One thing that frustrates me is how often the historical experiences of women, particularly in America, are compared to the historical experiences of Black people.
‘You sound very all lives matter’ I’m sometimes accused, with the speaker blindly assimilating women with Black people.
It’s a false equivalence that I entirely reject.
Because being a woman is not the same as being Black, not now, and certainly not in the past.
The suppression of women historically is not the same as the literal enslavement and systematic killing of Black people in America.
There does however seem to be *some* similarities in how men are often treated – as villains, as inherently dangerous and as disposable – that seem to align in some way, with the experiences of Black people.
Black Americans live shorter lives than White Americans. They are less likely to go into higher education, are graded lower for the same work in school, more likely to be searched or killed by police and sentenced more harshly in criminal court for the same crime.
They work more dangerous jobs, and die more often at the workplace. Reckless drivers who kill Black Americans receive shorter sentences, whilst Black tenants get fewer positive responses from landlords too.
All of these are true for those of the male sex too – and of course, all these things are doubly felt by Black men.
For the record, I’m not saying being a man is the same as being Black, of course it is not, I just wanted to point out certain similarities in these shared experiences.
So let’s take a look at how racism and sexism intersect, from a different point of view.
🚨 re uploaded – type, ‘women’ > ‘woman’
Sources:
National Center for Education Statistics, 2019: https://tinyurl.com/wcdky34z
Z. Sommers, Missing White Woman Syndrome, 2017: https://tinyurl.com/mejfpuxw
Racial Sentencing Gap, Starr, 2014: https://tinyurl.com/48pvhspy
Gender Sentencing Gap, Starr, https://tinyurl.com/3eez899z