Power and Technicalities
When the wrong person benefits (or may benefit) from a technicality, the status quo will attempt to convince everyone that technicalities work in the favor of unscrupulous individuals. However, the opposite is usually the case. In most cases, technicalities work in favor of the person/system in power. For example, thousands and thousands of privilege white men who can afford an attorney can get away with polluting rivers and streams, killing their wives, and evading traffic tickets but let a black man do the same and all hell breaks loose (the possibility of being a black woman is too astronomical to even ponder, well, there is Oprah, and of course she will be limited). I think specifically of O.J. Simpson. He did nothing but what men with his amount of money and prestige (at the time) would have done and do in American courts every day. But because he was black he was grossly demonized for doing the same thing that white men do every single day. Of course, I must add a disclaimer here and say yes I think O. J. Simpson should be hated for murdering Nicole Simpson. DUH! Yes, vilify him for murdering Nicole Simpson, but don’t pretend (or convince yourself) to hate him for murdering his wife when you really just hate because he is black and got away with what white men get away with every day. Suddenly white people (particularly white men, but for sure white women) was against men murdering women (and domestic violence) as if men have not been murdering women for centuries without a peep from these people. Why is that?
I bring up the O.J. case because when I started reading the crap that Karla Mantilla shat at redmegaera’s blog, the first thing I saw was the art of using technicalities. People in power love to use technicalities in order to dismiss a valid assertion. Karla Mantilla, head white woman in charge of OOB is no exception. What does she asks? “Why did she [Celie’s Revenge] rail against being “kicked to the curb” [by OOB] when it was she herself who quit?” See how that technicality thing works? Now you tell me, what human being (besides George Constanza) could/would stay somewhere when it is obvious that they are being mistreated and squeezed out? Should Celie’s Revenge have been a glutton for punishment? Should she have been able to dissect every little nuance of racism that she was sensing/feeling in real time exactly when it was all happening? Should she had waited until Karla Mantilla and her followers rented Carnegie Hall and to a packed audience repeatedly call the woman a nigger? That is what Karla Mantilla is asserting when she so innocently requests that we ponder this particular technicality.
And that was just the first paragraph. God only knows the tripe waiting in the rest of the shit.
A personal note to redmegaera. I am not emailing this to you because I think considering the circumstances of everything happening; it would seem a little sneaky on my part to email what I have to say. I do feel that you are sincerely trying to work on your anti-racism. And I am not willing to pour another bottle of ink on a new copybook. Instead, I see your latest blunder (I will get to it in a second) as part of the whole. Not that any of this coming from me means anything to you, I’m just saying that I think it may be processed better if it can be understood that it is all a work in process vs a procession of failures after a success (in other words, the success has not been achieved yet). If you want to email for clarity, you are welcomed, or you can ask here. To me, your latest blunder is a big one. I don’t think it was wise for you to post Karla Mantilla’s response. Maybe it isn’t as bad if perhaps you copied her response from her blog and pasted at your blog, then, I could see how you would want to call it balance (although I still would not agree). Here is why (or, how I see it). You are white. Karla Mantilla is white and has power. Without a link to her blog (as you did with Celie’s Revenge and aladydivine) you appear to be hosting Karla Mantilla’s point of view. You may not agree with her point of view, but you are still hosting that point of view. The concept of hosting can be unpacked, and perhaps it should be, to understand the position you have put yourself in as hostess. Now, it could just be a matter of you not linking to her blog, but as it stands, it appears that you are hosting the person in this situation who structurally has more power than the person who has asserted the complaint. Your very act has aided in the power differential to the benefit of the one with the power. In addition, to not have comments open is a post in itself. Were the other posts closed to comments? If so, at least there was a link to Celie’s Revenge and aladydivine’s blog with the opportunity to comment.
Comments are closed.
AROOO 
Karla Mantilla cowardly didn’t post this on the OOB blog where she could be held accountable… no no. She posted this LIVE ON FACEBOOK and they’ve disabled the wall so NO ONE CAN SAY SHIT TO HER and hold her sorry ass accountable.
ALSO, their lil trolls (one such being a Lizzie Ellis) have created multiple profiles and are basically shitting on any woman they ever exchanged words with… here’s the catch, the ONLY women they’re angry at and raging at are BLACK, because any white woman who has said ANYTHING has not been named. But hey, they’re not racist, they’re not abusing their white privilege, and they’re certainly not white supremacists… No not at all, it’s all in our heads.
What they’re doing is counting on the sterotypes against black women to gain ppl who will support their shit. They took over a group that Jenn had been mod of, changed the name to “We’re RADICAL feminists NOT the Jenn (last name omitted) kind” and began to post MORE shit about her having NPD and Kate Gunnerman has taken to posting about how Blackzilla is a porn star (I have no idea I dont fuckin watch porn or associate with any jerk who would) and has given fodder to Lizzie aka Luna aka Glen to go around saying Jenn also supports porn.
I have screen shots of ALL OF THIS, with the exception of the group name change, and here is where it gets interesting. ALL THIS SHIT went on all morning until the queen herself, you guessed it, Karla Mantilla posted a comment saying she doesn’t endorse it. After she said that, they changed shit back to the way it was and took down anything that would connect her to the action. Karla is full of shit, and so is redmegaera.
Kitty, I hear you on believing that red is “trying” to be accountable, but I believe she is full of shit. She allowed a KNOWN racist white woman to attack me yesterday (TWICE) on her blog, and refuses to be accountable for that, or do anything about it. So Redmegaera, in my book, is another white supremacy apologist because to me her inaction is speaking LOUDER than her claim of wanting to be an ally. I’ll believe that shit once I see it happen, as for now, it’s just words on a screen.
I’m going to link to this on my blog. Thank you for writing it.
I agree, for the deed to match the words, that post needs to be deleted.
The thing is that white women think racist acts are equivalent in effect to anti-racist responses to that racism. End of story. They don’t think that their “unintentional” racism supports white MALE supremacy, and they think that their FEELINGS being hurt over having been called racists is exactly the same thing as black WOMEN’S OPPRESSION being reified and perpetuated by the individual white women in their company.
So, because they labor under these white MALE supremacist delusions, they think they should give equal voice to white racists and black women, and they think they’re justified in demanding that black women respond to the enforcement of their oppression under white MALE supremacy politely. I mean, really, this is what redmegaera decided was the last word on the topic at her blog?
The parallel being drawn, dumb asses, isn’t between rape and an online disagreement. The parallel being drawn is between the protection of male supremacy by males and the defense of white supremacy by white women. Yes, males protect their right to rape, but the same could have been said about them protecting other rights guaranteed to them under male supremacy, such as the right to dismiss women’s claims REGARDLESS of what they are, whether they’re about rape, sexual harassment, or workplace discrimination; their right to structure the law in ways that presume women fighting their wife-beating husbands back in self-defense is exactly the same thing as wife-beaters pummeling their wives in the first place; basically their POWER to deny they have power while utilizing that power to erase women’s experiences.
Who the fuck knows whether or not those white women in that picture were feminists? White feminists have, in our country’s history, actively sought to hold black women back for their own gain. They have agitated for their own right to vote, arguing that white men should be more loyal to them for their whiteness than they should to anyone else, the result of which was that white women got the right to vote before black women did in several states, and enjoyed the right to vote long before black women did even in the states where white and black women were ostensibly enfranchised simultaneously. They have agitated for their own right to work in “respectable” positions for “respectable” wages, while hiring black women to scrub their husbands’ piss off the toilet and nanny their squalling white brats, for what I can guarantee you is no “respectable” salary. They have advocated for no-wait hysterectomies and other sterilizations while black women were being deprived of their reproductive capacities on the whims of white doctors whose scalpels could have been stayed by legal prohibitions against performing such surgeries without a waiting period. I could go on!
YES, those white women, those white racists, look JUST like white feminists to me. JUST LIKE THEM.
If white women want me to see a difference, they need to start SHOWING me that they’re not like that. I’m not giving any of them the benefit of the doubt.
Reading Karla Mantilla’s response I can only surmise that she does not care for the future of Off Our Backs.
“YES, those white women, those white racists, look JUST like white feminists to me. JUST LIKE THEM.
If white women want me to see a difference, they need to start SHOWING me that they’re not like that. I’m not giving any of them the benefit of the doubt.”
My sentiment’s exactly, and my EXACT POINT in posting it up anyway.
Kitty, Karla doesn’t care about oob, she doesn’t care about black women (especially what it means for a black woman to be laid off and without a means to provide for herself in an unsure economy) She doesn’t care about anyone who isn’t lilly white or a token.
She doesn’t even care about the tokens. The tokens line up to do her bidding with no incentive other than their tokenism. The second they say anything that aligns them with other members of their race, they lose their token status. Karla, and other white women like her, need not give them anything in return for their service.
Good call, and I agree.
In fact, that is a brilliant statement. I will be looking for these types of “equivalents” in the future… that is eye-opening and educational.
I wrote about OOB over at my place, and went back to other incidents I could recall that I know Celie is likely unaware of.
I would have been far harsher on Carol Anne Douglas (Mantilla was her student, as I recall) if she hadn’t just lost her long-term partner of 15 years in such a traumatic way. I don’t want to pile on her grief right now, but at the same time, she was integral to the way the newspaper operated for many years and it bears her ideological stamp. So, I tried to straddle between calling her out and … well, whatever it is I did.
Not perfect, self-indulgent, but there it is.
Thanks for covering this, Kitty and Margie.
I just wrote a follow-up to my experience with Off Our Backs because Nikki Craft has joined their crusade against me for speaking out against racism within the Radical Feminist Movement. What you can do to help is read it, post it, link to it, forward it, just get it out there! Much thanks!
Black Bitch Hunt Aftermath
Celie’s Revenge, there is no “Radical Feminist Movement.” There are only radical feminists, some of whom are racist whether they’re white or not. Yes, you’ve spoken out about the racism at Off Our Backs. That is but one racist organization that stakes a claim to radical feminism.
There are plenty of separatists and radical feminists who comment at this blog, white and otherwise, who do not leverage white men’s racism against black women. I find your grievances against Off Our Backs to be completely well-founded and relevant, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with radical feminism in general, and I won’t allow you to besmirch an entire ideology because a few racist women (white and otherwise) at one singular and increasingly irrelevant organization have demonstrated themselves to be the pawns of white men.
Off Our Backs is so much a joke. Joke. Joke. Joke. Joke. Irrelevant organization. Perfect wording. I mean how old are some of those women? Their antics would put them around 12-15. And I read most of their bios. Talk about privilege. But that is the hook. They want a PC way to flaunt that privilege. “Look we are doing all of this for the less fortunate. Did you see my new bumper sticker. Gawd, I am so down!”
Whatever.