The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

The Whole Race Deck

Welcome, Kim, and I’m glad you brought up Alice Walker's “womanist” position. Her Root essay last March, “Lest We Forget: An Open Letter to My Sisters Who Are Brave,” endorsing Barack Obama stayed with me a long time. Not just because I found Walker’s trademarked word womanism to describe only “feminist women of color” a little exclusionary. 

I do agree that Hillary Clinton is not, as Walker reminds us, "colorless, race-less, past-less," and she escapes racial scrutiny as "a woman" while Barack Obama is always "a black man." Furthermore, playing the race card (whether she then withdrew it or not) was inexcusable. But, although it is true that Hillary has benefited, as have I and other white women (particularly of our generation) from innumerable educational and economic advantages to being Caucasian in this country, I got a little uncomfortable when Walker wrote that Clinton carries "all the history of white womanhood in America in her person." Perhaps wrongly, until reading that, I had not personally considered myself an exploiter of racial inequality. To be clear, I am deeply ashamed of the abomination of slavery and the century of discrimination that followed. I just didn't think simply by being white and of a certain age, I was part of the problem.

I saw Florida recently joined the queue of states that have apologized for slavery. I posted a "Hot Document" a few months ago when New Jersey did the same thing. A lot of Slate readers Frayed for weeks declaiming the emptiness of that state’s gesture while many others wrote angrily that the official apology wasted resources and was not owed by the geographical descendants of New Jersey’s 19^th-century citizens. Personally, I think it’s never too late to apologize. In fact, I now want to apologize to Alice Walker on behalf of myself and all white women who believe in equality. Really. Can we be womanists now too?