"Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street,
and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying."
MICHAEL BROWN ERIC GARNER TAMIR RICE TRAYVON MARTIN
Audre Lorde wrote those words in 1980. It is heartbreaking to realize that in over 30 years not much has changed.
That quote is so powerful. It is full of truths and fears. It calls out a distinct difference between women. Audre taught me we have to acknowlege our differences. We can not move forward without doing so.
"Refusing to recognize difference makes it impossible to see the different problems and pitfalls facing us as women."
"Within the interdependence of mutual (nondominant) differences lies that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowledge and return with true visions of our future, along with the concomitant power to effect those changes which can bring that future into being. Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged."
A few years ago both of my grandmothers died a month apart. They were in their nineties. It is so easy to believe that we can't affect change when we "descend into the chaos of knowledge". We are too small. The world is too big. But then I think of my grandmothers. Over the course of their long lives society drastically changed. Do I really believe that progress can't be made? We have a wealth of feminist teachers. Some are still with us. Others are not, but their words are still here. Audre spoke truth 30 years ago, and it is still truth today. Listen.
