Tressie McMillan Cottom: Empirical Questions and "Big Tent Feminism"

Four days after the entire clusterfuck that was the 2013 Academy Awards (I am so glad I missed the telecast this year), specifically The Onion's offensive tweet about Quvenzhané Willis, Tressie McMillan Cottom posted an intelligent and reasoned look at the coverage of the tweet by feminist media. A highlight from her worth-reading post:

In the final analysis, the white out on Quvenzhané and The Onion is gradational. Some feminist outlets covered the issue, if only tangentially. The notable exceptions are the biggest brands and the most corporate outlets. What appears to be closest to the truth of what happened, and what feminists of color are arguing, is that white feminists ignored how race made Quvenzhané vulnerable to attack and that race muted the intensity of the response from white feminists.

and

For many black feminists, the extremity of the attack, satirical or not, demanded an equally extreme organizational response. If a movement was ever going to be unequivocal and resolute about anything I would like to think it would be about calling a child a c*nt. The response for me was visceral. The minute I saw The Onion tweet I was nauseated. I was not kidding when I said I was shaking.

I felt that for a host of reasons, I’m sure. She’s brown like my adorable younger cousin Genesis. God knows she has my god-daughter’s impish personality and preternatural confidence. I used to wear my hair like she had hers the night of the Oscars.

She looks like people I care about.

If she doesn’t look like people you care about, I have to wonder where your give-a-damn cuts off.

Being disgusted by sexualized attacks against a defenseless child is a function of a social construction, and likely a hypocritical one at that. Even though our society idealizes children we abuse them individually and structurally every day. Still, there remains a cultural norm that children are off-limits. When that norm is violated and it does not elicit a social response equal to the severity of the violation, it communicates that there are invisible limits to who is included in the greater social contract.

And then.

Within 24 hours of posting the commentary to my small blog, I was charged with deliberately publishing research designed to deny a “white male feminist” that wrote “arguably the most influential” article on the Quvenzhané attack his just due. Next, colleagues began forwarding responses from women’s studies scholars. The comments ranged from an argument that I am trying to brutally constrain what constitutes a feminist argument to I conflated feminists organizations with individual feminists to intentionally profit from a cottage industry of racist race-baiting as I plot to destroy feminism from the inside-out. I received long, personal emails from white feminists telling me the high price they have paid professionally and personally for being an ally. They said I spit on their sacrifice by asking how white feminist media responded to Quvenzhané.

I know how trolling works. This was not trolling. These were comments, emails and tweets from scholars who mostly signed their own names or acknowledged that they are in the academy. That is more than trolling; it is a debate among colleagues.

Some of my colleagues do not think that I should be asking questions about white feminist organizations.

and

As I posted in a response to the many angry commenters, I do not have the resources to make the argument that race matters. I also wouldn’t have the resources to convince you that the sky is blue and not purple. Like blue skies, I thought the idea that race matters is a pretty pedestrian argument at this point. Of course race would matter when the subject is an attack by a white media organization on a little black girl. Of course it would. I thought that went without saying.

And I was right.

It does go without saying when you are not allowed to say it.

I am not of the Academy. I'm not a timely blogger or even a consistent one. But I wanted to link to this discussion here as a good reminder that a feminist's "give-a-damn" must extend beyond just those women and girls who look like herself. A child is a child is a child.