have one on me

Malaika Firth photographed by Regan Cameron for Vogue Arabia March 2017

Catholic Retreat Center, Dulliken, Switzerland, 1973

I want to share something that happened. Three separate white women on three separate occasions spoke up to call for an end to ‘anger’ and to not swear at rallies and to not get emotional.

Fellow white women, that is White Feminism. Do not do this. No civil rights were gained or defended by asking nicely. We should know that! But here we are parroting the tepid moderation men use to silence us, and turning it on women of color. (And we have been doing this for decades and decades.)

How broken is that? If we shout and get mad, “uh bur your being too mean.” But if we supplicate they don’t have to change anything!

Civil rights battles are by nature inconvenient and disruptive to the status quo. When we tell other groups who dont have our privilege to calm down, we are telling them the comfort of white supremacy is more important than their (and our!) survival.