I need to add an update.

There. Fixed it for you.

The attitude that any particular –ism is everywhere, and therefore we just have to accept it, is exactly the sort of attitude that helps to maintain the status quo. And when it’s white women who are directly responsible for acts of racism against WOC–that’s not just a problem of “getting along.” That’s white women maintaining a hierarchy based on racial privilege in the same way men maintain a hierarchy based on patriarchy.

As imperfect, and for some intolerable, as it is to be a member of an alliance of pie scrappers, I think the stakes are too high not to find a way back to each other. I don’t care if we all get along. I just want to stick it to the jerks that have convinced us that fighting over a comic book is somehow akin to real power in the publishing industry or anywhere else for that matter.

The pictures are still in.

It was signed and read at netroots nation

wit peopel who were so conflicted on a panel telling others how to build community

http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2008/09/feminism_of_tod

Keep up the good work!

We agree that racism is a problem in feminism. We agree that wrt the Marcotte/Seal Press/Alternet stuff that WOC were treated very badly. This is part of a pattern, as I have been pointing out.

Here is the part that is most important:

You are part of that pattern.

I am not trying to attack you. But you keep asking what we can do? What kind of self examination can we do? YOU can. You can start by examining that pattern of white privilege as it manifests in feminist circles. Where do you fit in there? In, say, white women writing about WOC on outlets like Alternet? Calling for unity from our sisters of color who have been routinely dismissed? Focusing on the division, and not on the racism that has caused that division?

THIS is the hard part of feminism. The part where there is fierce resistance. The part where we have to examine not other people — because doing that is easy — but where we have to examine ourselves.

I haven’t read *all* 268 comments on your article. Actually I’ve only read a handful of them. But after glancing them over, I think they’re actually a pretty good place to see the dismissal of WOC by privileged white feminists. Do you have any way of engaging some of your commenters in conversation? The discussion got pretty heated there, and from the looks of it pretty OT at times (like I said, I only read bits and pieces because wow, that’s a lot of posting). But it looks like a few people are trying to get through and offer some perspectives.

Perhaps you could reach out to some…? The way to achieve progress on eliminating racism in feminism — it’s there.