Donna Hannover

But I will say that it’s past time for men of color who consider themselves allies to women of color, who recognize that their freedom can’t come at the expense the women who share their history, to meditate on and interact with the words, the ideas, the actions of the women of their communities. It’s time for them to contemplate something deeper and more profound than “rape=bad”–it’s time for them to look at their own roles in the creation of “race=male,” and why it is that every woman of color I have read, talked to, interacted with, watched, heard of, all have an extremely thoughtful critique of various issues like Tookie Williams, Leonard Peltier, hip hop, Abu Ghraib, suicide bombers, lynching, etc etc etc–and yet most men of color don’t even know that Latinas, black women, and Native women are ALL disproportionately imprisoned compared to their white counter parts. Or that Asian women are committing suicide in frightening numbers. Or that our work around rape extends well beyond a “no means no” campaign. Or that the women men do organize with have all probably been on some type of harmful birth control at one point or another. And they’ve all also probably carefully weighed their words at some point or another–considered how they could say something in the “right way”.

It’s time for men to contemplate this in meaningful, thoughtful and transparent ways, with other men of color, with boys of color, with the men that call us bitch, cunt, vendida, traitor, thundercunts, ho’s, nappy headed, ugly.

It’s time to push this thing to the next level, to put your money where your mouth is.

It’s time to push this to the next level, so we ALL can be free.