Done. ;)

Do you know how many times I skipped over this post? Yeah, I’m a lazy one, if the headline and the first sentence don’t strike me, I’m gone. I finally figured out what it was about while moderating comments (with my lazy self), and I was like ewww good topic.

The problem with being white and coming out and saying something about your own racism and anti-racist process, is that other white people immediately disassociate from you: NOT ME! I NEVER THOUGHT THAT! I dunno what you are talking about!

Whites do not readily cop to racism, so you are all alone out there.

The white people plead innocent and act superior, while the POCs certainly feel no sympathy (and I don’t expect them to, of course). White people hardly ever JOIN IN and affirm what you are saying about whiteness. They rarely interrogate their own prejudices and assumptions and make it a group process, which would make the whole thing worthwhile. They are too busy trying to LOOK GOOD, which BTW, is part of whiteness.

Anyway, I think that same pattern manifested with Ilyka. She was so “on fire”–that for awhile she didn’t care. But eventually, it caught up with her.

I hope she’ll be back.

I have felt the same struggles and not fought the good fight probably as much as I could/should, and that is due to the privilege of not having to. And that sucks.

I find myself having to sometimes tune things out and walk away because it’s all so incredibly depressing. It really is very very sad when people who undergo similar types of systemic oppression (not exactly the same, but historically long, institutionally ingrained) are unable to recognize it and take a step back and shut up and LISTEN. I’m also really tired of the politically correct talk - as in, there’s a lot of lip service about “inclusive” feminism - because we all know we are supposed to be that way. But, sadly, most of the time it is just that - lip service. I’d almost rather people put away the PC stuff because it’s harder to fight that which is cloaked, ya know?

I don’t really have a point. Just wanted to let you know that you are not alone in these struggles and in trying to get better.

Bonnie, I’m sorry the post was confusing. I didn’t take a whole lot of time editing it because the form seemed to be a little more raw than that. Ilyka Damen had started writing a lot about racism after the Jessica Valenti thing. Ilyka dida good job, in my opinion, of speaking in radical support of the view that was presented by the majority of women of color bloggers. More importantly, though, in my opinion, she did a good job of moving from that specific subject to the treatment of women of color in the blogosphere in general, in particular illuminating some darker things about the role of allies.

Her posts seemed very important to me, and very angry, and very dark. In retrospect, it’s not surprising that she burned out, having and writing those kinds of revelations.

For the record, I don’t know that I’d endorse every word that Ilyka wrote on the topics, either about the Valenti blog war, or the more general topics. But I had a sense of frame shifting when I read her work that felt important to me.

Remove the cut from this post, please.

In American discourse we frequently privilege “having the answer” over having some thoughts which don’t constitute The Solution To Everything or The Explanation For Everything. I think it’s silly and even vaguely patriarchal. I think it’s very sad to see such an incredibly thought-provoking post go ignored because it’s hidden behind a cut tag with an ambiguous, non-information-containing message in front of it.

Are you referring to Ilyka’s “Skedaddle Alert”? I’m very confused.