New Black Woman

I’m a glutton for punishment. I don’t know why I continue to read certain news organizations’ content, websites or blogs, but I like to see what varying opinions are floating around out there on the Internets.

I stumbled onto a so-called Black Women Empowerment blog called Black Women’s Interracial Relationship Circle (note the clever URL).  I like to read these types of blogs to get an idea of what other black women are saying in the blogosphere and to get a feel of the pulse of a certain segment of black women.

The author’s post, “The primary reasons why BWE are the real champions of black women,” caught my eye. The author, known as Halima Anderson, goes into a rant on how and why black feminists and womanists have turned their backs on black women.

Just a little taste:

If you look at most of the analysis for black women out there (whether they are by womanists, black feminsists etc), it still very much considers black women entities ‘the community’. Black women are still enscribed in community and are still analyzed as beings of the black community, community agents, black community bound, their destinies and lives to be traced out only within these confines and terms.

BWE are willing to unyoke black women from ‘community’ if it will save their lives, keep them sane, prevent them from being worked to death, provide a measure of protection, ensure their resources do not become the possession of others, if it will enable them meet their dreams and goals. To BWE the work which bw do or what they are to their community, is not more important than the health and well-being of black women itself!

BWE are willing to ‘loose her and let her go’. Ask yourself, which other justice group even those that claim to be all about bw are willing to go as far as to say, ‘Black woman, you are now more in danger from within so our models and frameworks need to take this into account and to ensure the survival of bw we will be willing to go as far as detach her from our community-bound, and community-based models if necessary’.

True champions of bw put bw first, not behind the use and purpose of black women to their communities. They can imagine bw living a life outside its boundaries. Those unwilling to separate bw from the community role and community locating contribute to her oppression.

A little more:

The question is indeed in need of asking, why hasn’t black feminism brought forth new ways of looking at the black woman’s situation that could be of practical use and benefit to black women NOW in her current situation and with the nature of her current threat. Black women are indeed in a bad way yet all we get is ineffective and outdated theories that do not address the current needs of black women!

From these ‘learned’ women we have nothing but the usual ‘complaining’ about the wider system. There is nothing to address the current nature of black female oppression, the battering of black women’s image and self esteem (this time not by whites but by black men). Maybe this is why they have absolutely nothing to say nor any solution to suggest (because black feminism/womanism was all about facing the outward enemy i.e. the white man and thus has come to the limit of its operation and ability now that the white man is no longer the biggest problem of black women). 

So each day the situation gets worse and the black woman is at the point that she rises daily and wonders, ‘who is going to trash my image, today? what next? what is going to be dished at me this time?’

I’ve been reading this and many other so-called BWE blogs over the past five or six years and I’ve never come across anything so piss poor and ignorant. The post in its entirety is worth the read, even though it’s highly and blatantly inaccurate and filled with lies.

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