Student Submission CUNY Hunter College Spring 2025

This project is an exploration of the pitfalls of allyship through online discourses, specifically the ways in which misogynoir hinders solidarity between non-Black people and Black women. The interactive collage consists of multimedia forms of content that have to do with the themes just mentioned. On the left-hand side of the collage are online discourses surrounding white feminism and white allyship, consisting of critiques by mostly Black women on white progressives. On the right-hand side are discourses around anti-Blackness within other communities of color. The general theme of these discourses seems to be that the failure to build and maintain solidarity with Black women comes from a lacking intersectional philosophy among those claiming to be allies. 

White feminism often leaves little room for conversations about misogynoir, and at times, white women and femmes end up being some of the biggest proponents of anti-Black misogyny. White feminism’s narrow focus on the gender gap creates a blind spot when it comes to race, which results in a campaign focused on white women reaching the same oppressive status as white men. This is not unique to neo-liberal white feminists, however, as more radical white allies who claim to believe in intersectionality still have biases that often do not reveal themselves until they are criticized. Kat Blaque’s commentary encapsulates this perfectly, in which she discusses the ways white allies often fail to engage with her criticisms because they attribute certain beliefs and arguments to her simply because she is a Black trans woman. That is to say, they are not having a conversation with an individual Black woman, but rather, an idea of a Black woman that is an amalgamation of things they have heard from other Black people.  

On the other side of the spectrum are non-Black people of color (POC), who also fall short in their support for Black women. As pointed out by Joy in her video, non-Black POC often expect solidarity from Black women, while failing to address anti-Blackness within their communities. This creates a dynamic that exemplifies the mammy trope, in which Black women are expected to be selfless mother figures that sacrifice themselves for others without complaint. Yet, when Black women call this hypocrisy out, they suddenly become accused of being aggressive, selfish and solely responsible for the lack of solidarity among women of color. Of course there should be solidarity among all oppressed peoples; that is not a controversial statement. Solidarity that comes at the expense of Black women is false solidarity—and that is the problem many Black women and femmes have with allyship.

Hearing these discourses from Black women and femmes themselves is extremely important, not only because it is coming directly from the source, but also because it shows how technology can be used to disseminate this information into public consciousness. It may be easy to dismiss these discourses as purely online, but I would argue that, for better or worse, online spaces force out our worst instincts and bring to light the deep-rooted issues that underlie our daily lives. If it were not for these online conversations, this information would be trapped in the ivory towers of academia, and most of us non-Black people would continue walking through life in blissful ignorance about everything Black women experience in a day. This is especially true in a country where most people live in segregated communities, increasingly becoming isolated from one another. If we are to rectify the harm done by the misogynoir that proliferates in non-Black spaces, we have to open our ears to Black women from various marginalized experiences, and then confront our own biases, and that of our community members.