Rosalarian - Dillingham PDF

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The above comic by artist Megan “Rosalarian” Gedris shows the parallels between the criticism of feminism and black feminism. The first panel shows a white man asking why feminism is necessary with a white woman responding that feminism addresses issues for a specifically marginalized group with a black woman nodding in agreement. Now avert your eyes to the bottom panel, the white woman is in the same shoes of the white man questioning the necessity of black feminism although she gave the answer in the first panel discouraging the black woman. This comic was originally posted on Tumblr, then again on twitter, though it was nowhere near as viral as the photo in another post. Despite, the smaller reach of the comic, it has still sparked meaningful conversation about how we address the disparities in the realities of American citizens. As seen in the comic, the issue at hand is debunking the oversimplified way of viewing black feminism. It is quite obvious that the white woman in the bottom panel does not necessarily understand that black feminism is not about promoting racial division or anything along those lines, or even solely about black women. The main purpose of black feminism is to address the issues that are not and cannot be covered by feminism itself. Many of the issues that black feminism addresses tend to relate to race, gender, and other forms of identity combined, a situation feminism was not formulated to combat. Historically, white women have been the “image” of feminism due to circumstances of minority women at the time not allowing the same involvement in pivotal women’s movements. This basically means that for decades white women advocated for women’s rights on the basis that every woman in America has the same experience as white women. Simple answer: We don’t. Of course, every person’s experience is different however on average, women of color face very different realities from their white counterparts. On top of women only making a portion of a white man’s dollar, Black, Latinx, and Indigenous

women make even less than white women. Black feminism aims to address these issues by bringing them up into conversation and making mainstream feminism acknowledge the situations of women of color. This way of thinking is again the same as feminism in regards to those who question the validity and purpose of it....