I Can't Hear You

The smart thing to do would be to take my own advice and simply go "hmmm..." and nod and keep my mouth shut.

But this (via written world) made me think of my aborted letter to Newsweek. The one where I wrote asking why, when TPTB decided to ask some actual black folk who worked at Newsweek what they thought of Imus's remarks, they didn't also ask women what they thought of Imus's remarks. Or, better yet, make a point of asking black women what they thought of Imus's insults. (Although the answer to that last may sadly be "there was no one to ask.")

Cheryl is right, as usual, and I'm not writing this to say that she's not. I'm writing this to make it clearer to non-colored feministsn why they may feel she's not, so they - we - will stop turning a blind eye to racism.

I suspect that people often feel more compelled to put on a veneer of pretending not to be racist than they feel compelled to not voice their sexism - in public. It appears easier to get away with saying that women are genetically not capable of....whatever...than it is to say the same about race. (Unless you modify the "race" to mean "culture" - then anyone is fair game.)

People, of course, still say both. People get away with saying both. But mainstream university presidents seem more likely to feel safe saying sexist things in public (couched in evo-psych). Fortunately, they don't always get away with that either.

But what people say is not always the same as what people do.

Women still only make $.75 for every dollar a man makes. Except, that's not right. The correct stat is that white women make $.77 for every dollar a white man makes. Black men make only $.74 for every dollar a white man makes. Black women make $.68 for every dollar a white man makes. And all four of these groups have Latinos beat by more than a dime.

If economic power really is tied to political and social power, then I think it's clear that Cheryl is quite right. And that's even before we start discussing the messy business of how much power the women who marry the white men have. Or how the recent Supreme Court decision will impact such stats in the future.

Because of our past - recent and distant - we can, as a nation, be very hyper-sensitive when it comes race relations between blacks and whites. But that doesn't mean we actually bother to do a whole lot about racism. In fact, the bulk of what we do is blame the victim.

Just as importantly, there's a lot going on that we (white feminists) don't hear - or don't bother to listen to.

It's not as if universities across the nation are overflowing with black people. In fact, it's very possible that we actually hear more about the sexist remarks made by the Larry Summers of the world not because they are considered to be ok, but because they aren't. Sexist remarks tend to piss off a huge section of the student body and a significant number of the faculty. They same cannot be as confidently said about casual racist remarks. There is strength in numbers, and I suspect women feel more comfortable calling out sexism in college than people of color feel comfortable calling out racism. And that the same is true in a lot of other places as well.

We have to remember that our perception of what people feel is ok to say in public is colored by the fact that we (white feminists) hear the the sexist things people say in private, but we don't necessarily hear the racist things people say in private - or even in public places that we don't happen to be in at the time. My suspicion could very easily be wrong; it's hardly a foolproof enough theory to go around making stupid remarks about black women having advantages over white women.