The Importance Of Sexism In Eye To Eye By Audre Lorde

705 Words2 Pages

As I completed Audre Lorde’s poignant and powerful chapter, “Eye to Eye” from “Sister Outsider”, I was painfully reminded of how entitled I am. The work of just being, negotiating a white world as a black woman, had to and still has to be exhausting! (I would say the same for men of color, but I am focusing on a woman’s perspective in this entry). I recently had an experience that albeit a mere snippet of sexism/racism, it revealed to me what it might feel like to be a minority. The advantage for me is that I get to return to me nice cushy life as a white woman. But for a brief time, I felt like odd woman out. Meaning, I was the only one in this group that was a cisgender, white female and it felt as though I was being singled out as less …show more content…

It is that connection which we are seeking. We have the stories of Black women who healed each other’s wounds, raised each other’s children, fought each other’s battles, tilled each other’s earth, and eased each other’s passages into life and into death. We know the possibilities of support and connection for which we all yearn, and about which we dream so often” (Sister Outsider, 152-153). If Dr. Ayo were to ask again in class what is Womanist theology, this entry defines it exquisitely. The idea of loving the female form, each other’s children, being community to each other, and fighting each other’s demons, says it all.
Conversely, how tragic that these very things birthed in African culture, were sabotaged by the white power structure and system of slavery. Play the women against each other, break up their families, then we are able to distract them from the damage we are creating around and through them. And it still continues today! As the mother of a mixed daughter (African and Panamanian), I feel for her. She is beautiful, she is wise and she is strong. But there are times when her black sisters admonish her and tell he, she is too light to really understand. In turn, her Caucasian sisters will tell her she’s too ethnic, too spicy to be white. That in between place is hard. Finding a voice in that space can be just as

Open Document