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Brown Voices



"Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) speaks at Netroots Nation conference on Saturday: "I don't want to bring a chair to an old table. This is the time to shake the table. This is the time to redefine that table. Because if you're going to come to this table, all of you who have aspirations of running for office. If you’re not prepared to come to that table and represent that voice, don’t come, because we don't need any more brown faces that don't want to be a brown voice. We don’t need black faces that don't want to be a black voice. We don't need Muslims that don’t want to be a Muslim voice. We don’t need queers that don't want to be a queer voice. If you’re worried about being marginalized and stereotyped, please don't even show up because we need you to represent that voice."

Comments

Rob said…
Hi, I tracked down your blog because I absolutely love this cartoon. Here in the UK, our new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has a bit of a chequered history, and has in the past occasionally used dodgy racial and homophobic words in attempts at humour in newspaper articles. (But he is absolutely not "Britain Trump", as Donald insists he's called). Anyway, his new cabinet has many women and ethnic minority ministers, and the two top ministers have south-Asian backgrounds. Inevitably they are being attacked by the left for 'selling out' to the right. As one leading journalist put it: "Someone from a minority group who chooses to serve in a far right government is no longer a person of colour. They're a turncoat of colour. It's one thing to opt out of fighting oppression, quite another to legitimise it with your own skin". (Fyi, this is by no stretch of the imagination a 'far right' government. Most policies are no further right than Nancy Pelosi.)
7:51 AM
Rob said…
By the way, the journalist who wrote "someone from a minority group who chooses to serve in a far-right government is no longer a person of colour"...is of course white.
7:56 AM
Synova said…
Rob, I sure wish that I was making this stuff up.

Even just as a woman there's this assumption that the Left (in US terms) owns you. Feminists own you. They own your voice.

With women, well, we're better than 50% of the population so mostly it's just annoying rather than a real problem.

For ethnic minorities? It's not just annoying.
2:04 PM
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