Note: Digital/Printed Read

URL: http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/wacquant/wacquant_pdf/3wacquant.pdf

Note: Digital Read

URL: http://www.mediafire.com/?tyynmokyomy

Opening: 

“I do not believe our wants have made all our lies holy.” -Audre Lorde

What lies between the lines are the things that women of color do not tell each other. There are reasons for our silences: the change in generation between mother and daughter, the language barriers between us, or sexual identity, the educational opportunities we had or missed, the specific cultural history of our race, the physical conditions of our bodies and our labor. 

As Audre Lorde states in the closing piece of the preceding section, “Difference is the raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.” It is critical now that Third World feminists begin to speak directly to the specific issues that separate us. We cannot afford to throw ourselves haphazardly under the rubric of “Third World Feminism” only to discover later that there are serious differences between us which could collapse our dreams, rather than fuse alliances.

As Third World women, we understand the importance, yet limitations of race ideology to describe our total experience. Cultural differences get subsumed when we speak of “race” as an isolated issue: where does the Black Puerto Rican sister stake out her alliance in this country, with the Black community or the Latin? And color alone cannot define her status in society- How do we compare the struggles of the middle class Black woman with those of the light-skinned Latina welfare mother? Further, how each of us perceives our ability to be radical against this oppressive state is largely affected by our economic privilege and our specific history of colonization in the U.S. Some of us were brought here centuries ago as slaves, others had our birthright taken away from us, some of us are daughters and granddaughters of immigrants, others of us are newly immigrated to the U.S.

Repeated throughout this section is each woman’s desire to have all her sisters of color actively identified and involved as feminists. One of the biggest sources of separation among women of color in terms of feminism has been homophobia. This fear that we [whatever our sexuality] breathe in every day in our communities never fully allows us to feel invulnerable to attack on our own streets, and sometimes even in the homes we grew up in (let alone in the white man’s world). So often it is the fear of lesbianism which causes many of us to feel our politics and passion are being ignored or discounted by other Third World people. “There’s nothing to be compared with how you feel when you’re cut cold by your own…” (Barbra Smith). But we refuse to make a choice between our cultural identity and sexual identity, between our race and our femaleness. We are not turning our backs on our people nor on our selves. We even claim lesbianism as an “act of resistance” (Clarke) against the same forces that silence us as people of color.

We write letters home to Ma. 

Surfacing from these pages again and again is the genuine sense of loss and pain we feel when we are denied our home because of our desire to free ourselves as specifically female persons. So, we turn to each other for strength and sustenance. We write letters to each other incessantly. Across a kitchen table, Third World feminist strategy is plotted. We talk long hours into the night. It is when this midnight oil is burning that we secretly reclaim our goddesses and our female identified cultural tradition. Here we put Billie Holiday back into the hands and hearts of the women who understand her.

The difference that we have feared to mention because of our urgent need for solidarity with each other begins to be spoken to on these pages, but also the similarities that so often go unrecognized- that a light-skinned Latin woman can feel “at home” and “safe” (Morales) among her Afro-American sisters- that among many of us there is a deep-rooted identification and affinity which we were not, logically, supposed to feel towards each other living in segregated white-america. 

We turn to each other to make family and even there, after the exhilaration of our fist discovery of each other subsides, we are forced to confront our own lack of resources as Third World women living in the U.S. Without money, without institutions, without one community center to call our own we so often never get as far as dreamed while plotting in our kitchens. We disappoint each other. Sometimes we even die on each other. How to reconcile with the death of a friend the death of a spirit? 

We begin by speaking directly to the deaths and disappointments. Here we begin to fill in the spaces of silence between us. For it is between these seemingly irreconcilable lines- the class lines, the political correct lines, the daily lines we run down to each other to keep difference and desire at a distance- that the truth of our connection lives. 

Note: 1) Digital Read 2) Sorry there’s so many parts to download. It took me FOREVER to scan in this book. It’s an amazing read though! A MUST READ if you will.

URL:

Pt 1: http://www.mediafire.com/?2ref96xn45tex1h

pt 2: http://www.mediafire.com/?w4ftdoa69zjk7ww

Pt 3: http://www.mediafire.com/?gguvgexm7vocc4w

Pt 4: http://www.mediafire.com/?fglf1ilu91pzgfi

Pt 5: http://www.mediafire.com/?fc0ea6y1nh6rf2v

Pt 6: http://www.mediafire.com/?mt8kn25e119kcwq

Pt 7: http://www.mediafire.com/?plz15bytkw5f0il

Description:

In this highly anticipated follow-up to White Like Me, activist and educator Tim Wise examines the ways in which institutional racism continues to shape the contours of daily life in the United States.

The essays include in this collection span the last ten years of Wise’s writing and cover all the hottest racial topics of the past decade, including the political rise of Barack Obama, the challenge to affirmative action, the implications of Hurricane Katrina, and immigration. Wise’s commentaries make forceful yet accessible arguments that serve to counter both white denial and complacency- two of the main obstacles to creating a more racially equitable and just society. Considered on of the leading writers on racism, Tim Wise once again challenges his readers to as, “Where is the outrage?”

Note: Good Print Read.

URL: http://viewer.zoho.com/docs/pdccWM

Opening:

Less Guilt, More Solidarity

Somewhere in the early chapters of Dan Berger’s excellent book Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity, the thought occurred to me: “Fuckin’ Finally!” It took a lot of time, alot of middling books on the white New Left, but someone had finally got the essence of what was right and what was wrong with the New Left on race.

Contrary to popular belief, it was that the “excesses” of the Weather (and contemporaries in the SLA) were a matter of going “too far” in their opposition to white supremacy. Nor is it true that the Weather weren’t guilty of excesses (including guilt trips, idealization of black liberation figures, the idea that the waning hippie movement constituted a revolutionary vanguard, ect.) Instead, and this is what makes Outlaws a unique addition to New Left history, we should have a better framework: That, paradoxally, excesses and extremism are a retreat, rather that advance, in radicalism.

“white Guilt” is one of these terms that has a lot of baggage. Everyone fro the fully fascist to the merely conservative uses it, “liberals” are constantly chided with it, and  white people who don’t want to struggle around issues of race and racism use it as a trump car. When people use the term, it’s generally just a pejorative way of saying, “get over it” (“it” being racism).

ect..