We’ve been talking a lot about cookies…. and about motives. We’ve been talking about Jim and his idea that if he tosses a little cash in Lace’s direction, that will be viewed as an olive branch or he will be viewed as ‘redeemed’ There’s a comment thread under the most recent post about Jim where some of us have discussed how we feel when we read the comments on Kinfolk Kollective’s page. Here’s the thing y’all. Again and again, white women as a group have chosen to be bad actors. Again and again, we have betrayed those we say we stand beside.
Now we have the Wall of Moms. Your newsfeeds have been filled with their praise as they put their bodies in between the violence of the Feds and the vulnerability of the protesters. I wonder how you felt when you read about them? A sense of pride perhaps? Solidarity?
What do you feel when I tell you this is pantsuit nation all over again? The truth is that black moms have had boots on the ground this entire time, but the groundswell of attention and participation by white women came largely after white and white adjacent women ‘had an idea’ for Wall of Moms. It wasn’t an original idea ~ oh, but it was a white woman’s idea and it spread like one.
In this past week, one of the original organizers of Wall of Moms, Bev Barnum, was quoted as saying that the group follows the direction of Black leaders.
“If [Black leaders] want one wall of moms, they get one. If they want two, they get two,” she says. “If they tell us to jump, we jump. And if they tell us to leave, we leave.”
In fact, white women in leadership for the organization had rescinded their positions in order to allow women of color to lead. But in the last day or two it has come out that instead, Ms. Barnum chose to file for 501(c)3 status without the knowledge of any of the newly instated black women leaders, and when some of those women expressed concerns, it appears Ms. Barnum severed ties. It became apparent that ultimately Ms. Barnum exploited the Black Lives Matter movement in order to launch her own movement, which while still willing to support BLM, will focus on frontline situations much more broadly.
This is not a new story. We as white women have perpetrated this same violence and betrayal against black women over and over. And then we think one word of support for black women, one penny of our resources tossed in the right direction, is deserving of gratitude? Makes us team members…. a cohort?
There’s one word up above that jumps out at me. Do you see it? Allow. It seems that whether we are serving and supporting, or whether we are beating and killing, whether we are faithful, or whether we betray ~ we still focus on holding the power. It always seems to come back to power, and the transaction.
Quite recently, Lace had an interaction with an acquaintance, or…. not quite sure what to call her but their relationship, while familiar is not quite at friend level. This woman expressed interest in what Lace does and Lace pointed her to our website and Facebook page and specifically the pinned posts. She came back to Lace and said she thinks the website looks great! She wanted to get coffee and chat because she had questions. Lace said sure, coffee and a friendly chat sounds nice, but not as a consult. And did you read the pinned posts? The woman replied “Oh no, not a consult. I only do consults with clients.” But she hasn’t read the pinned posts. She implies she’s offering friendship but she wants to talk to Lace about Lace’s work, without first reading the roadmap that Lace has already provided. And it doesn’t seem clear to her that Lace too does consults – and that she might have been the client in this instance.
Did it occur to her to ask Lace to coffee because maybe it’s lonely sometimes, living alone, especially during a pandemic? Hey, let’s have socially distanced outdoor coffee together and get to know each other better. That would have been relational. But relationship wasn’t what she was seeking. She was seeking Lace’s knowledge and expertise but doing it in the guise of friendship so that she could have access to those things without putting in any legwork herself. To the casual observer, no, let me take that back. To my white trained eye, at first glance it looked so innocent. Because I am well versed in making the transactional APPEAR relational. So it was a transaction, yes, and a clear power move as well. If she can couch it as a friendly conversation over coffee, she can gain from Lace’s expertise without ever acknowledging Lace as her better or as her teacher here. They can be equals but she will never have to be in a relationship where a black woman holds more power.
And that brings me back to where I started. Disguising the transactional as relational is why we think we deserve cookies when we do the right thing. It is why we think we can effect reconciliation by dropping a dollar here and there. And it is why in the end, we always end up betraying those we say we stand with. Because if our efforts are at their core transactional and there is no relationship base to keep us faithful and steady, we will move on to the next best opportunity every time.
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10111300334765391&id=5027561
https://www.facebook.com/DontShootPDX/posts/2803832126570586
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