women of color, then you will have a base from which to challenge the white "authorities." ,
Africa for the Africans,Asia for the Asians,white countries for EVERYBODY!
Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.
The Netherlands and Belgium are just as crowded as Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them.
Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to assimilate, i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.
What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?
How long would it take anyone to realize Im not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?
And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldnt object to this?
But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white.
