Elizabeth Eckford (Little Rock 9) walks through an angry mob of white female racists
by Denise Oliver-Velez, Black Kos Editor
Unfortunately, white men are not our only obstacle to defeating the madness of what is going on, and has been going on in this country for hundreds of years. This is painful for me to write as a lifelong feminist and as someone who empathizes and identifies with Epstein and his friends’ victims. This is not my problem to fix. This is not fixable by Black women. The “voted for Dump” polling numbers were high for white women. These women claim to be “Christian.” These women support MAGA and are MAGA. This is not a new phenomena. Black women can’t fix this. Perhaps our white female allies can.
Kim Kelly wrote back in 2018:
WHITE WOMEN MUST HOLD EACH OTHER ACCOUNTABLE FOR RACISM
We know that 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump. We know that some white women are so blinded by their privilege, their racism, and a patriarchal system that insists their lives as wives and mothers are “precious” that they happily carry water for the white men in hoods and iron crosses. We know that some white women march right alongside them in neo-Nazi rallies, drop racial slurs on social media, and push racist legislation in Congress. And we know this has been going on for a long, long time—well before Trump’s Klansman father was born. However, viewing white women’s involvement in perpetuating white supremacy solely through their relationships with men not only denies their agency, but assuages their culpability. As the old saying goes, men talk, women do.
Historian Elizabeth Gillespie McRae’s new book, Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy, is a fascinating, meticulously researched, and damning look into the myriad ways white women have consciously worked to aid racial segregation in the Jim Crow South and sanctify their racially pure vision of white motherhood. The book focuses on four women—Florence Sillers Ogden, Mary Dawson Cain, Cornelia Dabney Tucker, and Nell Battle Lewis—across multiple generations of white-supremacist activism; it takes us from Deep South racism in the “progressive” 1920s to the mob of screaming white mothers who greeted Black schoolgirl Ruby Bridges in 1960 New Orleans through the Boston school busing controversy of the mid ’70s.
The roots of this disease are long and deep. When we talk about enslavers we tend to point at men.
Here is some some history we should all be aware of.
I’ve written about the racist history in the women’s suffrage movement here in the past. In The ballot and black women, (Black) Women's History Month: Lifting as we climb, and Women's History Month: Reclaiming the herstories of black woman suffragists
Here’s something that needs to be read, written by hepshiba who founded the White Privilege Working Group here at DKos.
White Privilege Diary Series #1 - White Feminist Privilege in Organizations
I'll start this essay with this comment: If you're a white feminist and an anti-racist, I'm not talking about you (though I would be interested in talking with you). If you're a white feminist and you don't like how I'm talking about racist white feminists, that's fine. But if you want to convince me that most white feminists aren't also racists (conscious or unconscious), forget it because it won't work. You'll be doing the racists' work for them, by distracting from a discussion about racism, and diverting to a lament about poor, misunderstood white feminists. Finally, if you're a white, racist feminist and you know it, get a clue, or take a hike. Or show your ass. And if you're not any sort of feminist at all, go bark up somebody else's tree.
Historian Stephanie Jones-Rogers has written and researched the history of White Women & Slavery.
Give her a listen.
Gretchen Kell at UC Berkley wrote:
Unmasked: Many white women were Southern slave owners, too
Who was the typical white woman slaveholder, and how did she come to acquire slaves?
The typical female slave owner claimed legal title to 10 enslaved people or less. Far more often, she owned less than five, and this holds for the average male slave owner, as well. Much of the scholarship about white women and slavery tends to examine their relationships to enslaved people in adulthood, but my book starts the story far earlier, when these women were young girls and infants. By doing so, I was able to show that white girls often received enslaved people as gifts; some were only infants when they were given enslaved people as their own. While many of these girls and women inherited enslaved people from loved ones throughout their lives (not just when a family member died), they also bought them from slave markets throughout the South.
Legal scholar Michele Goodwin wrote:
A Different Type of Property: White Women and the Human Property They Kept
To be clear, not all white women possessed the economic capacity or desire to enslave Black people. Equally, however, it would be historically inaccurate to suggest that poor whites were more closely aligned with abolitionists simply because they did not own slaves. To the contrary, antebellum poverty and hardship, though often cruel, did not align with social and political opposition to slavery. Rather, poor whites participated in the broader social and economic structures of slavery. As Elizabeth Fortson Arroyo writes, poor whites sought their own “self-interest” and were cognizant of “what improvements in their lives they hoped to effect, and which other members of southern society could help or hinder them.”6Elizabeth Fortson Arroyo, Poor Whites, Slaves, and Free Blacks in Tennessee, 1796–1861, 55 Tenn. Hist. Q. 56, 57 (1996). But see Stephen V. Ash, Poor Whites in the Occupied South, 1861–1865, 57 J.S. Hist. 39, 40 (1991) (arguing that poor whites of the South were “cowed” into supporting slavery and “seduced . . . into supporting secession and war”).
As diaries, other empirical records, and legal cases show, slaveholding white women, particularly (although not exclusively) of the South, strategically fought to maintain slavery, engaging in litigation with banks, siblings, and others when ownership of their “property” came under threat.7 See, e.g., Atkinson v. Atkinson, 15 La. Ann. 491, 491 (1860) (“This suit is brought to enjoin the seizure of certain property [enslaved Black people] claimed by the plaintiff as her separate property, and seized under execution by certain creditors . . . .”); Bertie v. Walker, 1 Rob. 431, 431 (La. 1842) (plaintiff appealing the judgment upholding seizure of “a negro slave named Matilda,” whom “she bought . . . in her own name, for the price of eleven hundred and fifty dollars”); Bourgeois v. Bourgeois, 17 La. 494, 496 (1841) (“The record shows however a judgment in her favor for ,304[.]06, followed by a fi. fa. and alias fi. fa.; and an appraisement of the very slaves seized in this suit, made on the 12th of June, 1837 . . . .”). See also the Nancy Pinson Papers (1820–1890) (on file with the LSU Libraries Special Collections), and the collection of diaries and papers of women slave owners at LSU. And while most common depictions of Black human bondage involved sprawling plantations, slavery also included more modest acquisitions of Black people. Importantly, as owners and traffickers in enslaved Black people, white women were not passive participants in slavery—nor were they silent allies to the Black women whom they enslaved.8 See, e.g., Jacobs, p. 38 (“[M]y mistress, like many others, seemed to think that slaves had no right to any family ties of their own; that they were created merely to wait upon the family of the mistress. I once heard her abuse a young slave girl, who told her that a colored man wanted to make her his wife. ‘I will have you peeled and pickled, my lady,’ said she, ‘if I ever hear you mention that subject again. Do you suppose that I will have you tending my children with the children of that nigger?’”).
From The New York Times review by Rachel L. Swarns:
For generations, scholars argued that white women were rarely involved in the active buying and selling of Black people. A growing body of research says otherwise.
The buyers flocked to the slave auctions held at the Georgia estate, eager to inspect the human property on display.
There were cooks, carriage drivers, washer women and ladies’ maids. The trader — a woman named Annie Poore — paraded the Black captives before the buyers, haggled over prices and pocketed the profits. She was working in a field dominated by men. But that did not dissuade her from pursuing a thriving business in Black bodies.
She “was all [the] time sellin’,” Tom Hawkins, one of the people enslaved by Ms. Poore, recalled decades later. “She made ’em stand up on a block she kept in de back yard, whilst she was a-auctionin’ ’em off.”
For generations, scholars argued that white women were rarely involved in the active buying and selling of Black people. But a growing body of research is challenging that narrative, documenting the significant role that white women played in the American slave trade.
Between 1856 and 1861, white women engaged in nearly a third of the sales and purchases of enslaved people in New Orleans, which was home to the nation’s largest slave market at the time, according to a working paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research earlier this year.
In 1830, white women accounted for about 16 percent of the purchases and sales of enslaved people in New Orleans, the study found. Elsewhere, an analysis of runaway slave advertisements published between 1853 and 1860, which were compiled by the Black abolitionist William Still, found that white women were listed as owners in about 12 percent of the listings.
The findings demonstrate that active participation in slavery crossed gender lines, according to Trevon D. Logan, a professor of economics at Ohio State University, who was a co-author of the report with Benton Wishart, a student at the university who graduated in May.
“We’re talking about literally thousands of women being involved in this industry,” said Dr. Logan, who also serves as the director of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s working group on race and stratification in the economy.
Christians?
x
Three in 10 Americans qualify as Christian nationalism adherents or sympathizers, according to Public Religion Research Institute survey data released this week. American women are just as likely as American men to hold Christian nationalist views. https://bit.ly/4b0diqV
[image or embed]
— 19thnews (@19thnews.org) February 20, 2026 at 11:10 AM
Thoughts? Comments?
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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It’s been more than a year since wildfires tore through Los Angeles for weeks, leaving 19 people dead, displacing dozens, and reducing entire neighborhoods to ash. And for many Black families, the road home is still painfully out of reach.
On Friday, Feb. 27, a group of 12 residents gathered outside Victory Bible Church in Pasadena to speak candidly about the exhausting insurance battles they say have stalled their recovery, USA Today reported.
Nicole Stephens told the outlet that when people ask why so many families remain displaced, her answer is simple: “You can blame insurance.”
She and her sister, Natalie LaFourche, described a maze of denials, delays and red tape, saying insurers have dragged their feet despite years of paid premiums and ongoing mortgage payments on homes that are still unsafe to occupy. Like many others, their properties require significant repairs, cleanup or full rebuilds. Stephens questioned whether the prolonged inaction month after month amounts to insurers “failing” their clients because they are Black.
On Jan. 7, 2025, a wildfire ignited in Eaton Canyon and rapidly swept through Altadena, consuming homes, businesses, and schools. Although firefighters made progress later that month, the blaze was not fully contained until Jan. 31. Many of the neighborhoods hit hardest had been lived in and cultivated by Black families for generations.
Friday’s news conference came on the heels of an announcement from the California Department of Justice on Feb. 12 that it would investigate the emergency response to the Eaton Fire, including whether the Los Angeles County Fire Department delayed alerts and evacuations in the historically Black West Altadena community and whether any actions violated state anti-discrimination or disability rights laws.
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A series of bilateral health agreements being negotiated between African countries and the administration of President Donald Trump have been labelled “clearly lop-sided” and “immoral” amid growing outrage at US demands, including countries being forced to share biological resources and data.
It emerged this week that Zimbabwe had halted negotiations with the US for $350m (£258m) of health funding, saying the proposals risked undermining its sovereignty and independence.
A letter sent by Albert Chimbindi, Zimbabwe’s secretary for foreign affairs and international trade, in December that was made public said the president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, “directed that Zimbabwe must discontinue any negotiation, with the USA, on the clearly lop-sided MoU [memorandum of understanding] that blatantly compromises and undermines the sovereignty and independence of Zimbabwe as a country”.
Meanwhile, a deal with Zambia – which has been linked to a separate agreement with the US on “collaboration in the mining sector” – has yet to be finalised, with Asia Russell, director of the HIV advocacy organisation Health Gap, accusing the US of “conditioning life-saving health services on plundering the mineral wealth of the country. It’s shameless exploitation, which is immoral.”
At least 17 African countries have signed deals with the US, collectively securing $11.3bn in health aid but raising concerns over concessions made in return.
Critics say there has been a lack of consultation with the community groups that provide a lot of the healthcare in African countries, and have raised concerns over data privacy – the US requests patient record data as part of the deals – and the prioritization of faith-based healthcare providers.
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Voices & Soul
“… I am the history of battery assault and limitless/
armies against whatever I want to do with my mind… “
- June Jordan
”Poem About My Rights”
by Black Kos Editor, Justice Putnam
I was involved in a rather spirited discussion recently, with some former classmates whose brains have been consumed by the ghastly MAGA walking dead and have become mouth-gnawing-bone-breaking-mindless-shuffling-toward-any-loud-noise-or-smell-of-blood Zombies themselves.
It was sad to see once beautiful and sexy women reduced to spittle-flecked, red-eyed rage, and once lithe and athletic men now gray and bloody and mad. Frantically tearing at corpses long void of any discernible nourishment.
These weren't Zombies from some Caribbean Mythic conjuring though, so I had no choice but to retreat to the high ground to gain some better bearings.
One would think, that if these Zombies looked in the mirror, they would know their mortal coil has been conquered, that their Souls have left the vessel, that their broken and flailing limbs, their skulls absent of brain tissue, the ganglia hanging loose and dripping a slimy green liquid... you would think that would give them a clue to their predicament. But they only respond to a bright flash, a jarring thud and the smell of raw meat. So they shuffle and grasp and mouth senseless words that are mere recitations embedded in a lizard-center of a forgotten hormonal gland activated by Fox News wireless electrical shocks.
Maybe it's cruel for me to say so, maybe it's inflammatory to call these folks the walking dead and use such ghastly, grade-b monster movie metaphor.
Maybe it's simplifying matters to call these folks mindless Zombies, when they know damn well what they are doing. Just as the Good Germans, they so mightily resemble, did before, during and after the fall of the Third Reich.
MAGA complains of brown people harassing them with cupped hands begging for something not due them. MAGA complains of the jobless as losers who should be left to disappear in some other ether; just don't park on their street or ask for a job at their shop. MAGA consumes the most and gives back the least, and cheer when doctors are assassinated while advocating for a woman's right to choose.
MAGA say they harken to the Silent Majority from the time of Nixon and Reagan. Rather than silent, they are a cruel majority that is barely a third of the electorate, a cruel majority that would rather see a child die of sickness than extend healthcare. A cruel majority that will kick a man or woman when they are down and then penalize them for complaining about it. A cruel majority that expects the unflinching fealty any bully demands, from any who comes between them and what they wish to possess.
MAGA claim equal rights are only equal for them. If all boats rise the same, MAGA claims they are sinking. MAGA sees monsters where Angels tread. MAGA sends goon squads into the street to hunt down women for practicing the sin of empathy and teaching it to their precious sons and daughters, when everybody knows God wants MAGA to claim the world and purge it of the unbeliever. Just ask any MAGA. They’ll tell you, whether you like or not.
- JP
Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem about why I can’t
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body posture my gender identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the evening/
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being that I can’t do what I want
to do with my own body because I am the wrong
sex the wrong age the wrong skin and
suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/
or far into the woods and I wanted to go
there by myself thinking about God/or thinking
about children or thinking about the world/all of it
disclosed by the stars and the silence:
I could not go and I could not think and I could not
stay there
alone
as I need to be
alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own
body and
who in the hell set things up
like this
and in France they say if the guy penetrates
but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me
and if after stabbing him if after screams if
after begging the bastard and if even after smashing
a hammer to his head if even after that if he
and his buddies fuck me after that
then I consented and there was
no rape because finally you understand finally
they fucked me over because I was wrong I was
wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong
to be who I am
which is exactly like South Africa
penetrating into Namibia penetrating into
Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if
Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the
proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland
and if
after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe
and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to
self-immolation of the villages and if after that
we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they
claim my consent:
Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of
the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what
in the hell is everybody being reasonable about
and according to the Times this week
back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem
and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they
killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba
and before that it was my father on the campus
of my Ivy League school and my father afraid
to walk into the cafeteria because he said he
was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong
gender identity and he was paying my tuition and
before that
it was my father saying I was wrong saying that
I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a
boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and
that I should have had straighter hair and that
I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should
just be one/a boy and before that
it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for
my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me
to let the books loose to let them loose in other
words
I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.
and the problems of South Africa and the problems
of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white
America in general and the problems of the teachers
and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social
workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very
familiar with the problems because the problems
turn out to be
me
I am the history of rape
I am the history of the rejection of who I am
I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of
myself
I am the history of battery assault and limitless
armies against whatever I want to do with my mind
and my body and my soul and
whether it’s about walking out at night
or whether it’s about the love that I feel or
whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or
the sanctity of my national boundaries
or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity
of each and every desire
that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic
and indisputably single and singular heart
I have been raped
be-
cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age
the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the
wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic
the wrong sartorial I
I have been the meaning of rape
I have been the problem everyone seeks to
eliminate by forced
penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/
but let this be unmistakable this poem
is not consent I do not consent
to my mother to my father to the teachers to
the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy
to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon
idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in
cars
I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
My name is my own my own my own
and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this
but I can tell you that from now on my resistance
my simple and daily and nightly self-determination
may very well cost you your life
- June Jordan
"Poem About My Rights"
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY PORCH
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