1000 Women Sign Petition Urging President Obama to Create Legislation for Women of Color


Two weeks ago, a diverse group of Black men signed an open letter to the President urging him to consider the needs of Black women and girls in addition to the My Brothers Keeper initiative which focuses primarily on Black and brown boys.

The final paragraph of that letter reads:
If the denunciation of male privilege, sexism and rape culture is not at the center of our quest for racial justice, then we have endorsed a position of benign neglect towards the challenges that girls and women face that undermine their well-being and the well-being of the community as a whole. As Black men we believe if the nation chooses to “save” only Black males from a house on fire, we will have walked away from a set of problems that we will be compelled to return to when we finally realize the raging fire has consumed the Black women and girls we left behind. 
This week, over 1000 women and girls of color banded together to advocate for themselves in their own open letter. Professor Brittney Cooper points out that the overwhelming support of Black and Latina women has not resulted in substantive legislation explicitly for these groups.
...black women, Obama’s single largest voting demographic, have been the subject of no executive orders, no White House initiatives and no pieces of progressive legislation. Ninety-six percent of black women voters voted for Obama compared to 87 percent of black men. Seventy-six percent of Latinas voted for the president compared to 65 percent of Latino men.
The letter seeks not to diminish the importance of My Brother's Keeper, but to expand the terms fo the conversation. 

While we applaud the efforts on the part of the White House, private philanthropy, social justice organizations and others to move beyond colorblind approaches to race-specific problems, we are profoundly troubled about the exclusion of women and girls of color from this critical undertaking. The need to acknowledge the crisis facing boys should not come at the expense of addressing the stunted opportunities for girls who live in the same households, suffer in the same schools, and struggle to overcome a common history of limited opportunities caused by various forms of discrimination.
Real the letter in full here.

No comments:

Powered by Blogger.