I appreciate what you have done at Racialicious to provide an open environment for Hillary supporters. I’m sorry about the email you got, I don’t know the background to that or who wrote it, but IMO, it’s not deserved critique.

I read Joan Morgan as well (on your recommendation in fact). I understand her analysis of the loyalty of black women to black men. I also understand how an analysis of the Sean Bell matter which centers the black women in his life and their issues as black women is a feminist analysis.

However, most of the posts I saw about Sean Bell did not center or even focus any energy on the black women in his life and their perspective. So without that perspective, how is it a feminist issue? If a post were “Sean Bell: A Feminist Analysis” and talked about exactly the issues you mention, there could be no reasonable critique along these lines, IMO.

Most issues can be looked at through a feminist lens. But without that lens they’re not necessarily feminist. Just as looking at music in itself isn’t an anti-racist issue, but your treatment of music at Racialicious is an anti-racist treatment.

“I could be having a conversation with a white feminist who works with a major site, bring up Dunbar Village, and have her have no idea what I’m talking about. But why, Octo? Why is that? Why do we have to keep so many conversations segregated?”

I don’t know. I don’t think these conversations should be segregated. I don’t agree with deciding when an issue that implicates both race and gender is “more about” one or the other. It’s not Olympics.

My only concern is this. Some white feminists have demonstrated a disinclination towards intersectionality. That’s a problem. Some white feminists (hi) have said that issues about men are not feminist issues in and of themselves. Those two groups aren’t the same, and the post appeared (to me) to put them in the same category, of being disinterested in intersectionality. On the contrary, I think it is critical that feminism not only understand but engage directly with issues that affect ALL women, including police brutality. I’d just like to see those discussions actually TALK about the affect on women.

Sometimes it’s women who are oppressed, sometimes it’s poor white guys, sometimes it’s a well-to-do family of colour who “only got there because of affirmative action” (i.e. didn’t really earn it). Sometimes, it’s looking at how [insert marginalised group here] is oppressed in some situations, but experiences privilege in others. Sometimes it’s looking at lateral oppression in marginalised communities.

Because you know what? *NONE* of us are “single issue.” We have family members, and friends, and lovers, and children, and bosses, employees, or co-workers who all bring us into one intersection or another. And the more conversations we have and the greater the diversity of issues under consideration, the more we realise that things we thought were “isolated incidents” actually exist as part of a pattern – the matrix of institutionalised oppression.

None of us is free until all of us are free. Rock on, Latoya.

And Renee’s “When people say this is not a feminist issue it is silencing behavior meant to control who has the right to speak in feminist spaces.” is RIGHT ON.

Rachelle: Feminism = Equality for ALL people. More nodding on this point!

Just throw me on the pile of Latoya-lovers here. You’re doing a bang-up job!

But it’s not feminism that pretends to be all inclusive and then backs away. It’s certain feminists, privileged white women, I venture to say. Feminism itself simply calls for women to be treated equally and given equal opportunity.

Yeah, but this is significantly complicated by the fact that it is often those privileged white women who get publishing contracts and interviews and whatnot — in short, who get to be the face of feminism to “mainstream” culture — and therefore shape feminist discourse in big ways.