What it is it about the white feminist blogosphere this week?
Mar 7th, 2008 by Rebecca
I griped earlier in the week about the coverage of the Obama campaign by a few white feminist big bloggers, but this well and truly tops that. Short version: anti-choice activist makes a call to the vice president of development and marketing Planned Parenthood of Idaho suggesting that he wanted the donation used to abort black babies. Said vice-president replies that it was “understandable” and that she “was excited and didn’t want to leave anything out”. However, where Jill Filipovic called for her to be fired and Jessica Valenti stated that the heat PP Idaho are taking is well justified, the comments on both threads are a stunning example of white feminists excusing blatant racism.
Commenter after commenter at Feministing rushes to defend the comments of Autumn Kersey, the woman concerned, as merely an understandable lapse of judgement. Several commenters - including (this time at Feministe) Hugo Schwyzer (though his utter cluelessness about race is near-legend at this point, I still hoped he had some fraction of clue) - even went so far as to declare their intention to donate money to PP of Idaho as a result of this incident. Numerous comments insist that Kersey must be some overworked and scared intern or college student, despite that all the articles clearly stated her very senior role in the organisation. A couple of commenters raise this in light of the well-known strong support for racist eugenics of PP’s founder, Margaret Sanger, and get roundly jumped on by ignorant idiots interpreting this as “you believe in eugenics if you support family planning!” A significant majority of the commenters at Feministing were literally rushing to excuse this woman’s blatantly racist comments just because she was involved in a feminist cause and because the caller was an anti-choice activist. And that, folks, is fucked up. Incidents like this make me wonder if it really takes a noose or a white hat to wake so many of us white folks up to racist behaviour right in front of our faces.
I’m a professional fundraiser who works in the reproductive rights industry [not PP, by the way]. While I have been trained 12 ways from Tuesday about how to handle calls from whackadoos and sly calls from the anti-choice crowd, I can tell you that most fundraisers have not rec’d that kind of training and it comes as a shock when someone calls you and says something that vile. I listened to the call in question and it’s clear that Kersey didn’t know what to say and was pretty freaked out. It doesn’t excuse her - I mean, working in reproductive rights means being prepared for this kind of thing…and giving anyone ammunition to use against your employer is always bad news.
I also know a little bit about Kersey’s background - she comes from a multi-racial family. It’s important to take these things into consideration before deciding how to feel about this particular situation.
I’m afraid I misrepresented my reason to donate. I was donating not in support of racism but in the name of the very white, very middle-class, anti-choice Lila Rose — the 19 year-old UCLA student who rigged the sting operation. It’s possible to loathe and decry what Kearsey did — and call for her to be disciplined, as I did on my blog, while also finding what Rose and her “Advocate” newspaper did to be juvenile and reprehensible. Telling Lila that her attacks on abortion providers will result in donations being given to those providers in her name is a bit of poetic justice, and has nothing to do with what PP ought to do with its clueless vice-president.
My post is here: http://hugoschwyzer.net/2008/03/03/the-troubled-sanger-legacy-some-thoughts-on-planned-parenthood/
And the last sentence makes it clear how I feel about Kearsey.