short Response to reading Audre Lorde, Peggy McIntosh, and Tiya Miles

Tiya Miles and her work on the magazine called the Rag is not a story I have not heard before. Countless times you see women getting catty over things that are unnecessary. I don’t want to make stereotypes but most women do have this problem. We can’t face a problem head on; we have to talk behind peoples back and things like that. The issues that this magazine were big, but easily fixed in my opinion. The major problem was that the black women do not like the fact that it was labeled as a feminist magazine because that discourages black women from writing for it because feminism has long been associated with white women problems. What they should of done is create a section in the rag called the womanist, so that black women can be heard and so the title remains the same. Black and white women do have different issues in society and it’s all right to acknowledge that. White women don’t have to pretend that there is no difference in the problems of white and black women. Together they could of joined ideas and expressed their views and struggles and become even closer through their differences. This issue has popped back in time before. Tiya Miles even say that the group was, “… unfamiliar with feminist history and contemporary feminist theory (Miles 177).” She also says that, “We were so focused on our individual development and liberation that we failed to reach out to women with different experiences and to plan group activism (177).” If they were going to be a feminist magazine they should of a least done some research and looked up ways not to go under like most magazines like that do.

Peggy McIntosh’s article on White privilege was an interesting read. Her basic theme through the article was certain groups have privilege that they were born with only because of color of their skin or their sex, and these people deny having any privilege at all. To her the main problem with this is that they are the only ones who can change the system and if they don’t acknowledge this privilege how will it ever change? She gives multiple examples of how white people have more privileged then us and it’s a lot of things. I actually really enjoyed reading these privileges because I wanted to see if I felt either privileged or not because I’m half black half white. So where do I identify? I really can’t tell whenever I see either race I identify so I guess I’m lucky, white or black I identify with it.

Audre Lorde article really spoke of how underrepresented black, lesbian, and poor women are in feminist theory. She wishes that everyone comes together and recognizes the differences between each other. She doesn’t want to come together and turn into each other- she likes the differences. Which is a good thing there is nothing wrong with being different. Audre Lorde says that, “It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths.” She also explains how white women need to educate themselves about the differences between white and black women. I think this can go in multiple ways. I think all women need to sit down and learn about our differences, so that we can better understand each other.