I Can Never Take White Feminists Seriously: Not Here or Elsewhere

Adebayo Adeniran
4 min readNov 14, 2023

My two cents on this fraught subject.

RF Studio via Pexels

I have always been drawn to feminism.

Its raison d’etre, which is about equality and complete sameness of economic and political conditions between the genders has always had the greatest appeal to me.

As with every paradigm in the west, the gatekeepers have made a point of pushing white feminists to the very forefront, while paying scant (or no) attention to feminists of colour.

And that for the very longest time, shaped my world view on the subject.

A great deal of airtime has been given to the likes of Millicent Fawcett, Mary Wollstonecraft, Emmeline Pankhurst and their work in the suffragette movement.

But we must ask why the same sort of attention wasn’t given to the phenomenally intelligent and politically inclined African-American women, who were extremely active in the abolitionist movement and marched alongside Frederick Douglas and William Lloyd Garrison?

Do the names Maria W. Stewart and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper ring a bell?

The former was a profoundly exceptional orator and the latter was preternaturally gifted writer, who should both be listed among the protagonists of the feminism’s first wave.

--

--

Adebayo Adeniran

A lifelong bibliophile, who seeks to unleash his energy on as many subjects as possible