Privilege

“Going to Places That Scare Me: Personal Reflections on Challenging Male Supremacy” Chris Crass, author of the book Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy, devotes one chapter to detailing his personal experience becoming aware of his own sexism and that of his fellow male activists. After accepting the reality of his privilege, he began the lifelong process of uprooting blatant and subtle manifestations within himself, challenging it within male comrades as indivduals, and helping structure activist groups to counteract sexist defaults and biases. ...

Ben Cutbank / Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory, written by Marilyn Frye in the 1980’s, is one of the most instructive books I have read to date. The succinctness of each of her essays, which cover such fundamental topics for the feminist learner as white privilege, male supremacy, lesbianism and gay rights, and violence against women, combines with an impressive comprehensiveness that leaves the reader with little room for debate. It’s simple, but forceful, similar to, I would assert, the works of radical environmental author Derrick Jensen, and especially his two-volume book, Endgame. ...

Having been raised in a culture predicated on racism and vilification of the “other”, we have all internalized a racist perspective. Relationships across lines of difference often fall prey to power dynamics reinforced by this perspective. The proliferation of “good white people” has not made the situation any better. In fact, as argued in this blog post, they may have made it worse. Excerpt: If you’re a POC [person of color], you probably know at least one of these Good White People! If you’re white and reading my blog, maybe you are one; a well intentioned whitey. You’re ‘on my side’, right? You figured out racism is ‘bad’ so now you’ve joined the fight against racism! Maybe you work in a social enterprise, for a charity, with refugees, or Indigenous people, or in the multi-cultural arts. You’re proud of yourself for your many years of human rights work. You’ve claimed your anti-racist identity, you have friends and maybe even lovers who are people of colour, so how could you possibly be racist? ...