- Share This Post
- submit
- 65
-
Sparkle (0)
I hate labeling boxes when I organize my house or move. I hate filing. I hate the term "women of color blogs." The latter makes me uncomfortable because it creates a sea of women so vast it sends my writing mind into a seizure. What does that mean, "women of color bloggers"?
Does that mean any woman blogging who is not exclusively of European descent? Does it include Jewish women and if it doesn't include Jewish women then should it not include Arab women? After all both groups sprang from the Middle East not Europe. They are both Semites, and both can be classified under the larger umbrella of groups that have been oppressed, not automatically benefiting from "white" privilege.
Does the tag "women of color" include all Asians? Some Westernized Asians don't identify with oppressed people of color at all, sometimes not even other Asians. Sometimes some Asians, as do certain kinds of upper-crusty black folks, mentally imagine themselves to be white.
In many ways, being a person of color politicizes your nature even when you yourself don't feel political. It's an issue I tackled in my poem "A Persistent Pursuit" and another poem that confesses the weariness of a woman of color too often asked to exemplify or explain blackness to a white world. Yes, I am black, and so I speak of blackness, and when I use the term "women of color" people respond with names of black women. Is it because I am black or is "women of color" simply the new politically correct euphemism for black women like "urban author" means black author?
No, it's not, and yet when I asked people to share with me impressions and history on women of color in blogging, most people sent me the names of black female bloggers. Perhaps all that means is that black women who blog have a higher profile.
When the names of mostly black women bloggers started hitting my email box, I suspect the feeling that came over me is the same feeling that weighs down white people when they plan an event celebrating diversity only to look at the program and realize only white people have been scheduled to speak, the result of their only having real relationships with other white people. This insular way of living is probably why such panels end up including very fair-skinned Indian businessmen or Moroccan immigrants who are 1.) Apologetic for their lack of knowledge about American race issues, and 2.) Shocked that anyone noticed they are not "really" white. But I don't live like that. My life is not insular.
Nevertheless, my in-box grew fat with the names of black women bloggers. Not all the names were of black women, but certainly enough to make for a lopsided "decade of women of color in blogging."
Then I ran into another complication. Some women of color, black or otherwise, do not want to be considered women of color bloggers because the label boxes them into the kinds of expectations expressed in the poems mentioned earlier. It seems "women of color blogger" is associated specifically with the woman of color who addresses female empowerment, race and gender issues, and is willing to walk through political bomb minefields as does Renee at Womanist Musings or the Ph.Ds at what once was The Kitchen Table (Melissa Harris-Lacewell and Yolanda Pierce). Therefore, we come to this idea that "woman of color blogger" may have not as much to do with skin color or ethnic roots as it does with having an identity mindset toward race and gender within the sphere of political, cultural, and social justice issues, perhaps, that permeates your blog.
And yet could a piece on women of color bloggers leave out folks like Renee at Cutie Booty Cakes, who's been exceptionally successful online in a short period, Asian Mommy, Modern Mami, or Mocha Moms? Could it exclude the black female writers online using blogs to promote their own work and the work of other writers of color?
Unsure and realizing the sea was too vast for my puny little brain, I crowd-sourced. I decided that was the only way to write a post supposedly examining a decade of women of color blogging and not make a mess like the one Samantha Ettus is accused of making with her very white list of 14 Power Women To Follow On Twitter or a stink like the one Vanity Fair fell into with its
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| ldjohnsonblogher06.jpg | 33.14 KB |
