Top Quotes: “Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot” — Mikki Kendall
“Police violence, particularly being collateral deaths in police misconduct, is a risk that is rarely discussed in feminist circles but is something that Black Lives Matter and campaigns like #SayHerName attempt to address. Their work is made more difficult not only by the lack of any official data but also by community norms that center on cisgender men.
I could be any of the women we have seen brutalized or killed by police in recent years as videos proliferate. I could have been that little girl down the street who was shot in the ankle while I wrote the draft of this chapter, or I could be Rekia Boyd, a young Black woman in Chicago who happened to be standing next to a man holding a phone to his ear when an off-duty police officer, mistaking the phone for a gun, opened fire and shot her in the head. The man with the phone was shot in the hand. Rekia died at the scene. She committed no crime, and the officer who shot her served not a single day in jail despite admitting he shot over his shoulder as he drove away. He wasn’t working, he was a newcomer to the area who owned property nearby, and still the gun in his hand took a young woman’s life.”
“We often create artificial and unnecessary barriers, like limiting unemployment insurance to full-time workers, which leaves part-time workers with no assistance if they lose their jobs.”
“It’s easy to say no one should ever sell food stamps, harder to justify that stance when you remember that people need things like pots and pans to prepare their food. They need working refrigerators, stoves, and storage solutions to keep out the vermin so commonly found in the subpar housing that is often the only option for those living at or below the poverty line. Food stamps don’t even cover basic household cleaning and hygiene products, much less things like diapers and menstrual pads.”
“Girls of color in a patriarchal system have experienced more abuse, violence, adversity, and deprivation than protection. Yet programs that focus on “at-risk” girls tend to focus more on job skills and preventing pregnancy and not on equipping them with better coping mechanisms. We need to shift the conversation about systems from vague assertions that work is empowering and early pregnancy is bad to one where we support the healing and healthy development of girls and young women in every community.”
“Not only do we reward thinness in general, we specifically reward any beauty aesthetic that prioritizes assimilation. For young people of color who are developing bodies that can never actually assimilate into the mythical monochrome of middle America, there’s very little validation available in media or anywhere else.
Add in the deluge of imagery that associates beauty with whiteness, and for girls of color who are already struggling to love themselves in a world that tells them they are worth less than white girls, there is greater-than-average risk not only of them developing an eating disorder but also of it going unrecognized and untreated. And for the lucky few who do receive treatment, whether their program will address the impact of racism or be a source of yet more trauma is difficult to predict.
Although we’re conditioned to think that most eating disorders develop at the onset of puberty, the truth is the seeds for them are laid much earlier, Children of color enter into prepubescent life with the painful awareness that no matter how many changes our bodies are going through, there’s nothing about puberty that can meet standards set by white-centric, unreasonable standards of beauty.”
“There’s a trend in some feminist books to tell you that the hood punishes you for being smart, that it hates those who reach for success. That wasn’t my experience at all. The same kids who called me Books are now adults who pass my articles around and tell me how proud of me they are, because there was nothing malicious in the teasing. I teased; I was teased; that’s basically the nature of kids.”
“Caregivers who care more about their own comfort and convenience than the basic rights and welfare of their charges are a dangerous necessity for many people who don’t have any other options.
These might come in the form of a family member experiencing fatigue, one with limited or nonexistent empathy, or a paid employee who’s there for the money, but not particularly concerned or otherwise invested in the welfare of their patient. Not only do disabled women in abusive relationships, whether it be with a romantic partner, a family member, or an employee, report the horror of losing control over access to food, bathing mobility, and their community, but some are being used solely for the minimal income that they may bring in from social services programs. An unbalanced power dynamic plus a lack of alternative care options can leave victims feeling trapped in situations that are ultimately dangerous.”
“Families may not be able to get involved earlier in the process of bringing attention to their missing loved ones because they don’t know how to go about engaging the media, and instead end up waiting to be contacted. Families may be reluctant to push for answers because of feelings of shame and embarrassment when circumstances around the disappearance involve crime, sex trafficking, and drugs. As a result of that lack of media and family pressure and because of implicit bias, staff at overworked and underfunded agencies may feel justified in giving more attention to cases involving white victims.”
“This is not to say that black women are better prepared or better versed in politics. In fact, what is most common is that the poorest people are the best versed in what it takes to survive. As a result, their focus is less on fattening the pockets of the rich and is instead on what will keep the lights on and the kids fed, and allow for at least a few small pleasures. There comes a point — when you have never had anything — where you don’t begrudge your neighbors having as much as you, because you know that if you work together, then you can survive hard times together. It’s less about altruism and more about simple math. Keeping up with the Joneses is way down on the priority list when you know that the Joneses are likely to share whatever they have if you need help If you don’t have the resources to get through the month on your own, but sharing resources with your friend or neighbor means you both make it, then of course you want everyone to have more. We frame politics and voting as a zero-sum game that must be won by one side, when it is in fact always about harm reduction.”
“Ultimately an estimated 25 to 50 percent of Indigenous women were sterilized between 1970 and 1976.”
