Is Feminism Really for All Women?

Too often the unity we seek comes with conditions

Illustration: Ana Galvañ

In January 2017, while I was covering the inaugural protests and the Women’s March in Washington, DC for a small Black newspaper, I ran into three women I’d known in my Navy-wife days, decades earlier. White, liberal, and decidedly feminist, they embraced me like a long-lost friend.

We met for dinner and spent hours catching up about our kids, railing about Trump, and predicting the future of America. I wasn’t soul-sick yet about the election; I was still in fight mode, still resolutely optimistic. I’d been one of very few Black women at the March, and I’d been processing that all day, too, thinking of the story I needed to file.

Then one of the women clarified my angle for me in an instant. “We couldn’t get any of the Black women in town to show up,” she said, somewhat exasperated. “I mean, the patriarchy oppresses us all. We need to be united now more than ever!”

In White feminism, unity too often means to deal with White women’s priorities first, to bring some color to the photo op, but be silent when it’s time to make policy.