Garza and the other Black women activists are unbossed and unbought, following in the footsteps of Shirley Chisholm, Ella Baker, and Fannie Lou Hamer. They have made it clear that there can be no business as usual while Black people are dying in the streets.
BLM is also working in the tradition of ACT-UP and Code Pink, both mostly White organizations that have embraced the tactics of disrupting public gatherings and officials. The hostility directed at BLM, given the celebration of these White-led movements by White progressives, begs the question: Is it the tactics that people are uncomfortable with, or the sex and skin color of the people putting their bodies on the line?
“When these groups disrupted, they were heroes and courageous. Now we have a group of Black women who are disrupting forums on behalf of Black life and we’re seen as people who don’t have a strategy,” said Los Angeles–based BLM co-founder Patrisse Marie Cullors-Brignac. “That has everything to do with stereotypes of being Black and female in this country.”
“White supremacy is very real. If two Black women can go up there and hold space and get that kind of response from those folks in Seattle who claim to be so progressive then we have a problem. The vitriol from the left is a litmus test for what we imagine what would happened if we did this in a Republican setting,” said Moore.
The optics of two Black women publicly confronting powerful White men is certainly unprecedented. Willaford and Johnson pushed aside a history where Black women have been denied access to the political stage, a place where White male politicians routinely demonized and chastise them as bad mothers and welfare queens driving up the national debt, who regularly denounce their cultural influence as disputable and immoral. Willaford and Johnson snatched the mic, owned the stage, and made clear who was in charge, followed up with a hashtag: #BowDownBernie.
While eschewing White fragility in favor of Black survival, BLM activists are also challenging Black people’s hang-ups around queer leadership, women’s roles, and respectability politics.
“There’s a lot to be learned from Black women’s resistance,” said Garza. “Black women participate consistently in elections and toward the side of justice. Black women are consistently carrying the crisis of democracy and of the country’s economy on our backs. They have consistently taken risks that have opened up opportunities for everyone in the workplace, home, and in social justice.”
“From what I can see, it is a wholly new paradigm of Black women’s leadership,” said Daryl Scott, a history professor at Howard University. “Historically Black women have been expected to do be the support for the leadership of Black men, doing everything from serving food to carrying out the details of organization. BLM, however, places women in leadership roles and tosses aside gendered expectations of how roles are supposed to be fulfilled.”
Scott said he is not certain if we are witnessing a new brand of womanist politics or a new brand of Black feminist politics, but we are definitely witnessing a new paradigm. Historically, Black women were organizing, and working at a grassroots level, often behind the higher-profile Black male leaders. Now, they doing the work and are the face, and voice, of the movement.
The politics of respectability, which required male clergy leaders, have been pushed aside; the walls of a media that sought after those leaders and credentials have been kicked over by this group of Black women who aren’t calling press conferences or asking for a microphone, but snatching it without care or concern of the optics. For this generation, there are no worries about “airing dirty laundry” or reinforcing stereotypes. These women are literally fighting for their lives and they could care less if that makes White people uncomfortable.
via Why Are White Liberals Getting So “Berned Up” By Black Women Activists? | Dame Magazine.
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