(White) Girl Summer

Musings on the re-centering of Whyte women in a post BLM world...

It is the summer of 2020 and I am watching the neighborhood I grew up in burn. George Floyd was slowly suffocated on camera some miles away in Minneapolis. The city explodes into flames after years of spark & kindling. I take to the streets...arm and arm with my brothers and sisters...demanding justice within an unjust system. Whyte women are carrying bullhorns and hand painted signs. "We are with you," they say. Now that their eyes have been opened, they can't unsee. They will no longer ignore. They will do the work. Give up their seat. Decenter their comfort. Use their privilege to demand representation. They will cast aside their whiteness...because it is quite literally killing Black folks. They won't BE COMPLICIT.

It's the summer of 2023 and I am watching as Black history is erased from textbooks...LGBTQ rights are being rolled back across the nation...literal Nazi's are terrorizing libraries and neighborhoods. White women are wearing candy bracelets and attending Taylor Swift concerts. They make no mention of her rumored boyfriend and his abuse of Black women. They are eating girl dinner. They are dressing in pink and attending the Barbie movie with a squad of their (white) friends. They are casually complaining about the perceived loss of their "reproductive rights". They ignore that white women are responsible for that loss. But mostly they are busy sunning themselves on Italian beaches and sipping muddled drinks with their (tan) elbows on the bar.

It's white girl summer. We have returned to the comfortable status quo.

During the BLM movement we saw big businesses pledge to pour millions into racial equity. There were investments into diversity and inclusion. We were no longer making excuses for the quiet racism of public figures. We were CENTERING BLACK VOICES.

Ultimately, history works in patterns and progress will always be met with (white) resistance. In the years since 2020, support for BLM has steadily declined...and so has the patience of white women hungry to return to their main character status.

Killings by police reached a record high in 2022. Politicians have decided that if they cannot remove marginalized people from society entirely, they will slowly erase us. White women are gathering outside of schools and libraries in organized acts of bigotry. A Presidential election looms, threatening to sever the last thread of democracy.

But social media is pink and blonde and consumed with the sudden, insidious return of white feminism.

Who knows what the fall will bring...

But I am not delusional enough to believe that it will bring a return to critical thinking or putting those suffering the most at the center of our conversations. Marginalized people know this All Too Well. While white women may be fierce advocates for their own rights, they are even fiercer advocates of the structures so many of them promised to dismantle…so while they may pay lip service to feminism, it will wrapped in an image that reflects only them….Tall. Blonde. Thin. Cis. White.

(Bonus notes on Taylor are for paid subscribers only :) )