But she had to struggle to say this in a room of women, the majority of whom were white and wanted black sororities to redeem the racism and sexism of the white sororities. If it wasn't so inappropriate applied here, because Spivak has scoffed at the notion that women of color in the west should ever be called or call themselves 'subaltern', I'd still want to say, "Can the subaltern speak?"
Some of the women most offended by the book, particularly those who wanted to address the racism of the sororities, did not want to hear T's account of what *really* went on in HBSs.
I'm not sure how we got on the topic but we were talking about inequality in schooling. Someone mentioned that she was happy to pay taxes as long as it wasn't being spent improperly. Someone mentioned AIG. But then the women of color in the room brought it directly to the issue that the white women were too careful not to discuss: naw, there are some people ripping off the system. And they'd point to people who were on welfare, collecting section 8, when they could work if they really wanted to. etc.
One of them went on a rant about a neighbor who has a learning disability and is not staying home at 6 months into her pregnancy. She's pissed b/c she has three kids and has to go to work. She was saying all this while sitting under the picture of Che that decorated her living room.
Of course, I sat there and, after reading The Great Financial Crisis, thought: so, if they 'earn' their 8x8 project flat by working, like you had to work your way through college, what if there aren't enough jobs anyway? I eventually said this at some point, mentioning that there's no way we could have full employment in this system. Someone piped up to say they'd heard this too. But then it was something like 5% was 'normal' -- and those 5% would and should encompass the deserving poor: the schizophrenics, the disabled, etc. the rest of 'em needed to get off their ass and *earn it* like they did.
My blood boiled through a lot of it -- the poor bashing, the welfare queen bashing. It's amazing to me that even in a room where the operative definition of belonging to the group is being "progressive" that after welfare deform, we still have welfare bashing.
i know I shouldn't be amazed. I still am.
At some point I said something, in what I hoped was a more innocent, what about this? posture than i normally pull off: "well, reading about these people who basically wanted to buy a house with a loan so they could flip it in 4 months and make $50k doing nothing, isn't that the definition of the American dream of being rich: sitting around doing nothing, collecting money for it?"
I have resisted Dwayne's interpretation of what went on in feminist bloglandia, thinking that it was more a devolution into Teh Crazee that was peculiar to this group. But as I sit in this group and realize what the definition of feminism appears to be, I think you are probably right. The class analysis stuff I put out, as weak tea as it often was, just flipped people right the hell out.
What reverberated the whole drive home was how the woman who'd worked her way through college while in the military said this about the book: "I can't believe this is how women treat each other. And they pay to have 'friends' who treat them this way? When people tried to get me to join a historically black sorority, I didn't want to pay to have friends. Now I'm really glad I didn't."
Yeah: this is how women treat each other. And it goes on while we're sitting in a feminist book reading group, only the women we're shitting on are on the wrong side of poor.
shag