The F Word UK, arguably the biggest Feminist hub, blog and news aggregator in the UK, is compiling a Twitter list of feminists by areas of interest and expertise. One just has to fill in a form with a Twitter user name and get added to the database. Now, here’s the thing, the available subjects as of this writing include “anti porn”, “anti capitalism” and “anti government cuts”. However, no “anti racism”, just “Race issues”. I am just being told on Twitter that, after 238 people added themselves to this database, the person who created it is “fallible”. Moreover, she checked it with a few hundred people and nobody noticed this. To me, this points at a much bigger issue than one individual making a mistake. It means people saw the list and didn’t cross their minds that anti racism should be a fundamental part of their activism (much more so than anti porn, but that’s just me).
Sadly, I see it as an excellent illustration of the problems we encounter with feminism and racism time and time again. Because being anti racist is an after thought and only fixed after someone (in this case, me) protests about it.
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