I appreciate this piece as well. I'd never thought of many of the things that you brought up here - which is a part of what privilege means, so I'm glad to broaden my understanding and my perspective. Thanks! I think these are absolutely the kinds of conversations we need to be having.
I do want to comment on one thing though. Susan B. Anthony was a Quaker and a lifelong abolitionist. By the age of 17, she was circulating anti-slavery petitions, eventually collecting nearly 400,000 signatures in support of the abolition of slavery. Her opposition to Black men getting the vote before white women had nothing to do with racism. That is a convenient but highly unnuanced narrative. Yes, the early feminist movements did not include Black women BECAUSE IT WAS THE 1800s and no white women were associating in public spaces with Blacks. We have to take the context into consideration. Yes, the history of feminism in America is filled with places where middle and upper class white women have been prioritized and we can absolutely acknowledge and own that - but not by throwing somebody under the bus who did a HUGE amount for race relations at a time when that was not at all acceptable to stand for.
Anthony was regularly risking her safety and her life in some instances to speak publicly about the need to abolish slavery. "She developed a reputation for fearlessness in facing down attempts to disrupt her meetings, but opposition became overwhelming on the eve of the Civil War. Mob action shut down her meetings in every town from Buffalo to Albany in early 1861. In Rochester, the police had to escort Anthony and other speakers from the building for their own safety.[58] In Syracuse, according to a local newspaper, "Rotten eggs were thrown, benches broken, and knives and pistols gleamed in every direction."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_B._Anthony
"She would not campaign for a federal amendment that enlarged the male electorate and left all women outside the body politic. Speaking to an audience of African-American men in New York City in June 1868, she opined, if voting “be an inalienable right, it is as much the right of the black woman as it is of the white. And you can’t ask it for any class of men, without asking it for all the women who are deprived of it.” That was not an argument that could win over Frederick Douglass (who was never-the-less her life-long friend, until his death).
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/fraught-friendship-susan-b-anthony-and-frederick-douglass.htm
"Anthony expressed a vision of a racially integrated society that was radical for a time when abolitionists were debating the question of what was to become of the slaves after they were freed, and when people like Abraham Lincoln were calling for African Americans to be shipped to newly established colonies in Africa. In a speech in 1861, Anthony said, "Let us open to the colored man all our schools ... Let us admit him into all our mechanic shops, stores, offices, and lucrative business avocations ... let him rent such pew in the church, and occupy such seat in the theatre ... Extend to him all the rights of Citizenship."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_B._Anthony
So yes, let's take responsibility for the places where that is absolutely warranted and try to do better, but also look at history through a nuanced and complex lens. Eliz. Cady Stanton is a prime example. She was also a lifelong abolitionist who actually spent her honeymoon at an abolition convention in London - where she and other women delegates had to sit behind a curtain and could not participate directly -even if they were their local organization’s designated delegate. There was an instance where her frustration at the ways that women were held back expressed itself in racist ways. As far as I am aware, it was just one outburst. The essay that the Time article you linked to refers to her speaking in “unspeakably racist terms” isn’t racist in the slightest as far as I could ascertain. She simply says, “Charles Sumner, Horace Greeley, Gerrit Smith and Wendell Phillips, with one consent, bid the women of the nation stand aside and behold the salvation of the negro. Wendell Phillips says, “one idea for a generation,” to come up in the order of their importance. First negro suffrage, then temperance, then the eight hour movement, then woman’s suffrage. In 1958, three generations hence, thirty years to a generation, Phillips and Providence permitting, woman’s suffrage will be in order. What an insult to the women who have labored thirty years for the emancipation of the slave, now when he is their political equal, to propose to lift him above their heads. Gerrit Smith, forgetting that our great American idea is “individual rights,” in which abolitionists have ever based their strongest arguments for emancipation, says, this is the time to settle the rights of races; unless we do justice to the negro we shall bring down on ourselves another bloody revolution, another four years’ war, but we have nothing to fear from woman, she will not revenge herself! . . .”
One might quibble that newly freed slaves weren’t actually true political equals of white women, but that’s not truly “unspeakable racism” to express frustration around having your rights deferred until 1958 because the men in power didn’t think you could meaningfully demand any better.
Nobody condones the one racist outburst she did make certainly, but does it automatically erase all the other work she did on behalf of abolition and emancipation? Is it fair to hold somebody from the 1800s to modern standards about racism or to demonize someone for life for making a mistake? People do not wear White Hats or Black Hats - most people are good people who sometimes do things that aren't so good. We can note and even condemn those things without lumping them into the "bad people" pile - or at least we should be able to. It’s become quite fashionable to tarnish the reputations of Anthony and Stanton — I think because it takes powerful women who changed history down a peg — but that just serve’s patriarchy and doesn’t further equality for anyone. We shouldn’t make excuses for white women, but we shouldn’t demonize them for things they didn’t do or for things taken out of context either.
Edit: Contrary to what someone else said, there is zero evidence that white suffragettes did not want Black women to have the vote — and there is quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. An anti-suffrage group “the cult of true womanhood” viewed only white women as “true” women, but they were the antithesis of the suffrage movement in almost every way and the two should not be conflated.
(steps down from soap box)
