Frederick Douglass saw the absurdity of black men fighting for a “Women’s” movement that didn’t and intentionally wouldn’t include women of color.

One of the great myths in both the Women’s suffrage struggle and the GLBT fight was that black women and black glbter weren’t included in the Black Civil Rights struggle therefore those groups only hope was to align with whites who’d save them from mysoginistic homophobic black men.

Many fell for it. And the result is a Feminist movement that treats black women as 2nd class to White feminist academics and a GLBT movement that loves to tout Coretta Scott King’s support while not only treating Black GLBTers as mascots but seems bent only characterizing every Black church and every straight Black male as homophobic.

There’s an arrogance of whites claiming the Black Civil Rights movement as if it’s some sort of socio-political version of Hiphop–as theirs while ignoring the community that birthed it.

We saw endless examples of this dynamic in the 08 election with white women voters loudly decreying a “glass ceiling” in their support of Hilary while ignoring the fact that Cynthia McKinney a black woman was running for president as well. [But she didn't count because black women not named Oprah don't count for many white women.]

We saw the same thing among the white GLBT community who saw fit to blame Black Californians for Prop 8 despite the fact that Blacks are roughly 3% of the state. [Even if every black californian had voted against gay marriage their votes in context were negligible. But Blacks were an easy target.]

The solution in both movements is to challenge whites to [1]uphold the responsibility for equal treatment to WoCs and GLBTs of Cor [2] to address the inherent arrogance at work in putting themselves in charge of social movements that involve everyone.