Monday, December 30, 2013

When Feminism Goes Wrong: Ani DiFranco's Plantation Empowerment Songwriter's Retreat


This is something that should be on a TV show.

Musician Ani DiFranco planned to have a songwriting Feminist gathering known as The Righteous Retreat in Louisiana. However, it was hosted at a plantation.

Several activists were bothered by this, expressing how it's insensitive and a bit problematic. When Black activists called it out, some folks tried to defend it, like Mandi Harrington. Miss Mandi tried to justify the retreat, but nobody was hearing it. She was reminded that the particular plantation wasn't not a happy place, a lot crap went down there.

However, several White feminists continued to defend the idea, but Mandi went to a dark place. She decided to create the ultimate defender of this mess... LaQueeta Jones. See below (via For Harriet):


Yep! This really happened. Mandi created this stereotypical person, even tried to add ebonics to the character. Once she was exposed, Twitter went off. Mandi quickly ran for cover and after a series of tweets and FB messages went viral, Ani finally responded and cancelled the event. She wrote an apology, but it was very passive aggressive. Read it, here .

I tell you, White feminists did not have a good year.

1 comment:

  1. I'm not so bothered by the plantation venue as I am by the blatantly racist "character" she used to defend herself.
    How is that possibly feminist?

    ReplyDelete