The XX Factor: What women really think.

Family Fight

Dahlia, thank you so much for your piece; finally, the scales are falling from my eyes. I have been, I must admit, a bit bemused by the rise of the Angry White Woman (AWW) this year. That older white women should support Hillary Clinton with passion did not surprise me, of course. That they should decry incidents of sexism made perfect sense. Even that they should turn angry when her frontrunner campaign began to fail was no great mystery. After all, I came of age, and launched my career, in the time of the Angry White Male. Pissed-off white folks are old hat to me.

What confused me was the tone of that anger—the way it was consistently and passionately framed in terms of shock and woundedness. The way the words betrayal and abandonment have been hurled about, with their insulting implications of what was owed and to whom, of what battles were fought and on who's behalf they were so launched.

I also didn't get how so many white women could be so shocked that sexism still exists. Such a level of insulation seems a privilege in itself. When I am stopped by a white cop for driving in a white neighborhood, I am not shocked. When my neighbor tells me confidentially I am the least ethnic black person he has ever met and how happy that makes him, I am not shocked. My mother, a seventysomething woman who grew up in Mississippi being stomped by black men and white folks—male and female—alike, is not shocked. My sister, who rose to become a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and who says quite clearly that sexism is far worse than racism in the military, was not shocked by this discovery. How could she be? Growing up black in Memphis had well prepared her for discrimination of any stripe. (One example: the white female guidance counselor who told her not to bother applying for college because she could not possibly do the work even if she got in. Result: one B.A. plus two masters' degrees, including one from Harvard.)

But now I see why I have been confused: This whole thing has nothing to do with me. This is a family fight between older white women and their daughters, and me and my mother and my sisters are not even in the conversation. 

What a relief. Ya'll carry on.