Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race(35)
The same sort of scenario happened repeatedly over the next couple of years. Just one year later, pop star Lily Allen released her first music video, ‘Hard Out Here’, after a long hiatus from the music industry. The formula of the resulting race row was similar to the furore around Girls. A young and successful white woman had revealed public work that was immediately lauded as raw, relatable and utterly, thoroughly feminist – the definitive anthem for young women everywhere. In this instance though, it wasn’t a lack of black people that sparked upset. The black bodies were present, but Lily Allen’s black back-up dancers were scantily clad, dancing in a parody of misogynistic hip-hop videos as she sang about glass ceilings, objectification, and strongly implied that smart girls didn’t need to strip to be successful.
After a while, it became wise to stop paying attention to anything tagged vaguely feminist in popular media, as it would only end up being disappointing. What I carried on doing was writing.
On New Year’s Eve of 2013, I was invited by a BBC producer to appear on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. It was a fairly innocent request – to discuss the year in feminism alongside Laura Bates of the Everyday Sexism Project, and Caroline Criado-Perez, who that year had campaigned to have historical women figures featured on British banknotes. When I took my seat in the studio, I realised I was the only black face in the room. That was the first red flag. I was joined by Laura and the radio presenter. Caroline was phoning in. The segment began. I was nervous. I explained that I didn’t really consider myself a campaigner, but that during the year I had been writing about racism in the feminist movement – my frustrations with a doggedly white-centric perspective from the movement’s ‘leaders’ – and found that lots of women who were not white were feeling exactly the same way. ‘A tide has turned in terms of these issues in feminism,’ I said. ‘They cannot be ignored any more.’1
The burden then fell on me to explain why feminism was so divided, and why feminism needed a race analysis in the first place. I was asked: ‘What lies at the bottom of the divisions, and why has the phrase “check your privilege” become so popular?’ That was the second red flag. This framing suggested that racism wasn’t a concern for my white peers. Having worked with Laura Bates in the past, I knew that this wasn’t the case. Despite my discomfort, I put forward my case for the need for a race analysis in feminism. But my point was quickly picked up on by Caroline Criado-Perez, who said that people had used an anti-racist perspective as a reason to harass and bully her online.
The context of her comment was very disturbing. Earlier in that year, Caroline’s women-on-banknotes campaign had drawn national headlines. The press coverage attracted a misogynist sentiment, and what started out as a win quickly descended into one of the most high-profile British cases of online harassment. When the Bank of England announced plans to put an image of the author Jane Austen on the ten-pound note, the women-on-banknotes campaign claimed this as a success. But because of the harassment that followed as a result of the campaign’s work, Caroline had been sent death threats. She received messages that told her that bombs had been installed outside of her home. She was repeatedly messaged by anonymous ill-wishers who were encouraging her to commit suicide. Eventually, two people pled guilty to sending her some of the more vicious tweets. They were sentenced to twelve and eight weeks in prison respectively, under the Malicious Communications Act.
On that New Year’s Eve Woman’s Hour, Caroline’s comment, aimed at discrediting her online abusers, came across as equating my work and politics with these vicious and abusive messages. I felt implicated in the harassment against her. In the BBC studio, it fell to me to account for Caroline’s horrific experiences, putting me in the position of defending the arguments (that I didn’t share) of people I didn’t even know. I was completely lost for words.
This was the cost of representation. The overwhelming whiteness of feminism – on a radio-show segment that would have been all white if it wasn’t for my presence – was not considered a problem. I had wanted to discuss how feminism wasn’t exempt from white privilege, but instead I found myself on the receiving end of it.
There was an Internet storm about the interview immediately after we came off air. Some people were as shocked at this assertion as I was. Others were convinced that I was a liar and a bully who had been waging a war against Caroline online – not true – and that by balking at her intervention, I was playing the victim. I hadn’t wanted to at first, but after some encouragement from friends, a few hours later I wrote a short blog post clarifying what went on.
Think about the last time you heard a comprehensive description of the nature of structural racism in the mainstream media, I wrote. These issues just don’t get the kind of airtime that feminism does in the UK press. Think hard about the last time you heard a person of colour challenge the virulently racist rhetoric around immigration in this country, or just state the plain fact that structural racism prevails because white people are treated more favourably in the society we live in. I was afforded the opportunity to do this live, on national radio. I didn’t take it lightly.
After a concerted effort from many a white woman to portray black feminist thought as destructive and divisive, I’m aware that accepting these media requests is a double-edged sword. It was Audre Lorde who said: ‘If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.’ Though it sometimes feels like I am entering into a trap, I’m hyper-aware that if I don’t accept these opportunities, black feminism will be mischaracterised and misrepresented by the priorities of the white feminists taking part in the conversation . . . I’m tired of this tribal deadlock. I meant what I said on the programme: the only way to foster any shared solidarity is to learn from each other’s struggles, and recognise the various privileges and disadvantages that we all enter the movement with.