Leftovers.


The countries neighboring the Ivory Coast are worried that violence there may spread.

After being told their baby had no chance of survival, an Iowa couple was forced to see the pregnancy to term and watch the child die because state law prohibits abortion after 20 weeks.

Latoya on being the token Negro on feminist speaking panels.

Earlier this year, I opted to join a feminist media luncheon. I accepted and planned out my statements – I really wanted to stress the opportunities in the new media space, and encourage the young women to branch out from standard “feminist” conversations and instead go into other types of spaces and apply feminist concepts to the general threads there.

And the beginning of the conversation went well. However the third panelist, who arrived a bit later, started changing the tone of the conversation. It isn’t that this speaker intentionally set out to minimize the experiences of anyone who isn’t in line with the mainstream version of feminism – but her second-wave swagger and broad sweeping statements had the same effect.

Then I found myself at a crossroads – do I start talking about what I intended to and let her statements go unchallenged? Or do I once again have to represent for folks who aren’t in the room, to people who would most likely repeat the mistakes of their fore-mothers because they never learned anything different.

So once again, I swallowed what I wanted to say and instead talked about race, class, and structural injustice.

I felt like I had to take the loss for the greater good of team POC.  Why? Because tokens are inherently disempowered, no matter how much we want things to be different. To not represent is equally as painful as the knowledge that I am silencing myself when I do so. But these are the terrible choices we are forced to endure when people are willing to accept tokens in lieu of equity.

China’s basketball fans love them some Stephon Marbury.

G.D.

G.D.

Gene "G.D." Demby is the founder and editor of PostBourgie. In his day job, he blogs and reports on race and ethnicity for NPR's Code Switch team.
G.D.