By Maud Kersnowski Sachs
I am a white woman. Feminism is the lens through which I see the world. It shocks me that I have to explain to anybody why Black Lives Matter or why women of color should be central to the Women’s March or why marriage equality is worth fighting for, but here it goes. Yes, I have friends who are black, Latino, gay, Muslim, Asian, trans, and just about any other label you can think of, but that’s not the reason. My great-grandparents were run out of town by the KKK i
n Ohio because they were Polish immigrants, but that’s not the reason. As a child, I saw the ugliness of racists up close when New Orleans was attempting to desegregate the public schools, but that’s not the reason. All these things inform who I am and how I see the world, but they’re not the core reason why I know we have to fight. The reason is that when any person’s rights are diminished, all of our rights are diminished–and that makes it my fight.
We’ve spent decades and decades arguing over whose rights it was “time for” and asking others to step back for pragmatic reasons. Maybe those were the right choices for that time, the time has come for us to fight for human rights. It’s time to fight for what is guaranteed to each and every one of us in The Constitution — but that doesn’t mean pretending like we are all equally unequal. Our democracy cannot be judged by the rights of the privileged, but by the rights of the most vulnerable.
So yes, we need to fight the fact that “driving while black” still gets you pulled over; that in low income neighborhoods there are virtually no college prep classes; that girls drop out of STEM programs in disproportionately high numbers; that all forms of family planning are under threat; that states are making laws about who can use which bathroom. We have to fight for all of this and so much more.
So ladies, get over your guilt that while you are oppressed, you are not the most oppressed. There’s only one group that wins that fight and it’s not any of us.
