Faux Intersectionality of the Left

Not news, obviously.

I stumbled upon this blog, Muslim Bushido, through this interesting post. Ignoring the blatantly ableist title, this is an important topic. Part of the discussion is about the lack of coverage in the media on things that affect black lives, and when there are stories concerning black people, even in black communities, they center around men.

In the first video, starting at 34:18, Yvette Carnell says, “You see all these things . . . All these stories about black women’s hair and all this stuff –I’m not saying people can’t talk about their hair– but you look at the proportions of these articles to articles that actually matter in terms of black life, that actually matter in terms of what’s happening to black people, and you wonder how that happens; you wonder ‘how did we get here?'”.

This is something I definitely noticed within supposedly intersectional liberal feminist spaces. I saw A LOT of articles about black women’s hair and about Beyoncé. I did not see things about policies that affect black women, I did not see things about black children and school, I did not see things about the Flint water crisis. There was some mention about Black Lives Matter, which of course, is male centered. In fact, in this article, the author of Muslim Bushido criticises Yvette Carnell’s channel as too male-centric, and — in other posts — advises black women to stay neutral in the conflict of police brutality against black men. I’m definitely going to be reading her posts on that and may post a compilation of notes and references to multiple opinions on this.

Just thought I would share this and some thoughts. Everyone reading this surely already realises that no one really gives a damn, even though the left swears up and down that they care SO MUCH. In my time as a liberal feminist I really got the feeling that women of color were there just to be occasionally mentioned to win extra inclusivity points, then pushed to the back to be forgotten.