If you were among the 136,000 white women on a Zoom for Kamala Harris via Answer the Call last night and you didn’t stick around until the end, you missed my favorite part.
While it was all quite inspiring and rallying, it was Sue Bird who said something I found enormously helpful and insightful.
The former WNBA star shared a lesson she learned playing in a league of predominantly black women. Essentially, recognize your privilege. There’s a time to leverage it to step to the front and lead, but there’s also a time to step back and follow.
Knowing when to do what, well, that’s sometimes clear and sometimes not. Use your intuition. Sometimes you’re going to get it wrong, but you can’t be afraid of that. You have to try. It’s the only way.
OK, I embellished on her take a bit, but not much. This was the gist of Bird’s message and I instantly realized the self-awareness and emotional intelligence, not just behind it, but needed to carry it forward.
No matter how well-intentioned white women are, if we call ourselves allies, we must shed the defensiveness and the fear of saying the wrong thing. It’s part of it. We must also be aware of our own privilege and maybe wield it in “convenient” places. Activism on steroids.
MAGA is trying to shut women up and steal our choices and hence our power. It’s not even covert. Bird gave us some gold that will help us harness our energy. It is about highly conscious action and boy do we need that. Our black sisters jump started this with an enormous Zoom gathering the very day Biden stepped down and endorsed Harris; we have proudly followed suit.
There’s a lot of recent chatter on social media that white women benefitted greatly from DEI (a.k.a. affirmative action or quota hiring). Listen to me. Don’t take offense to that. I was a sportswriter. I am quite sure the newspaper I wrote for in the 1990s wanted to add a woman to a sports staff of 20-plus reporters and editors. Did that give me an edge? In retrospect, I hope so. Did I hear the occasional derogatory comment back then? You bet. Can I write? Yes. Do I work hard? Yes. That’s it. That’s the ballgame. If someone wants to believe I won an award because “they must have wanted to give it to a woman this year,” that’s on them.
Let’s keep our focus on telling the guys at the top of the 2024 Republican ticket that their vision for the country is outdated and unacceptable.
Donald Trump just called his opponent “garbage” at a rally. I share blood with someone who recently called Hillary Clinton a cunt and a twat. I hope most people have been spared the sexually offensive memes already circulating about our Vice President.
What ever happened to, “She is so wrong. I disagree with her vehemently. Here’s why her position doesn’t hold water.”
Instead it’s about her womanhood, her race, and the perceived weaknesses that come with that. Her sexual choices. Her “female” tendencies. You can’t make a cogent argument on issues and so you go with that?
There’s an assault on our rights happening and we’re going to keep kicking and screaming and then some. Get off us. The persistent degradation is staggering.
I am delighted to have been on that call that raised over $2 million and felt so unifying. I was on another one from a different organization earlier in the week, but it wasn’t quite a match for me. It also had rousing speakers and good intent, but one speaker talked about our “shame” as white women for having elected Trump.
OK, listen. I’m disappointed that white women put the guy in office and think he’s for real, but shame? No, I don’t feel shame. I didn’t vote for him. White women are not a monolith. There are a lot of white women who are swept up in and quite comfortable with the current patriarchal structure. Most don’t see it that way, but their adherence to Christianity alone supports my contention.
My intent here is not to be divisive, but to point out that there are a bunch of organizations trying to get Kamala Harris elected. Find your fit.
I knew this Zoom gathering last night was my home when author Glennon Doyle talked about her own “regret and shame” for not doing more in 2016. Now there’s some shame I can relate to.
“Silent support is not support,” Doyle said.
Duly noted.
All the speakers – Shannon Watts, Pink, Mallory McMorrow, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elisa Slotkin and others – spoke to action. Get involved. Donate. Have conversations. Organize a rally or fundraiser. Use your voice.
Ultimately, Doyle shared what she wants to feel on election night in November when Harris wins.
“We won and we saved the goddamned world.”
Period. Amen.
[Editorial Note: This is my 32nd installment in a series I began in order to give my writing some flow after being in a healing phase from knee surgeries for a year (2023-24).]
