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Here is Tim Wise's latest essay, "Your Whiteness is Showing: An Open Letter to
Certain White Women who are Threatening to Withhold Support From Barack
Obama in November." I think you can ascertain the content from the
title. I don't have a live link so I won't post it here.
You can find it though at his website, which is timwise(dot)org
I'm very curious to know what the respose to this is, as it is not talking to me persay so I cannot respond..
Here is the text:
Your Whiteness is Showing:
An Open Letter to Certain White Women who are Threatening to Withhold Support From Barack Obama in November
By Tim Wise
June 6, 2008
This
is an open letter to those white women who, despite their proclamations
of progressivism, and supposedly because of their commitment to
feminism, are threatening to withhold support from Barack Obama in
November. You know who you are.
I know that it's probably a bad
time for this. Your disappointment at the electoral defeat of Senator
Hillary Clinton is fresh, the sting is new, and the anger that animates
many of you--who rightly point out that the media was often sexist in
its treatment of the Senator--is raw, pure and justified.
That
said, and despite the awkward timing, I need to ask you a few
questions, and I hope you will take them in the spirit of solidarity
with which they are genuinely intended. But before the questions, a
statement if you don't mind, or indeed, even if (as I suspect), you
will mind it quite a bit.
First, for those of you threatening to
actually vote for John McCain and to oppose Senator Obama, or to stay
home in November and thereby increase the likelihood of McCain winning
and Obama losing (despite the fact that the latter's policy platform is
virtually identical to Clinton's while the former's clearly is not),
all the while claiming to be standing up for women...
For those
threatening to vote for John McCain or to stay home and increase the
odds of his winning (despite the fact that he once called his wife the
c-word in public and is a staunch opponent of reproductive freedom and
gender equity initiatives, such as comparable worth legislation), all
the while claiming to be standing up for women...
For those
threatening to vote for John McCain or to stay home and help ensure
Barack Obama's defeat, as a way to protest what you call Obama's sexism
(examples of which you seem to have difficulty coming up with), all the
while claiming to be standing up for women...
Your whiteness is showing.
When
I say your whiteness is showing this is what I mean: You claim that
your opposition to Obama is an act of gender solidarity, in that women
(and their male allies) need to stand up for women in the face of the
sexist mistreatment of Clinton by the press. On this latter point--the
one about the importance of standing up to the media for its often
venal misogyny--you couldn't be more correct. As the father of two
young girls who will have to contend with the poison of patriarchy all
their lives, or at least until such time as that system of oppression
is eradicated, I will be the first to join the boycott of, or
demonstration on, whatever media outlet you choose to make that point.
But on the first part of the above equation--the part where you insist
voting against Obama is about gender solidarity--you are, for lack of a
better way to put it, completely full of crap. And what's worse is that
at some level I suspect you know it. Voting against Senator Obama is
not about gender solidarity. It is an act of white racial bonding, and
it is grotesque.
If it were gender solidarity you sought, you
would by definition join with your black and brown sisters come
November, and do what you know good and well they are going to do, in
overwhelming numbers, which is vote for Barack Obama. But no. You are
threatening to vote not like other women--you know, the ones who aren't
white like you and most of your friends--but rather, like white men!
Needless to say it is high irony, bordering on the outright farcical,
to believe that electorally bonding with white men, so as to elect
McCain, is a rational strategy for promoting feminism and challenging
patriarchy. You are not thinking and acting as women, but as white
people.
So here's the first question: What the hell is that about?
And
you wonder why women of color have, for so long, thought (by and large)
that white so-called feminists were phony as hell? Sister please...
Your
threats are not about standing up