naming black and white

In the opening notes of Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility she talks about identity politics and how “all progress we have made in the realm of civil rights has been accomplished through identity politics”. She then uses the example of women’s suffrage to make it very clear that we need to name who has access and who does not:

Take women’s suffrage. If being a woman denies you the right to vote, you ipso facto cannot grant it to yourself. And you certainly cannot vote for your right to vote. If men control all the mechanisms that exclude women from voting as well as the mechanisms that can reverse that exclusion, women must call on men for justice. You could not have had a conversation about women’s right to vote and men’s need to grant it without naming women and men. Not naming the groups that face barriers only serves those who already have access; the assumption is that the access enjoyed by the controlling group is universal. For example, although we are taught that women were granted suffrage in 1920, we ignore the fact that it was white women who received full access or that it was white men who granted it. Not until the 1960s, through the Voting Rights Act, were all women—regardless of race—granted full access to suffrage. Naming who has access and who doesn’t guides our efforts in challenging injustice.

— Robin DiAngelo

The politics of our identities is pivotal in the anti-racist fight for justice.

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