Gatekeepers and Gatecrashers

Three articles on waking up and who to listen to right now

In the wholesale rush to try to absolve ourselves of the collective guilt of being both White and deaf, many folks have asked their Black friends or The One Black Person in the Office about what we can do. While not everyone is awash in guilt, there is at least something of a reckoning to be done to figure out where too many have been blithely marching forward assuming all was well without realizing the cost of that so-called wellness.

This morning I read this article by Crystal Marie Fleming which addresses the multi-layering of how Black women are expected to support their men, as well as what not only her sisters but also what the rest of us need to attend when it comes to hearing Black women’s voices:

From her article:

Many Black women have had to struggle against the intertwined forces of patriarchy, racism, and class oppression that keep us silenced, ignored, and marginalized. So, yes, even as a Black woman, it took me several decades to begin to understand that Black women and girls have been uniquely and violently oppressed in our White male supremacist society — and that listening to Black women is key to challenging multiple forms of oppression.

I can’t speak for anyone else but there has never been a time I didn’t have Black women in my life, and not as “the help,” but as family and friends and powerful allies. That said, I wonder how often those friends shielded me or prevented me from knowing their true hearts. That’s a whole other story. For my part, I just had a friendship forged over this very difficult time with someone who needed to rage. She wasn’t interested in being “the Happy Black Person” (read: no threat), so I was able to hear a great deal more past the superficial. You can’t put a value on that perspective. That I am given permission to bear witness to that pain is beyond valuable. If you are truly fortunate, your Black friends let you have it with both barrels.

In situations like that, if you really are a friend, you get to be that big rock that stands your ground in the middle of the white water. Let it all wash over you. Let it transform you. Reason for that. Stay with me here.

If your friend has a real friend in you, you kept your mouth shut, listened with respect. Didn’t try to argue about how you’re not like all those other people or other weaselly words that dishonor the kind of Black truth that truly just needs airing.

Too many of us suffer the White Savior mentality, handed us by the patriarchy, which says that all we have to do is White’splain it all away, say that you just don’t understand, or there there, or other platitudes which are pretty much like dumping napalm on someone’s pain. Just. Fucking. Don’t.

I am speaking as a White Chick. Just fucking don’t do that. Just listen. Because saying tut tut don’t fix it.

If you want to know how frustrating that kind of thing is, read stuff by Marley K. She is that white water over the rock.

One of my favorite Medium writers Rosennab wrote this recently, to which I have linked before. In case you missed it here it is again:

From her article:

Meanwhile, generations after generations of Europeans have immigrated to America to experience bodily autonomy denied them in their homelands. The price for their and their children’s children’s autonomy was for them to be gatekeepers of white supremacy. So, yes, a white mass murderer can easily be taken into custody alive, but a Black alleged larcenist cannot.

Dr. Bakari and I have had some long discussions, and among the comments she made recently which struck me hard was that White women are even more determined Gatekeepers than White Men. To understand what I mean, read her article. I am teasing this point out further because as she explains, the history of how White women have been not only complicit but hard core warriors to maintain the patriarchy is all too clear.

The following is a perfect example of what the White Woman as Gatekeeper looks like from Anushay Hossain:

From her article, a quote from Jenn M. Jackson:

One of the most prominent groups to participate in the preservation and purification of the failed white supremacist regime was the United Daughters of the Confederacy, founded in 1894. The Daughters worked alongside organizations like the Klan to grow white supremacist frameworks in the South. They were integral in erecting statues and monuments to commemorate the Confederate generals and soldiers who were their own family members. While they claim these efforts were about history, they instead sanitized our memory of those states that had seceded from the Union, and downplayed the Confederate states’ enduring commitments to those ideologies even after the war ended.

Hussein writes:

The very same Confederate monuments that are being protested and pulled down today were erected by women’s groups who worked alongside groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

and

She (Jackson) stipulates that White women are number two in a deeply entrenched racial order in the United States and says not to forget the role White women play in upholding White supremacy.

This is precisely what (White) Katy Bar the Door looks like.

So kindly, before you and I wail that we aren’t complicit, or we’re not like everyone else, it would serve that we might read carefully what Black women have to say about us. After all, they’ve lost out in far too many diversity efforts, which by far and away have benefited white women far more than minorities.

I’ve worked in that arena for years, and while it’s nice to see White women make gains, it is not okay to see them continue to make gains on the backs and at the expense of our Black and Brown and Yellow and Red sisters.

Let me share what that looks like: at a conference for women business owners (WBENC.org) some years ago, I watched a group of women shove and elbow and scratch each other and push fellow women out of the way to get to the senior corporate rep who had the potential to give them business. Interestingly, several of the Black women they were shoving out of the way had large, hugely successful businesses (often staffing) which were being required by that very corporate rep to hire those women’s smaller businesses.

Most of those White chicks didn’t have the capacity that the corporate could hire. Those particular Black women did. The White chicks were chasing the corporate, patriarchal power paradigm, while ignoring the real “green” that was standing right next to them, the opportunities represented by Black women-owned businesses ready to hire. In fact, required to do so by those very Fortune 500 corporations.

Those Black women business owners, even though they were publicly awarded and feted on stage, were all-too-often invisible as soon as they hit the conference room floor. To Dr. Bakari’s point, the White women used their white bodily autonomy to push their sisters out of the way to get to corporate contracts. Not work with one another, or, gasp, for a Black woman’s bigger, more successful company. Those are rare enough. Rather than work for them, many of those White women wanted to get bigger and compete.

We don’t listen, ladies.

We as White women have no clue how what we do every day, the choices we make and how we use our Whiteness in the world affects our sisters. I have written elsewhere that the ob-gyn industry owes its origins to the systematic operations on slaves without their permission, without anesthesia, without mercy, and a doctor who bitched about having to feed them. The statue of Dr. Marion Sims was recently removed from a New York Park. Not very many White women have any clue about the cost. The blood of Black women slaves makes their female health care possible.

If you don’t know this, you haven’t been listening.

When you do, you begin to embrace the scope.

One of the reasons I read, tag and link my Black sisters’ writing is because I am committed to get these articles in front of different eyeballs. My sincere hope is that you will start following Zora. That you will attend to Black female writers. If you have been fortunate, you already know the richness that is strewn along that path. If you are less fortunate, you have no idea what awaits you if you will just listen.

I hope sincerely that you will also be motivated to explore those depths, without fear, and look into the faces of your Sisters, who need us to crash the gates along with them. They have waited long enough.

Will you be a Gatekeeper or a Gate Crasher?