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Mikki Kendall QUOTES

Mikki Kendall QUOTES

1 " Feminism as a career is the province of the privileged; it's hard to read dozens of books on feminist theory while you're working in a hair salon or engaged in the kinds of jobs that put food on the table but also demand a lot of physical and mental energy. "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

2 " Now mainstream feminism has to step up, has to give itself to a place where it spends more time offering resources and less time demanding validation. Being an accomplice means that white feminism will devote its platform and resources to supporting those in marginalized communities doing feminist work. "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

3 " In the moment, as mad as I was, somehow I was still shocked when he pinned me to thefridge with one hand around my throat, aimed his fist just so to knock me out, and released. Then he dragged me across the floor, took my keys, and left. Our two-year-old son saw all of it, and I will forever regret not getting out earlier, but I also know that my tenuous plans to get out hinged on getting into a place I could afford on my own, getting childcare, and crafting a life where no matter what he did or didn't do, I could make it "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

4 " It's not at all helpful for some white feminists to make demands of women of color out of a one-sided idea of sisterhood and call that solidarity. Sisterhood is a mutual relationship between equals. And as anyone with sisters can tell you, it's not uncommon for sisters to fight or to hurt each other's feelings. Family whether biological or not is supposed to support you. But that doesn't mean no one can ever tell you that you're wrong. "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

5 " while white women are an oppressed group, they still wield more power than any other group of women—including the power to oppress both men and women of color. "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

6 " [Rape is framed] as something that a potential victim can prevent if they learn the steps of this peculiar dance that is trying to avoid being possibly assaulted, the immediate response is often one of several questions ranging from “What were you wearing?” to “Why were you there?” to “Had you been drinking?” The answers to those questions can never be relevant — ultimately victims are assaulted because someone chose to attack them.

Instead of tips on how not to be a rapist, how to teach people not to rape, or even on creating therapeutic outlets for potential rapists, we find a half dozen tips on preventing a mythical stranger from raping an able-bodied, alert, physically fit person with excellent reflexes and an exceptional amount of luck.

These tips never address disability, differences in flight-or-flight (or freeze) adrenaline responses, or even the reality that most assailants are known to their victims. "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

7 " I like not living up to the expectations of people who don't like me. I enjoy knowing that my choices won't be acceptable to everyone. My feminism doesn't center on those who are comfortable with the status quo because ultimately that road can never lead to equity for girls like me. "

― Mikki Kendall

8 " When white feminism ignores history, ignores that the tears of white women have the power to get Black people killed while insisting that all women are on the same side, it doesn't solve anything. Look at Carolyn Bryant, who lied about Emmett Till whistling at her in 1955. Despite knowing who had killed him, and that he was innocent of even the casual disrespect she had claimed, she carried on with the lie for another fifty years after his lynching and death "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

9 " Being an ally is just the first step, the simplest one, it is the space wherein the privileged began to accept the flawed dynamics that make for inequality. Being a good ally is not easy, it’s not something you can jump into, though it can feel like you’re a know it all superhero. Privilege not only blinds you to oppression it blinds you to your own ignorance even when you notice the oppression. Why is becoming an ally so hard? Even would be allys have an immediate reaction of defensiveness when someone challenges them on their advice, their intentions, their need to be centered. It’s in that precise moment they need to stop, step back, and realize they are still part of the problem. It’s never the privileged outsider who gets to decide when they are a good ally, especially when now they want to use their status as an ally to excuse whatever they have done that has offended someone in the group they claim to be supporting. "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

10 " One of the biggest issues with mainstream feminist writing has been the way the idea of what constitutes a feminist issue is framed. We rarely talk about basic needs as a feminist issue. Food insecurity and access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. Instead of a framework that focuses on helping women get basic needs met, all too often the focus is not on survival but on increasing privilege. For a movement that is meant to represent all women, it often centers on those who already have most of their needs met. "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

11 " No one can live up to the standards set by racist stereotypes like this that position Black women as so strong they don’t need help, protection, care, or concern. Such stereotypes leave little to no room for real Black women with real problems. In fact, even the most “positive” tropes about women of color are harmful precisely because they dehumanize us and erase the damage that can be done to us by those who might mean well, but whose actions show that they don’t actually respect us or our right to self-determine what happens on our behalf. "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

12 " Women of color declaring to white women, I'm not here to clean up your mess, carry your spear, hold your hand, or cheer you on while I suffer in silence. I'm not here to raise your children, assuage your guilt, build your platforms, or fight your battles. I'm here for my community because no one else will stand up for us but us "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

13 " It's easy to blame the patriarchy, to rightfully point at the men who rape and hold them accountable. What's harder is to notice the women who sometimes passively direct rapists toward their victims by contributing to the hypersexualization of women of color under the guise of empowerment... Feminist white women who think "sexy Pocahontas" is an empowering look instead of lingering fetishization of the rape of a child. The same imagery they claim to find sexually empowering is rooted in the myth of white women's purity and every other woman's sexual availability. "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

14 " When feminist rhetoric is rooted biases like racism, ableism, transmisogyny, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia, it automatically works against marginalized women and against any concept of solidarity. It's not enough to know that other women with different experiences exist' you must also understand that they have their own femiminist formed by that experience. Whether it's an argument that women who wear the hijab must be "saved" from it, or reproductive-justice arguments that paint having a disabled baby as the worst possible outcome, the reality is that feminism can be marginalizing "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

15 " Allies tend to crowd out the space for anger with their demands that things be comfortable for them. They want to be educated, want someone to be kind to them whether they have earned that kindness or not. The process of becoming an ally requires a lot of emotional investment, and far too often the heavy lifting of that emotional labor is done by the marginalized, not the privileged. But part of that journey from being a would-be ally to becoming an ally to actually becoming an accomplice is anger.

Anger doesn't have to be erudite to be valid. It doesn't have to be nice or calm in order to be heard. In fact, I would argue that despite narratives that present the anger of Black women as dangerous, that render being angry in public as a reason to tune out the voices of marginalized people, it is that anger and the expressing of it that saves communities. No one has ever freed themselves from oppression by asking nicely. "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

16 " You can argue that conservative values are at odds with feminist ideology, but ultimately the question has to be not only what women are we empowering, but also what are we empowering them to do. White women aren't just passive beneficiaries of racist oppression; they are active participants. "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

17 " On average, American states spend $88,000 to incarcerate a young person, but allot an average of $10,000 to educate them. "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

18 " Politeness as filtered through fragility and supremacy isn’t about manners; it’s about a methodology of controlling the conversation. Polite white people who respond to calls for respect, for getting boots off necks with demand for decorum, aren’t interested in resistance or disruption. They are interested in control. They replicate the manners of Jim Crow America, demanding deference and obedience; they want the polite facade instead of disruption. They insist that they know best what should be done when attempting to battle and defeat bias, but in actuality they’re just happy to be useless. They are obstacles to freedom who feel no remorse, who provide no valuable insight, because ultimately, they are content to get in the way. They’re oppression tourists, virtue-signaling volunteers who are really just here to get what they can and block the way, so no others can pass without meeting whatever arbitrary standards they create. And if you get enough of them in one place, they can prevent any real progress from occurring while they reap the benefits of straddling white supremacy and being woke. They have less power than they think, than anyone realizes, but like any small predator, they manage to be flashy enough to be seen. "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

19 " But the peculiar impact of white fragility on the dynamics between white women means that too often mainstream white feminists get hung up on being polite at the expense of being effective. "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

20 " No woman has to be respectable to be valuable. "

― Mikki Kendall , Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot