ossuariies:

One thing which always interests me is the “political economy” of purporting to protect white women. It’s a ruse that has immense political capital— thinking of the Central Park 5, of lynching, of white women’s general inability to handle any critique and of peoples propensity to defend and protect them from just criticism, on the grounds of their gender— particularly when those doing the accusing are black. So there is this racialised dynamic of the notion of whites women needing to be protected (from black people) being used to cash in on so much bullshit— more policing, justification of murder or, now a days, unjust convictions, etc.

And then there is the actual experience of white women being victimized— but like all women gendered violence against them is primarily intra-racial. In other words, the race of men against which white women will need protecting is most likely to be white. So when white women are assaulted by white men you really see how all of this rhetoric about “creating safe neighborhoods” (for women to run in), protecting families, etc. which foregrounds arguments for things like broken windows policing, stop and frisk, getting tough on crime (especially violent crime, the increased presence of law enforcement agencies in public space and the increasing privatization of public space (to keep out [black and brown] “undesirables” who can not afford to pay)— all of this political violence done in white women’s names are actually just racial attacks which have nothing at all to do with protecting white women from violence— as soon as the imaginary assailant is not black or brown no one cares. Thinking of course of Roy Moore and how he is still running for office after being accused of sexual assault by multiple women who were teenaged girls at the time of their encounters with him.

What is it like to literally have your safety and security be a political football. No one has ever dedicated legislation to protecting black women— so I don’t know the feeling (and this is its own problem)— it must be strange to have people talk at length about protecting you then utterly fail. And it must be stranger still to be told all your life that the boogie man is black, only to discover that white men will attack you with impunity.