Activist Bree Newsome Wants Us to Listen to Alicia Garza and Tarana Burke When it Comes to #MeToo an
When I say sis had time today, I don't even think she went to sleep! All night long Activist Bree Newsome, you might know her for climbing the flagpole to remove the Confederate Flag a few years ago,via Twitter put folks in their places, shed light and dished out hard facts. The #MeToo movement was started by Tarana Burke and hijacked by White Hollywood into being more of a make-up tutorial than the therapy session that it was intended to be.
It started when she, apparently, got fed up with the idea that the mainstream media keeps pushing that "we need to teach girls to say no."
After this tweet, Newsome went on an educational tweet-fest that deserves a standing ovation!
She continued in a thread of Tweets that read:
"Am I saying there's no room for affluent white women? No. I'm saying that the failure to recognize how WW hold a privileged position within white patriarchy, benefit from & perpetuate it in many ways is a constant point of disconnect b/w white feminism & intersectionality.
While Tarana Burke & Alicia Garza have been pushing for MeToo to focus on the conditions of domestic workers, poor women and women of color, white feminists like Margaret Atwood continually focus on the movement's potential negative impact on (mostly white) men.
The criticisms being lodged against MeToo (started by a BW) are based on a distorted understanding of what the movement is to begin with. Tarana Burke's movement has never been about publicly shaming male celebrities. Others insist on framing it that way.
And in so doing, they, in typical white feministing fashion, completely ignore the leadership of BW in favor of centering themselves & their perspective--a perspective woefully ill-equipped to grasp the racialized gender & class dynamics of rape culture.
The stubborn refusal to acknowledge that white women benefit from the racialization of gender, that a true feminist movement must dismantle both patriarchy & racism at once, is a refusal to acknowledge the reality of structural sexism.
This is not a new issue, of course. When white middle class women were defining liberation as breaking away from being housewives & entering the workplace, most BW were having to work to support their families. Many by cleaning WW's houses & caring for their children.
Many of these BW experienced sexual violence within the households where they worked (a dynamic going back generations to slavery) & received little help or support from their WW employers.
So, in closing, if you have concerns about the direction MeToo is going, I suggest listening to folks like Alicia Garza & Tarana Burke & taking cues from them about what the focus should be & not affluent white women penning editorials."
Somebody had to say it and Bree Newsome is definitely putting her platform to great use! We appreciate you!
