Cynematic MOMocrats

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  Cynematic signed the petition | over 1 year ago

  Tell the DOJ: Investigate the Chamber of Commerce's Campaign Spending
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  Cynematic commented on the article | almost 3 years ago

  Let's Talk About Race

  Tina,
  Wish I'd had a chance to meet you at NN09! I too went to the "Women And Minorities on Mobile" and "Stepping it Up: Creating Multi-Racial Alliances with Bloggers" panels, both of which were excellent. They were diverse by gender and race, from what I could tell. And while I did attend Joanne & Jen's panel on "Building a Conversation Across Generations of Feminism," I also left it midway between to attend the panel on "Connecting People to Politics: Storytelling As a Tool for Progressive Change."

  
  

  
  All,
  To tell the truth, I left the intergenerational feminism panel because I knew that several other MOMocrats were in attendance and I could debrief with them later, and because I felt the conversation starting to rehearse issues regarding generational differences among feminists that I felt I'd spent much time and energy discussing during the longest-ever Democratic primary of 2008.

  
  

  
  See, for example, my expression of the belief in intersectional analysis/practice as the most valuable form of feminism: http://momocrats.typepad.com/momocrats/2008/05/open-letter-to.html

  
  

  
  And, as someone who's recently felt whipsawed by the child-free feminist versus child-having feminist wars, my own conclusion is that even panels without the word 'feminist' in the title can still contain feminist analysis. I know this because my own panel, "The Revolution Begins at Home: Using Social Media to Engage Parents Online," was shaped by the strong progressive feminism of each participant.

  
  

  
  And likewise, to give another example, the conversation on comprehensive immigration reform was shaped by strongly feminist frameworks that Rinku Sen and Cheryl Contee brought to the topic in an organic and meaningful way. My head was bursting with more questions and insights after the panel: if current immigration law layers criminality on top of the regular penal code, what do undocumented immigrant detainees do if they have minor dependents? What if those kids have different citizenship status? Given the state-less "non-person" zone a detainee occupies, are women incarcerees subjected to sexual and other abuse in detention centers at high rates? And so on. It sparked awareness and a desire to get up to speed on issues of pressing urgency to women of color.

  
  

  
  So, to reference Emily Dickinson's "tell the truth but tell it slant," to my mind the best way to get beyond these mini culture wars among progressives who should be allies is to instead focus on **what needs to be done** as opposed to **who should do it.** Maybe the most tiresome part of identity politics is trying to squeeze our varied, complicated selves into nouns that'll never totally and adequately describe us. Instead, let's embrace the freedom of verbs and define ourselves by what we do. Let's make sure the identity feedback loop circles through something applied, something where we'll have to talk to someone we might not have otherwise. We might be challenged or made uncomfortable, but to my mind feminisms have responded best when growth comes out of that constructive discomfort.

  
  

  What if we all took one action that helped us be a better ally? What if we brought to someone else's struggle our feminist tools, frameworks, resources, networks, and so on?

  
  

  But first comes trust, and working alongside or in support of someone helps build trust. For me, this would be the most productive direction a continued conversation on race and feminism could take (put in any number of ways we experience difference and privilege relative to one another).