Marked as one of the largest protests against sexual and gender-based violence in the country, the protest was a response many believe is an escalation of murders of women.  In 2023, the organization Femicide Count recorded 152 killings, equating to one woman every three days. The majority of these women are victims of intimate partner violence. 

Following the protests, ANWO looked at articles that cite numbers like 90 women killed over 3 years and 500 women killed in 7 years. Although, it is unnerving, this isn’t femicide – a massive targeting of women because they are women. 

Unfortunately the murder of African women is part of the overall colonial violence that African people endure under the colonial mode of production.

Colonized women endure heightened violence under colonialism 

A December 2023 article in The Root reported that black women were 30% of all crime victims in Chicago in 2022.  Black women victims constituted 67,000 of the 270,000 crimes reported in Chicago that year. In a system that does not value black people and black women even less, these statistics are on trend with all other trends that show horrible conditions faced by African people. 

According to Frantz Fanon, an African psychiatrist who tracked violence during direct French colonialism in Algeria and the resulting Algerian revolution,  violence among the colonized was high until the national liberation struggle redirected that violence. The effects of colonialism instigate horizontal and vertical violence.    

ANWO is overwhelmingly opposed to gender-based violence and killings of women because they are women. Although the fourteen documented murders of African women in Kenya since the start of the year seems like an alarming increase; in a country of 53 million, it’s minute and possibly in line with all other murders happening in the country including the murders of men, children, and non-gender-conforming persons.

Even though Kenya has one of the highest quality of living in Africa, the biggest threat to women in Kenya is that they live under neo-colonial democracy. Kenya is aligning itself with the U.S. and other Western imperialist nations by doing their bidding. Such as answering the call of the U.S.-influenced United Nations by sending the Kenyan police force to Haiti, to police other African people. In addition to this, Kenya’s Labour Ministry sent 1,500 farm workers to Israel to fill the agriculture gaps caused by the Palestinian resistance.  Essentially making Kenyan laborers “scabs,” to undermine Palestinian resistance.

Ultimately, if African women in Kenya want to end the violence they experience, they must become anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist and contend with the overall colonial nature of their government which foments violence inside their country and in other places around the world.

We would rather spend all of our time engaged in solving the problems of our class; organizing African women to combat colonialism, which threatens our participation in the African liberation struggle.

We are forced to, however, make critiques of the subjective petit bourgeois nature of feminism because it is a divisive, unproductive political line that leads African women away from African liberation and toward an unrealistic stance of self-preservation under white power imperialism.

ANWO is a confusing organization for many feminists and feminist leaning activists, because while we are in favor of equality of African women on one hand; we are against colonialism in all of its forms including in the form of petit bourgeois feminism which puts forth the position that patriarchy is the primary barrier for African women.

Patriarchy, as problematic as it may be, is not the core contradiction. It can be overturned with political education in the form of discussions and, from time to time, physical resistance.

Colonialism, on the other hand, cannot be reasoned with. Its very existence is at the expense of the lives and lands of many of the world’s peoples regardless of age, gender, political alignment, class or religion.

Therefore, ANWO understands that patriarchy is undesirable; as we continue to critique feminist conclusions that prioritize ending patriarchy over all other things, because we understand that an equal society cannot be achieved under the parasitic exploitative system of capitalist colonialism.

Only the African revolution can bring about an equal society

What we do instead is build toward a revolution. In that process of building a new socialist society where African workers have control of the State, we are challenged and transformed through criticism and self-criticism, dialectical materialism, combating liberalism, engaging in struggle and forwarding the leadership of African women, as a practice.

Alternatively, feminism encourages equality in order to maintain the status quo within the existing parasitic social structure.

For example, it has African women fighting for equal pay for “women”, while oppressor nation women continue to earn more than African, Indigenous and Latinx men and women in the U.S.

So essentially, colonized oppressed people within the U.S. colony are fighting just to catch up to white women, while white women are fighting to be equal to white men.

Patriarchy cannot explain this dichotomy, nor can it explain the many other issues that affect poor working class colonized people.

Patriarchy does not explain the overrepresentation of the African prisoners in the U.S., Europe and Canada; State violence; the overrepresentation African children kidnapped by the State; dumpster babies; neocolonialism; infant and maternal death; poor healthcare; food deserts; gentrification; ethnic cleansing; and proxy wars.

Feminists are confused about privilege, patriarchy and oppression

The fact that feminism cannot explain the world confuses even feminists themselves. Feminism does not provide an analysis for oppression, colonialism or violence, even though violence seems to be the primary basis for the creation of a black feminist.

A self-identified feminist initiated a struggle with Party member, Dexter Mlimwengu, after he made a critique of Angela Davis on a social media post. What resulted was a stream of strawman arguments, used by feminists, to defend their position that African men benefit from white power.

The feminist tried to make a point about oppression, which lobbed all forms of internal colonized oppression on African men.

When Dexter presented her with the variations of violence that happen amongst the colonized giving the example of “cishet” African women “oppressing” queer African women, the feminist says, “we do, but in a power structure, it doesn’t do anything. Like a black person being “racist” to a white person.”

To which Dexter asked, “but if their “oppressing” doesn’t do anything then they are not really oppressing. So black women are incapable of oppressing but black men oppress black women?”

The reality is that oppressive violence is a symptom of colonialism. Colonized people engage in violence at much higher rates than if we were not colonized, because of the forced contained conditions that are in place to control us.

This is how we explain the African mother who kills her children or the African trans man who beats his girlfriend, or the African teenage girl who stabs and kills her classmate.

Colonial conditions breeds violence. Colonialism is not the creation of African men it is the creation of white power, imperialism to maintain control of the colonized.

African men cannot therefore, benefit from white power when they are victims of it.

The feminist could not contend with this line of questioning and attempted to retreat from the discussion when the comrades deepened the question of African male privilege and oppression.

Confused about privilege, patriarchy and oppression

There is no such thing as African male privilege

Does male privilege then save us from getting gunned down by the pigs?

Does male privilege work when white women yell rape and the next thing you know, there’s a lynch mob at the door?

Did African men get whipped less [and African women more] on the plantation? Did African men get to be in the house while African women were outside?

Does male privilege keep African men from being stuffed into prisons?

Perhaps it was male privilege that crushed the Black Revolution of the ‘60s too, right?

Where is my so-called male privilege to grant me power over judges, the police, the courts, the schools, the banks? How does one begin to organize to defeat “male privilege”, since this seems to be the fundamental issue?

Colonialism, imperialism, and parasitic capitalism be damned! It’s “male privilege” that snatches African women’s children away and places them in foster care.

It’s ‘male privilege’ that has distorted the relationships between African men and women – not centuries of oppression.

How do you define how you, a black woman, ended up in this country? Do you say that “male privilege” did that?

This “male privilege” that African men supposedly has didn’t come into effect when we were being stuffed on to those slave ships, same as African women.

It did nothing for us when they dispersed us around the world; it does nothing for us today with the present conditions of genocide.

To think that African women can achieve liberation separate of African men, you really have to ask how that will happen.

African men do and say horrible things to African women, and vice versa, not as a result of “male privilege” but because of this relationship we have with colonialism. When we identify our issue as “male privilege”, we place the onus on the oppressed versus the oppressor and doesn’t give us an opportunity to overturn it.

The feminist responded, “You see! That’s what black men do! You always make it about you! That’s what I’m talking about!”

This sister does not have a historical materialist understanding of the world and the place of Africans in it, such as what is explained in the theory of African Internationalism, therefore, she has come to the wrong conclusions about the whole question of patriarchy and privilege.

We can have ideological disagreements with sisters who have this understanding, but at the end of the day, we want every African woman to be educated about the root cause of our conditions and how to fight. We recognize barriers that are sometimes present in our communities and unite that they should be destroyed. We do not want to fight African men and discourage them acting as the State in our homes, communities or any other space, and we support dialogue and action that dismantle colonial behaviors that mimic the oppression of white power.

That’s why we are actively involved in dismantling these behaviors, like what we’ve done in Santa Barbara, California when we organize our community to respond to a campus predator.

We have also targeted our work at the primary purveyors of violence in our communities, the State. We have organize protests against slumlords that threatened eviction and social service offices that denied services – and won.

We’ve organized a community response to the state-sponsored kidnapping of African children from poor working class African families, with our campaign #ArrestCPS.

We are also organizing a community response to child welfare, Uhuru Kijiji Childcare Collective that makes the community responsible for African women, children and families overall.

We are also engaged in building economic self-sustainability for our organization and our community through our brand DeColonaise and we provide political education through our website, flyers and The Burning Spear Newspaper’s column Harriet’s Daughter.

Our work addresses the real material conditions of our people. So even as we debate about patriarchy, we are actively involved in overturning real colonial conditions—Our feelings about patriarchy.

To learn more about what we do contact us at info@anwouhuru.org or (240) 326-3959 (U.S.) or visit our website at anwouhuru.org.

SWEDEN — In March of this year, Feminist Initiativ (F!) chose an African woman, Victoria Kawesa who is originally from Uganda, as the Chair of their political party. This is the first time in Swedish history that a black woman has ever been elected to such a high position in the imperialist political sphere.

Feminist Initiativ, is a feminist political party in Sweden that was created in 2005 by a white feminist named Gudrun Schyman as a way to intervene in the Swedish “patriarchal” parliament  by pushing forth a feminist agenda.

The election was seen as a success for African women who identify as feminists, however, Kawesa being elected as the Chairwoman for F!, did not mean much to the majority of African women. That is to say – African working class women.

The win was short lived, however; Kawesa left her position in September – just a few months after she was elected – claiming that she couldn’t take on the position due to her “life circumstances” of being a single mom of two, working full time and completing her thesis.

Apparently the reality of life as an African working mother – even as an intellectual –  does not mesh well with holding leadership positions in feminist organization.

The conflicted identities of Victoria Kawesa

Victoria Kawesa stands for a feminist petty bourgeois ideology, that seeks to integrate into the colonial system with the aim of fixing it by “fighting patriarchy” and “ending racism.”  There is no plan to overturn imperialism.

As part of F!, Kawesa unites with F!’s line that “they speak for all women”. As African working class women, however, we need to be clear on the colonial question and be able to say that if F! or any other coloniser doesn’t work under the leadership of African working class women to overturn this system then “all women” ain’t on their agenda.

With that being said, whenever someone claims to speak in our interest but doesn’t – Victoria Kawesa in this case –  we need to be able to expose their contradictions to the masses!

For those that don’t know, Kawesa is rather contradictory. She identifies herself as an “anti-racist intersectional post-colonial black feminist”; an identity that assumes that we are no longer oppressed by a foreign power and that fighting to make white people (white men in particular) like Africans and other oppressed people, is a an end-goal.

She actually has built up her career around gender and been promoted through academic feminist platforms to speak on issues pertaining to the gender contradictions women experience.

Not too long ago, however,  Kawesa participated in a seminar that discussed ‘women and gender research’ in Bergen, Norway where she was stopped on the street by the police who asked her to present her identification.

She couldn’t comply with the cop because she had left her identification in her room. The Swedish [white] woman that was in her company asked  the police , “Do you want to see my ID as well?” and the police replied, “No it’s not needed because you have a Norwegian [white] appearance.”

When the police moved closer to Kawesa, she ran to her hotel room and locked herself in  because she was afraid to get arrested.

After this incident Kawesa has stated many times that she is outraged because she had been racially profiled.  Racial profiling is not something that happens because of gender but because one is part of the oppressed African nation.

Just like another petty bourgeois academic, Dr. Henry Louis Gates who was arrested while trying to gain access to his home back in 2009, Kawesa learned that  having access to white people, white platforms and white ideology cannot save you from the colonial reality – African people are an oppressed and subject people under capitalist imperialism.

An understanding of domestic colonialism is needed to overturn our relationship to the State and destroy Parasitic Capitalist Colonialism

Feminism did not prepare Kawesa with the understanding that she is a colonial subject under the imperialist system and that the police are the armed militia of the white ruling class or that the imperialist State apparatus is the reason why she had to flee from Africa to Europe in the first place.

She has not yet learned that it’s a waste of time to “fight racism” because this system is based on the oppression of colonised people and benefits from our exploitation.

What Kawesa experienced in Norway is nothing new to what the poor and African working class African communities face in Norway and Sweden. This small incident can’t even be compared to all the contradictions we face on a daily basis.

Everything from having to flee by boat over the Mediterranean, getting killed by the police, to having our children kidnapped by the imperialist State. The same State that Kawesa herself wants to be a part of!

The question I want to ask Kawesa is, how much sense does it make to claim to be an ‘anti-racist intersectional post-colonial black feminist’ in your interaction with the police, when they clearly have the power to do whatever they want to do with you?

You cannot claim to be living in a postcolonial society when you are obviously treated as a colonial subject by a female cop in front of your “feminist sister,”  who even though she “sympathises with your struggle,” is clearly a contradiction to your stance.

Clearly it didn’t mean anything, because African people don’t have power in this system!

The aim now is to change that dynamic and push forth an agenda of the African working class that will amount to the overthrow of capitalist imperialism.

Kawesa’s contradiction, shows that we cannot rely on African petty bourgeoisie forces in our communities since they only want to protect their own interest at the cost of our liberation as a nation!

Feminism does not speak to the interest of African working class woman.

In Sweden, just like in many other places in the world, there is a special oppression of the African working class woman that Feminist Initiativ doesn’t talk about and that they won’t and cannot solve!

Even though feminism is a bourgeois ideology there are still too many African working class women that unite with F! and adhere to feminist principles.

This is primarily because African women did not have any other significant ideology that could describe what was happening to us under colonialism.

Instead, many of us have been pulled into the gender politics of Feminism that often do nothing more than describe the symptoms of colonialism, such as patriarchy and violence.

Feminism – whether white or black – wants us to integrate into a dying social system

Feminism does not have the interest to overturn the colonial conditions that are faced by the majority of the people on earth. Feminism is a bourgeois ideology that only  serves to and protect the interest of  white power. Mostly in the name of “equal rights” and “anti racism”.

This is exactly why the African National Women’s Organisation(ANWO) is so important

The goal of ANWO in Sweden is to organise African women so that we can respond, in an organised manner, to the different issues we face as a consequence of the oppression from the white imperialist State.

African women are constantly being oppressed by the State and usually we fight in isolation due to lack of organisation. Therefore ANWO wants to develop programs in order to help  poor and working class African women, find our voice and power.

Not only that, but also bring our women into organisation so that they become an active participant in their own liberation struggle.

We need more African women to get involved in ANWO Sweden

What ANWO in Sweden wants to do is to have orientations on a consistent basis.What this means is that we want to gather African women and lay out the programs we have thus far and get the people themselves involved in the process to build and develop the programs.

The orientations will also provide the masses with political education, based on the perspective of the African working class, called African Internationalism which has been developed by the Chairman of The African People’s Socialist Party, Omali Yeshitela.

These orientations will also help us build one of our main campaigns, which is the ArrestCPS campaign. This campaign is crucial to build in Sweden and in Scandinavia since the State is kidnapping African children on a regular basis without facing any consequences;leaving African mothers and fathers alone in the struggle to fight for their children.

To be able to further build ANWO in Sweden and also in Scandinavia we want to hold conferences  with the participation of every African man, woman and child who want to see an end to this misery we live in.

We need to change the narrative  

There are so many contradictions that we face as a colonised people. The reason why ANWO was created,is because we recognise that there is a special oppression of oiir and  working class African woman.

Everything from horizontal violence, children being kidnapped by the State to  Female Genital Mutilation. These attacks on African women are caused by our colonial relationship to the white imperialist State.

There are also contradictions between the African woman and man.However – these are the symptoms of the State violence that has been imposed on us as a people since the first attack on Africa.

When African women  jump on the feminist bandwagon, they simply join the oppressor,since it was born out of the white women’s struggle to have the  slice of the imperialist pie, as their male counterparts.

ANWO can see and fights for a new world where there is no oppressor/oppressed relationship.

In order to get there, however, we need to come to the conclusion that we need to do for ourself and not rely on the system that is responsible for our oppression in the first place!

Smash colonialism!
Smash Neocolonialism!
Join ANWO today!

In Republican Donald Trump’s camp were the likely open white nationalist “good ole’ girls” and the unlikely African supporters like YouTubers Diamond and Silk and Omarosa Manigault.

In Democrat Hillary Clinton’s camp were the so-called progressives, entertainers like Beyoncé and feminists, some of whom were left with her as their ONLY candidate for a chance at presidency, after fake socialist Bernie Sanders failed to win the Democratic Party primary.

Though Clinton presented herself as the most stable option to lead U.S. imperialism, by pandering to women and Africans, she still lost the presidency to Donald Trump.

Election exit polls show that white people overwhelmingly voted to elect Trump as president: 53 percent of white women voters and 63 percent of white men voters.

This is despite Trump’s oppressive attitude and treatment of women and his position on women’s issues.

The shattering of “women in general”

It is clearer now to African women, who hoped to coax white women into caring about us through intersectional coalitions, that white women are part of the oppressor nation and as such, have a vested interest in the exploitation and oppression of people internationally and inside the U.S., just like their male counterparts.

That’s why we say that “there is no such thing as women in general”—the idea that all women are oppressed by patriarchy—is a false concept that obscures the colonial question by equating the experiences of white women of the oppressor nation to the oppression experienced by African women. There is no commonality.

The oppressor white nation, which includes white women, acquires what they have at the expense of African and other oppressed people.

African women’s primary enemy has always been our colonial oppressor—the white imperialist nation—that has held the power over our lives since it first attacked Africa.

White women’s votes for Trump is indicative of their opportunist relationships with oppressed women. This is mainly expressed through feminism which was never meant to solve the contradictions faced by African women.

While black feminists are doing the “important” work to help white women be less opportunistic through the development of intersectional feminism, white women are using intersectional feminism to shield themselves from criticism for their exploitative behavior.

Feminist, Melissa Harris Perry’s defense of the so-called “transracial” identity of Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who led a branch of the NAACP under the false pretense of being an African, is a perfect example.

What votes for Trump really say about Clinton

Donald Trump made no attempts to win over the hearts and minds of women. In fact, his remarks did more to upset bourgeois white women, more than any other sector of the population.

Yet 45 percent of college-educated white women voted for him instead of Hillary Clinton, which speaks volumes about the relationship that white women have with one another.

White women couldn’t even hold true their own “women power” line when it came down to voting for one of their own. They abandoned the whole woman question in order to align themselves with a white man.

They supported blatant white nationalism, misogyny and exploitative white male dominance as exemplified in Donald Trump’s campaign.

White women had no confidence in a white woman at the helm of U.S. imperialism.

Trump’s selection pulled the scab off the white nationalism intrinsic in capitalism, which would have been obscured had Clinton been selected.

She continued in the cloak and dagger styled politics of her predecessors. She pandered to the “black vote” by minstrelizing African people on one hand, while on the other hand she was erecting policy that harmed Africans and Indigenous people.

Trump did not care about black people or women. Instead, he had more confidence in the ability of the general white population to get him elected. They didn’t let him down.

With this crisis happening among the white women of the ruling class, African women must seize the time to break free from the “women in general” centered politics associated with white women’s aspirations to be recognized as equal to white men.

Safety pins and white women’s march on Washington

Now that white women are confronted with the concrete data of their white nationalism, they are doing everything they can to reassure so-called “women of color” that white people are not the enemy.

In the days following the selection of Donald Trump, liberal white women apologized profusely for their role in electing Trump; writing scathing self-criticisms framed as op-eds, chastising one another, and taking to the streets to protest against the outcome of the election.

They’ve come up with gimmicks to show black people that they are “allies,” such as wearing safety pins in public, as a message to oppressed people that they are safe to be around.

Wearing safety pins, however, does more to keep white people safe, in the center and included, because it is an expression of fear caused by the threat of oppressed people fighting back.

They can only hope that this symbolic gesture of safety keeps them from becoming victims of anti-colonial violence.

White women have even scurried to organize a white women’s march on Washington planned for the day after Trump’s inauguration.

The organizers have described the event as a way to combat “the rhetoric of the past election cycle [which] has insulted, demonized, and threatened many of us—women, immigrants of all statuses, those with diverse religious faiths particularly Muslim, people who identify as LGBTQIA, Native and Indigenous people, black and brown people, people with disabilities, the economically impoverished and survivors of sexual assault.”

While, in theory, the premise for the march is righteous, we have to ask where were all these white women when Africans were being murdered in the streets? How about when African women were being raped by the police or when our children were being taken by the State?

We know where.

They were in McKinney, Texas siccing police on black teenagers leaving a pool party. They were in Tulsa, Oklahoma shooting unarmed Terrence Crutcher, and wearing black face at college Halloween parties.

The truth is that all of these upset white women weren’t upset until their freedoms were threatened.

Now they seek to cloak themselves in the issues of the struggling colonized African, Arab, and Indigenous women as a way to win solidarity with the masses of our people through this white women’s march. This is the ultimate show of opportunism.

Trump’s selection exposes white America’s loyalty to white power and has created a groundswell of fear in liberals of the white oppressor nation. There isn’t a dancing Negro or a woman as president to veil the white nationalism of U.S. policy.

We can only deduce that white people’s frantic response is informed by the knowledge that African and other oppressed people are no longer fooled by their claims of being white allies.

If white people were truly here to “protect” the marginalized communities they purport to show solidarity with, then they would just join the African People’s Solidarity Committee or Uhuru Solidarity Movement who are under the leadership of the African poor and working class.

Ultimately, we have data that reflects the opportunism of white women and we shouldn’t be fooled by their attempts to dig their claws into the flesh of our people.

African women must reject this “all-women” rhetoric and organize in our own interests by joining the African National Women’s organization.

Admittedly, I struggled when I was asked to give a presentation entitled “End the Oppression of African Women” at the 2011 International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) convention. Although I think the presentation had many good points, overall, I think it lacked focus. Now, as the video of this presentation is being played to wider audiences, I thought it was important to solidify what I believed to be a shaky message.

My struggles on this subject came from not seeing a clear definition of gender-specific oppression when it came to African people. Even though there are differences in the types of attacks men and women experience, it is important to identify that those attacks are rooted in a capitalist system, which has manipulated and exploited African people from the very beginning.

This system allows the enslaved to act as collaborators, which the oppressor uses as a basis for divide-and-conquer campaigns. As I explored the oppression of African women, I first had to identify areas where the oppressor sought to divide and conquer. I found those attributes were apparent in something veiled behind the interest of a devalued group, black women. This thing was called feminism.

This was why I initially tried speaking about theories of feminism to approach the subject of the oppression of African women. I realized, however, that even if I could see how divisional feminism was, I didn’t know how to speak about it because I didn’t fully understand what it meant to be a feminist, more specifically, a black feminist.

So while I mentioned it, I didn’t make it a central theme. I continued, however, my effort to understand it even after the convention.

I began a study, looking for articles, books and videos explaining why black women would choose the feminist agenda as a liberation engine. What I concluded was that feminism, even black feminism, vies for the attention of white power , essentially working within its system to solve the problem of being a devalued human being, and although black feminist would argue that they are more devalued than anybody else by this system, they still depend on it to validate themselves.

Black Feminism

Black feminism encompasses a range of ideas that, unlike white feminism, which primarily seeks an end to gender inequality, acknowledges that social and economic disparities associated with race are additional oppressive factors in which white women have no historical experience.

Black feminism acknowledges the root oppression of African people and the resulting effects it has on us. Black feminism, however, allows black women to take a perpetual victim’s role, essentially pitting black women against black men in a contest to see who is oppressed the most, drawing focus away from the overall system of oppression that oppresses us both.

This is contrary to feminist thought, as black feminist academic, bell hooks, states in her book, Killing Rage: Ending Racism, that it is black men who have become victims in order to obtain some of the privilege of being men in white-dominated society, ultimately aligning themselves with white men and becoming oppressors to black women.

Armed with this understanding, feminism found a place in the black community and used our personal relationships as the platform for its agenda. Feminism undermines our ability to think critically and plays on our “emotional” characteristics. Personal responsibility could be absolved by placing the blame on black men, not only in subjective relationships, but also in their inability to beat back the oppressor. So what begins is a positioning of ourselves in opposite corners, ready to fight it out for recognition.

For example, a sister might be resentful toward black men because, instead of becoming an agent for change, a brother might become a drug dealer, and due to the resulting jail time from this activity, more single black mothers would turn to welfare for economic assistance. In an effort to free themselves from their perceived abandonment, black women could engage in acts of collaboration with the state against black men and black people through welfare, which is an imperialist tool that rewards single-parent households led by black women. It allows us avenues to become agents for the oppressor as a way to incarcerate more black men and to further tie ourselves economically to this system through child support/wage garnishments and welfare-to-work programs, among others.

Of course, discussion around this topic is being had without recognizing (or at least not wanting to recognize) that a brother doesn’t choose to be a drug dealer as much as a sister doesn’t choose to go on welfare. These are responses to the same beast of imperialism/capitalism, which has divested the economic and human resources from African communities the world over since its creation.

It is also important to note that while white feminism is opposed to the power structure of white men, black feminism takes on the specific question of how it relates to their relationship with black men. Black feminism does something that white feminism could not do, which is accuse black men of oppression. And in this way, black women now take on an antagonistic position toward black men, just as their feminist label would suggest, pulling out the black woman experience again, and preventing us from focusing on the exploitative divisive nature of capitalism.

Some black feminists claim this is not the case, that their label as a feminist identifies their layered oppression and that their fight is against oppression in all forms. That the black woman’s struggle and identity has been marred in such a way that black feminism defines them—not only as fighters against oppression but as black women whose struggles are different from white women, and that this position is not necessarily in opposition to black men.

Why call yourself a feminist, then?

If black women are fighting against all types of oppression, what is the reason for using this label? Why can’t these black women just join in the overall struggle to crush the incorrect systems that have victimized black people?

Feminism automatically calls out a biological identity that aligns itself with white power imperialism, based on white women’s need to be seen as equal to white men. In that vein, when anyone calls themselves a feminist it ultimately means that they are vying to be recognize by white power imperialism as a victim.

Neo-Feminism: Becoming goddess

Another growing verve of feminism coming from black women is to take on the moniker of goddess. Some of these women use goddess myth to explain how balance can be restored to the world, first through a global black women’s alliance, and ultimately an alliance with women of all colors. That men have caused all the ills of the world and thus should accept women as divine beings and subscribe to “worshipping” her as such.

I have been in circles where all a woman has to do is burn a candle, throw their menstruation blood on some rocks during a full moon and sit with a bunch of women under a red tent in order to chant out the ills of the world. This practice plays on the significance of having a womb as a means to see oneself as some sort of supreme being.

One major problem, if you haven’t already spotted it, is that this version of goddess myth “rescues” women from doing the actual practical work needed to really stamp out the ills of the world.

Basically, it’s a lazy lady’s cure for change.

It relegates solutions to metaphysical “work,” almost never depositing messages of community empowerment. It allows us the comfort of being psychic revolutionaries from our homes instead of being on the front lines and in the streets, as examples to other women and girls that their place is right here and now in the struggle for freedom and liberation of our people.

Oftentimes, goddess theory Africanizes European ideals of what being a goddess is by subscribing to the perception of a easy-tempered being. My understanding of goddesses in African traditions is a bit different than what I’ve heard coming out of the mouths of black “goddesses.” Goddesses are one part of a dual system in which male and female “gods” could not exist without each other.

African traditions espouse duality and balance which represents African women and African men each as parts of a whole, and necessary to solve a problem. For example African goddess Oya, the warrior water goddess, is counterpart to Sango, the thunder god. The unbalanced notion of god or goddess superiority is non-existent.

I do want to say that, even as I see the process of becoming a “goddess” as counterrevolutionary, I have seen how study of the African goddess myth, has transformed some women who previously didn’t value themselves into women who found pride in who they are as African women.

This is important especially as black women are attacked by the imperialist media and by backward-thinking individuals whose aim is to make us feel less than. If the end goal, however, is just to make us feel good about being black, then I have to advocate taking it a step further and revolutionizing the message.

Because, while it’s nice to have a space where we can discuss our issues, if it stops at that without any real workable solutions, the whole practice is dysfunctional. It’s not enough to be a proud slave, resolved to live in your physical oppression because you got rid of one one hundreth of your mental one.

This mentality is familiar to me because I used to involve myself with certain aspects of the goddess life. But for all the candle burning and altar building and black self-loving, I wasn’t satisfied. It became a question of where the practical work was. The more I saw my sisters ascend to the sky, escaping from reality, the more I distanced myself.

I saw this mentality problematic because it forged a disconnect between myself and other African women who were not in a position to escape the death of their child due to malnutrition, or imperialist-driven rapes, or life in a poverty-stricken ghetto.

I asked myself: how could I walk up to one of these women, tell her she’s a goddess and invite her to join me in a healing circle?

She’d probably look at me like I was out of my mind.

The more I stayed amongst these goddess women, the more I saw that even though they expressed concerns about the conditions of our people, their resolves usually ended up attacking men, victimizing themselves or relegating the work they needed to do to tapping into a “higher vibration.”

Needless to say, I abandoned the goddess identity and elevated myself to African womanhood, standing side by side with other African women and men to do the work that is needed. Ending oppression of African women cannot mean turning ourselves into victims or escaping our realities. It means dealing first hand with the problem, and the problem is capitalism.

This parasitic system feeds off the labor and resources of African people, and its survival is predicated on its ability to infiltrate our communities and divide us along color, gender and economic lines.

Let’s not let them win.

Let’s learn that our greatest power is a united front focused on ensuring the fall of imperialism under which we cannot survive or be free.

African women: we must embrace an African Internationalist agenda that takes on this very question, that arms us with the ability to really end our oppression through collaborative efforts amongst the African working class and poor peasants.

As an African Internationalist, I understand that the only way to shed victimization is to become a revolutionary, struggling against this system to end all forms of oppression.

There have also been numerous blog posts about the circumstances of Eric’s death, but none more strikingly condescending than “Why I Will Not March for Eric Garner,” a blog post on the black feminist website For Harriet, written by its founder Kimberly Foster.

The title itself was enough for me to delay reading beyond the first two lines. I did not want to read another self-absorbed validation of “black womanhood” pitted against the idea of the “black man.”

I did not want to read about another African woman who felt like her victimization was justification for her indictment of African men.

I did not want to be upset by the words of an African woman who saw herself and our gender as separate from the African nation as a whole.

I had to read it, however, just because I knew it had all of those things trapped inside its paragraphs. I also realized it was necessary to expose her petty-bourgeois positions.

Foster writes, “I’m not settling for anything less than reciprocity. If you refuse to hear our calls for help, then I cannot respond to yours. I have no desire, as a black woman, to be placed on a pedestal, but I will not allow myself to become a footstool. Do not ask me for empathy if you are content to deny it in return.”

Feminism, a skewed worldview for Africans

The “pedestal” Foster claims she doesn’t want is exactly what her article calls for, a place high at the top as a glorious example of double oppression that everyone must learn to listen to.

The reality is that her calls will continue to go unanswered because she has no understanding of the material conditions of our people. She and African women like her do not understand that we are still colonized—as part of the oppressed African nation—which is why their worldview is so skewed.

They are fighting for “recognition” within a capitalist society that devalues the life of African people, period.

Everything in this society minimizes us and there is no pocket to which we can escape while imperialism continues to exist.

Feminism leads people to believe that there is a safe place for African women, that the devaluation of the African woman can be solved if we get African men to understand and stand in solidarity with our struggles.

This is politically backward because it makes the assumption that African women have it all together, like we have nothing to overcome.

The fact is that some African women are still not clear on who our oppressor is and do not recognize it when colonialism is staring them right in their face. They are therefore ill-prepared to take on struggle toward freedom and liberation.

Violence on one of us is violence on all of us

Foster says that “Black people, both men and women, experience coercive, violent and often deadly interactions with law enforcement.”

To Foster, the “coercive” and “deadly interactions” are merely inconsequential words that take up space on the way to her main point about African men being absent on issues concerning African women.

She continues to convey her feelings of being left out of the mainstream discourse on violence and she attacks African men who she believes benefit from the support of the entire African community.

Her veiled attempt at acknowledging African repression by colonial forces does little to expose the fundamental contradiction of imperialism, which creates the violent conditions we are exposed to. Foster writes that “watching black men show up for Garner after seeing so many derail conversations about Black women’s well-being leaves me with little more than a sinking feeling of despair upon recognition that the understanding so many of us crave will not come.”

I don’t pretend to understand how it is that we can measure and compare stats on our deaths or our experiences of violence.

Some of us seem to think that the factors that cause our misery are cut from two different cloths; as if African women are somehow subjected to a harsher oppressor than African men.

If you look at some of these feminist writings, it would seem that African women came out of the entire experience unscathed and capable of putting out analysis that should not be challenged, no matter how backwards it is.

African men, just like African women have been subjected to some of the worst conditions imaginable. Under colonialism our education, health, security, family and food have been compromised.

Colonialism is the problem

Colonialism brings with it the ideals of the oppressor nation and imposes them on the oppressed nation.

The white nationalist ideals were carried over to the oppressed and enforced through policy and action.

And yes! Colonialism interrupts the natural dynamics between men and women based on the idea that men are superior, women are objects and our lives are valueless.

However, if we do not understand that we are still colonized then the only way some African women will know how to struggle is against African men, who they believe benefit from the oppression of African women.

To them I ask, in what ways do African men benefit? And who do they benefit from? And if you think there is a benefit, do you want that benefit bestowed upon you?

When Foster writes, ”but we are told that unless we are murdered or raped, we are not truly in distress because black women’s bodies are instruments upon which black men can play out their fantasies of domination without reprisal. But the illusion of power crumbles when black men face the police state.” She seems to be having an “I told you so” moment, almost tickled by the idea that African men are taken down a notch when they meet up with the pigs.

She disingenuously attempts to correlate the powerlessness felt by African women at the hands of African men to the powerlessness of African men at the hands of the “police state.”

African women and men must fight imperialism together

What Foster fails to realize is that the violence brought to us by the police is systemic and antagonistic, which is different from the violence within our own communities which is interpersonal and non-antagonistic.

Within our communities we can fix each others behavior, but we cannot fix the behavior of a parasitic system whose existence is dependent upon our continued oppression. We have to destroy the system and we have to struggle like hell together to do it.

If violence against African women by African men is a problem, let’s fix it through discussion or baseball bats to the kneecaps; either way we are going to find a way to struggle through it so that we can work together to cut down imperialism.

“In recent weeks,” writes Foster, “black women have launched campaigns to ensure that we can exist in public without experiencing harassment and have presidential endorsement of policy that addresses our specific needs. And though these petitions seem common sense to me, black women’s mere desire to take up space is met with push back. And then we are caught in a cycle of perpetually asserting our humanity.”

Asserting our humanity to whom? Here is where we discover what perceived benefit African men are being afforded—the attention of reigning imperialist Barack Obama.

Earlier this year the white house announced My Brother’s Keeper, an initiative to highlight the challenges faced by “young men of color” which set off a chain reaction of funding for nonprofits who wanted to get into the business of figuring out the black male’s condition.

Is this the recognition Foster and other women like her are aiming for? They are vying for a seat at the imperialist table or at least the money that sits on it.

Never mind that under the Obama regime, unemployment for Africans has increased, public education has been on the decline and black removal from major cities, including Washington DC, has been on a steady increase.

Instead of making a struggle against these glaring attacks on our people, Foster and other black feminists are scrambling for recognition inside a dying system.

Feminism –worldview of the African petty bourgeoisie

Ms. Foster, your priorities are in disarray. Eric Garner wasn’t even cold in the ground before you fired off this self-absorbed indictment of African men, which left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths, including some black feminists.

Herein lies the problem with feminism—it is the worldview of the African petty bourgeoisie whose class aspirations align them with the interest of the oppressor and not with the African workers. Clearly the ideas offered up here by Foster are not reflective of the views of the African working class—mothers, wives and sisters of those being murdered daily in our communities.

Under the banner of feminism, African women align themselves with petty-bourgeois, colonial and oppressive forces, because it identifies patriarchy as the enemy instead of colonialism.

This is a primary reason why Africans continue to be conflicted about how to struggle against oppression.

Feminism ain’t the solution—revolution is!

African Internationalism is clear in that there are two nations—the oppressor and the oppressed—the former benefits from the latter.

The men and women of the oppressor nation benefit from the subjugation of the men and women of the oppressed nation.

Africans of the oppressed nation have to struggle together to bust up the power the oppressor nation has over our lives, and we will not do that by targeting each other.

My intention is not to downplay the conditions that plague African women at the hands of the oppressor and from African men. It’s a huge contradiction.

The resolve, however, cannot be the malicious attacks of African men rooted in victim self-aggrandizement because then the question becomes “Who do we want to recognize us as victims?”

If the answer is “society” then we are talking about a bourgeois capitalist society that not only causes our misery but benefits from it as well.

The solution to our problems is revolution—a principled objective revolution. It is through the revolutionary process that we will see the withering away of these backward ideals imposed on us through colonialism.

Under the leadership of the African proletariat, the struggle that we make amongst ourselves will be a step towards consolidating the African nation and enhancing our ability to overturn imperialism and free ourselves.

We will win!
We are winning!