First Posted at TenSpeaks<\/a><\/p>\n I had a white male mentor once early in my career.\u00a0 For reasons unknown to me then, but which are much clearer to me 20 plus years later, he took a liking to me and voluntarily took me \u201cunder his wings\u201d.\u00a0 He helped me a lot and I appreciated it.\u00a0 But I also helped him a lot, although I didn\u2019t realize it at the time.\u00a0 I guess his mentoring was his way of showing me that he appreciated it too.<\/p>\n He even felt comfortable enough to \u201ccome out\u201d to me.\u00a0 No, he wasn\u2019t gay.\u00a0 But, by his own admission, he confessed to me that he was a \u201crecovering racist\u201d.\u00a0 At that time, I was completely unprepared for how to handle that admission from a white man 20 years and about four corporate job titles ahead of me.\u00a0 So, I just listened and was his sounding board for crazy questions like \u201cwhy do all the blacks sit together in the cafeteria?\u201d\u00a0 He posed that question\u00a0before the\u00a0book of nearly the same title<\/a>\u00a0was ever written.<\/p>\n Anyway, among the many nuggets of wisdom he passed onto me, only one has truly stuck with me verbatim:<\/p>\n \u201cTruth is Elegant\u201d.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n His point was that no matter the circumstances, \u201ctruth\u201d will always beat out manipulating and outright lying.\u00a0 Truth is always more sophisticated and more graceful and more highly exalted.<\/p>\n I haven\u2019t seen or heard from this mentor in over 20 years, but his quote has always stuck with me.<\/p>\n So, with this thought in mind, let\u2019s examine the elegance of this truth:<\/p>\n Contrary to what journalist Rebecca Griffin thinks, white women feminists are not responsible for giving black women rights.<\/a><\/p>\n How\u2019s that for elegance?<\/p>\n Griffin\u2019s arrogance is so profound, it almost took my breath away.\u00a0 But not only is she arrogant, she\u2019s wrong.\u00a0 The truth is that most of the women\u2019s suffrage movement excluded women who looked like me.\u00a0 Sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.\u00a0 But the result was the same.<\/p>\n When women finally scored the right to vote, that victory was largely for\u00a0white\u00a0<\/em>women.\u00a0 Black women were fighting for the right to breathe.\u00a0 White women fight for equal rights vis a vis white men.\u00a0 Black women, then as now, have never had the luxury of that focus.\u00a0 Black women have always had to fight for our right to just be recognized\u00a0as\u00a0a human being rather than\u00a0white people\u2019s\u00a0property.\u00a0\u00a0Our humanity, our sexuality, our individuality,\u00a0have always been a struggle.<\/p>\n Black women primarily identify with the civil rights struggle.\u00a0 We\u2019ve never gotten an opportunity to\u00a0connect to the women\u2019s rights movement.\u00a0 Nor have white women been particularly inclusive in their efforts, since we\u2019re talking about truth.\u00a0 The feminist movement was all about equality for\u00a0white woman, who have never faced racism and systemic oppression of\u00a0not only their bodies, but their entire family structure as well.\u00a0 White women did not include\u00a0black\u00a0women\u2019s right to be equal in the eyes of the law and society.\u00a0 White women did not\u00a0go\u00a0one step further to ensure that their right to vote included my right to vote either.\u00a0 It\u00a0was only 50 years ago that my right to vote was secured.\u00a0 And that is to no credit of white\u00a0women.\u00a0 In fact, white women benefited from the marginalization of black women.\u00a0 Have you seen the movie or read the book\u00a0The Help<\/em><\/a>?\u00a0 I rest my case.<\/p>\n Black women carried the torch\u00a0in the struggle for black women\u2019s rights.\u00a0 Ida B. Wells, Sojourner Truth, bell hooks, and\u00a0so many other dynamic black women who have\u00a0battle scars to prove their fight\u00a0for black women\u2019s equality are who black women pay homage to.\u00a0 That\u2019s truth.<\/p>\n And\u00a0the truth is, if anyone owes anyone recognition and thanks for a movement, it is white women who owe black women a debt of gratitude for our role in the civil rights movement since\u00a0white women have been the largest beneficiaries of affirmative action and EEOC laws<\/a>, on top of benefiting from their fathers\u2019 and husbands\u2019 supreme status on the food chain.\u00a0 Just as black women are \u201cdouble minorities\u201d, white women are \u201cdouble majorities\u201d, with all of the rights, privileges and benefits accorded thereto.<\/p>\n White women were largely silent about issues that mattered to black women then, and they are largely silent about those matters now.\u00a0 Where are all the white women fighting with black women to demand that the police stop killing black men and women?\u00a0 Where are white women fighting with black women to denounce the prison industrial complex that imprisons more black men now than were slaves in 1860?\u00a0 Where are all of the white women demanding the dismantling of white supremacy and institutional racism?<\/p>\n Anecdotally, these white women show up at #blacklivesmatter rallies and protests.\u00a0 But as a feminist movement?\u00a0 G.H.O.S.T.<\/p>\n White women: I\u2019m calling for you.\u00a0 There is room for you in the movement for the recognition and valuing of black women and those we love.\u00a0\u00a0Join your voices with ours calling on your husbands and fathers and sons to stop their madness.\u00a0 Recognize and use your white privilege to someone\u2019s benefit other than yours.\u00a0 If black women win, then everybody wins.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s the truth.\u00a0 And it\u2019s elegant.<\/p>\n Traci Ellis<\/a> is a R3 contributor and blogs at TenSpeaks<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First Posted at TenSpeaks I had a white male mentor once early in my career.\u00a0 For reasons unknown to me then, but which are much clearer to me 20 plus years later, he took a liking to me and voluntarily took me \u201cunder his wings\u201d.\u00a0 He helped me a lot and I appreciated it.\u00a0 But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[196,17,29,716,195,16],"class_list":["post-3911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-traci-ellis","tag-feminism","tag-gender","tag-race","tag-traci-ellis","tag-truth","tag-women"],"yoast_head":"\n