In no other election over the past 30 years has the feminist voice been stronger than in the 2016 U.S. presidential race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
This is partly because the 2016 presidential race is the closest that a woman has ever gotten to being selected for the seat of U.S. president.
The other reason is because Trump’s positions on everything makes it nearly impossible for any self-respecting feminist to support his candidacy.
From immigration to reproductive health, Trump’s disparaging remarks made Hillary the frontrunner for feminist camps—primarily because she’s a woman.
Across the board there is a general sentiment among feminists that selecting Hillary Clinton as president is the best hope to save U.S. democratic process and champion their position that a woman—at the helm of U.S. imperialism—is equality.
Despite this, Hillary has not escaped criticism from feminists, particularly self-identified black feminists who find it difficult to reconcile their urge to vote for Hillary against her track record of spearheading policy that has had a damaging impact on black people in the U.S. and abroad.
But even as it is difficult to reconcile these two opposing positions, black feminists overwhelmingly resolve to vote for Hillary Clinton—as the “lesser of the two evils”—thereby casting their lot in with U.S. imperialism.
Feminism is bankrupt
Despite the occasional sessions of intellectual masturbation that passes as “think pieces” or theory, feminism contributes nothing in the way of answers to solve the contradictions faced by African women.
Feminists have attempted to resolve this lack of analysis by creating dozens of iterations of feminism such as black feminism, radical feminism, intersectional feminism, anarcha-feminism, Marxist feminism and socialist feminism, which try to fill the gaping holes in feminist ideology that leave many African women unable to examine their own conditions, outside of feminist spaces.
The inability to use our history––from freedom to enslavement to colonization––to analyze the cold reality of our current material conditions make black feminists completely inept at solving the problems faced by African women.
Often their determination is for African women to entrench ourselves deeper into the capitalist system, siding with our oppressors as a means to usher in reform that almost never equals in the improvement of African women’s lives.
It ends up looking like voting for Hillary Clinton, a woman who has a track record in destroying black families through her support of the Crime Bill and the Adoption and Safe Families Act or her continued theft and exploitation of African people and resources in places like Haiti, the U.S. and Africa.
The final analysis is that feminism does not equal freedom or liberation for black women.
It does its best work in defining reasons why black women should distance ourselves from black men.
Whether it’s highlighting the falsehood that black men don’t get outraged or activated when black women and girls are killed by police or the rates at which black men murder their partners, feminism always focuses on patriarchy as the main issue and leaves imperialism unchallenged.
A vote for Hillary is a vote against black women
When these are the primary issues put before you, it is easy to think that white power is going to solve the problems faced by black women.
It’s easy to support so-called police reform, the U.S. presidency, the “injustice” system, U.S. or European military and NGOs that purport to protect the defenseless; and easy to unite with a white woman who has destroyed the lives of more black people than any black man.
This is what feminism does to African woman who are activated by injustice; it redirects us away from concluding that we need to be free and the thing that’s stopping our freedom is the U.S. imperialist state.
African Internationalism equals freedom for black women
Freedom, pure unadulterated exhilarated freedom, is what black women can expect when we take on African internationalism as we worldview. It forces African people to center ourselves, look at our collective history and strategize our way to freedom, together.
It helps African women look at candidates like Trump and Clinton, and recognize that they are two sides of the same imperialist coin. No matter who wins, African people aren’t free.
With that realization we can end our stake in U.S. imperialism and begin to forge a path toward a free and liberated African people.
With this understanding, we can then expose the functions of State in its many different forms: police, education, child welfare, and welfare with laser sharp precision.
We can build principled strategy to dismantle anything that impedes the production and reproduction of African life like the National Black Political Agenda for Self-Determination.
We can shape a future that is non-oppressive and inclusive of all sectors of the African nation.
And we can do this without siding with white power through imperialist elections. Instead we can vote for ourselves by voting for black power.
Join African National Women’s Organization (ANWO)
Join the Uhuru (Freedom) Movement
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