Reform Sexist Quotes

Most ambitiously, some feminist epistemologists have argued that even our fundamental concepts of reason, evidence, and truth are covertly sexist. Feminist epistemology also goes beyond criticism to make suggestions about reform-how to make science better at finding out about the world (if that goal is to be retained), and also how to make science more socially responsible.

Then again, hypocrisy had normalized in the American reform movements. Racial, gender, ethnic, and labor activists were angrily challenging the popular bigotry targeting their own groups at the same time they were happily reproducing the popular bigotry targeting other groups. They did not realize that the racist, sexist, ethnocentric, and classist ideas were produced by some of the same powerful minds.

Racial reformers have customarily requested or demanded that Americans, particularly White Americans, sacrifice their own privileges for the betterment of Black people. And yet, this strategy is based on one of the oldest myths in the modern era, a myth continuously produced and reproduced by racists and antiracists alike: that racism materially benefits the majority of White people, that White people would lose and not gain in the reconstruction of an antiracist America. It has been true that racist policies have benefited White people in general at the expense of Black people (and others) in general. That is the story of racism, of unequal opportunity in a nutshell. But it is also true that a society of equal opportunity, without a top 1 percent hoarding the wealth and power, would actually benefit the vast majority of southern Whites poor. It is not coincidental that slavery kept the vast majority of southern Whites poor. It is not coincidental that more White Americans thrived during the antiracist movements from the 1930s to the 1970s than ever before or since. It is not coincidental that the racist movements that followed in the late twentieth century paralleled the stagnation or reduction of middle and low income Whites’ salaries and their skyrocketing costs of living. Antiracists should stop connecting selfishness to racism, and unselfishness to antiracism. Altruism is wanted, not required. Antiracists do not have to be altruistic. Antiracists do not have to be selfless. Antiracists merely have to have intelligent self-interest, and to stop consuming those racist ideas that have engendered so much unintelligent self-interest over the years. It is in the intelligent self-interest of middle and upper income Blacks to challenge the racism affecting the Black poor, knowing they will not be free of the racism that is slowing their socioeconomic rise until poor blacks are free of racism. It is in the intelligent self-interest of Asians, Native Americans, and Latinos to challenge anti-Black racism, knowing they will not be free of racism until Black people are of racism. It is in the intelligent self-interest of White Americans to challenge racism, knowing they will not be free of sexism, class bias, homophobia, and ethnocentrism until Black people are free from racism. The histories of anti-Asian, anti-Native, and anti-Latino racist ideas; the histories of sexist, elitist, homophobic, and ethnocentric ideas all sound eerily similar to this history of racist ideas, and feature some of the same defenders of bigotry in America. Supporting these prevailing bigotries is only in the intelligent self-interest of a tiny group of super rich, Protestant, heterosexual, non-immigrant, White, Anglo-Saxon males. Those are the only people who need to be altruistic in order to be antiracist. The rest of us merely need to do the intelligent thing for ourselves.