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Committee on Gender and Sexuality Studies: Get Your People: Activism in/and Scholarship

Fri, November 10, 4:00 to 5:45pm, Hyatt Regency Chicago, New Orleans, Ballroom Level West Tower

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Workshop Format

Abstract

In the wake of the 2016 presidential election of Donald J. Trump, the Crunk Feminist Collective, an online “space of support and camaraderie for hip hop generation feminists of color,” published a viral post titled “Get Your People.” It stated, “White people—so-called liberal, progressive, radical, dare I say “woke” white people—it’s time for you to do your motherfucking work. Organize, mobilize, and strategize with and for your people. Work on uprooting white supremacy at your job, place of worship, and at the Thanksgiving table. Get your shit together.” A week later, Rhon Manigault-Bryant repeated the call, asking white feminists to face and work to dismantle the pervasive history and persistence of white supremacy. This workshop features the co-founders of the Crunk Feminist Collective, Dr. Brittany C. Cooper and Dr. Susana M. Morris, who authored the viral blog post, and uses the call to “Get Your People” as a springboard to discuss ongoing work from activists, scholars, and scholar activists who will share best practices for educating, building solidarity, and mobilizing around intersectional issues related to racial and economic justice, queer liberation, transnational feminism, and/or anti-imperialism.
In addition to discussing responsibilities that fall on the privileged, we are also interested in considering inter-group tensions and cross-group solidarities in the search for more productive advocacy and activism. Moreover, getting “our” people is necessary within academia as well given the increasing attacks on scholars of color for speaking out against racism and the visibility of campus and professor watchlists meant to silence progressive and radical critiques. From the erasure of ongoing indigenous dispossession and settler colonialism within feminist and antiracist efforts, to class divisions and debates over respectability politics, to trans bias within LGBTQ communities, to the unique dangers shared by those who fall outside of the protections of “legal” citizenship, what does it mean to GET. YOUR. PEOPLE. at a time of “uneasy” solidarities, as former ASA president David Roediger put it?

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