Amanda: Last March, you sent a video message to our Muse Conference. It was so wonderful to hear you wishing happy birthday to our keynote Myrlie Evers-Williams.

Gloria: Oh I miss her!

A: She went on to tell so many wonderful stories about working with you which leads me to my first question. You make note that academic feminists have taught and students now learn in women’s studies that second wave feminism was about white women only.  What can we do to better convey the inclusiveness of feminism?

G: I don’t mean to speak for everyone because it’s a huge and diverse movement, and people have had many different experiences, but in my experience, it was African American women who were disproportionately inventing the movement. They always supported the issues and the movement itself more than white women did. I’ll give you an example. In a very early issue of Ms. Magazine we conducted the first national poll of women on the movement and on women’s issues. It was conducted by Lewis Harris and was a very respectable poll. I am sorry to say that he did not include other women of color, so he didn’t include Latinas, or Asian-American women. The poll did include both white and black women though, and it turned out that white women supported the issues and the movement by about 30% and black women supported the issues and the movement by over 60%.

A: Wow, that is a big difference.

G: Right, but it just makes sense that if you’ve experienced discrimination in one area, you are more likely to recognize it when it comes at you again. Also, black women were more likely to be in the paid labor force and, therefore, experiencing wage and sexual discrimination. It was also black women who brought the first sexual harassment lawsuits. So if you want my honest opinion…

A: Of course, please.

G: In my experience, it was an effort mainly be the media to characterize the movement as mostly white middle class women to diminish the movement.

Read More