I want to share something with you, I am not very sure what point/s I want to make, but my hunch tells me that a conversation might come out of it. A conversation that I dont think I have had, certainly not here on FB. So if you are going to comment just bear in mind that I am just pouring out and opening myself up and to hear your views about it. I want to talk about 2 issues that seem unrelated, but maybe they are in a way....you can respond to either 1 or 2 or both... 1. When I was MCing for BWA Achievers Awards last month, the winner of the entrepreneur category said something that struck a nerve with me. She said it as part of her brief award acceptance speech. Her name is Carol, I dont remember her surname, but she is a white lady who seems to be in her mid forties or so. I am going to paraphrase her because I dont remember her exact words but she said something along these lines business is tough being an entrepreneur and being a woman is not easy, its even much tougher for white women, it seems that everyone talks about the plight of the black woman. The white women are struggling too It struck a nerve with me because I have never actually thought of white women as white women, I thought of white women as white people, this is of course not a deliberate and conscious thought, its subconscious. Furthermore my predominant thought of white people is that they are privileged period. As such whenever I think about womens month I hardly ever think about white women. I only think about black women. So when Carol said what she said, I wondered to myself what is her struggle like? As a white women entrepreneur what is she struggling with? Apart from the BEE scores that her company must meet, what else is she battling with? How does patriarchal oppression manifest for her as a white woman? It also made me realise how little I know about white people, yes like most people I work with white people I interact with them and I believe I have a relatively healthy but not very deep relationship with them. Let me park this one for now while you ponder on it. 2. This past Saturday I was one of the 13 speakers, 10 of those speakers were white dynamic women who have achieved many accolades. The symposium was organized by a young and very vibrant lady called Rayland Dunbar. The audience was a fair mixture of black and white women, maybe 60% white and 40% black give or take. As someone who attends a lot of events and speaks at most, I noticed that white women generally are unapologetic about their achievements, they tend to be very direct in articulating their points. What fascinates me the most is that a majority of them hardly ever emphasize God or how highly favored they are by The Lord, they just own their accomplishments and emphasize hard work - with most black women its always God from the beginning to the end. No judgement but I find this extremely intriguing.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 05:31:41 +0000
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