Nov. 29, 2016, promised to be a lucrative day for the National Organization for Women. It was Giving Tuesday, exactly three weeks after Donald Trump was elected president. A staggering number of donations had already poured in. Stunned that the country had elected a leader with a long history of flagrant misogyny, who boasted on camera about sexual assault, liberals were rushing to back organizations dedicated to defending women’s rights. And who better to support than the most storied feminist activist organization in the country?
To meet the moment, NOW chose to highlight the experiences of board member Barbara Miller, who has been active with NOW since the 1970s, when the organization led the charge on issues such as workplace equality and reproductive rights, firmly fixed at the center of feminism’s second wave. In a mass email to potential donors, Miller, who is white, recalled her early days at NOW, fighting for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.
“The concept of feminism was new to me and as I walked into my first NOW meeting I was taken aback by all the excitement. Strong, focused, and engaged women surrounded me speaking up and out against the injustices of the world,” she wrote.
“I instantly knew this was where I was meant to be.”
Women of color have struggled to find that same sense of belonging at NOW. In the 54 years since the organization was founded, few women of color have risen to its highest ranks. The organization’s leadership has always been dominated by white women, said Katherine Turk, a professor of history and gender at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who writes about NOW in her forthcoming book, “A Dangerous Sisterhood.” Ten of NOW’s 11 presidents have been white women. Twelve of its current 17 board members are white.
It’s not just NOW. Veteran feminist organizations, led by white women with roots in the second wave, have not made room for women of color, especially black women, according to interviews with 20 former staffers from the American Association of University Women (AAUW), the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) and NOW. Former employees say staffers of color are concentrated in lower level positions, with white leadership shaping organizational priorities that feel largely irrelevant to women who are not white, straight, cisgender, highly educated and upper-middle class. Employees of color were often made to feel like “tokens,” many said, rolled out to show diversity but derided and dismissed within the confines of the office.
https://www.thelily.com/how-many-wom...-staffers-say/
we live in a moment that calls for uncomfortable self-reflection
still waiting for some elite universities to abandon the legacy system...this is where the rubber meets the road...don't be just pointing at the police
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