“I did say it. I admit it.I HAVE A DOCTORATE”

Photo by: Claudio Brites

A white woman, a professor, and as she made a point of emphasizing, very qualified, uttered racist aggressions against a black woman working in a restaurant in Maracanã, one of Rio de Janeiro’s neighborhoods.

What lessons can we draw from this episode:

White women oppress alongside their white male buddies.

A white woman’s feminism does not protect a black woman’s life at all.

Feminism is not the same as anti-racism. Women may acquire rights as a whole, but black women will remain black, and therefore oppressed by white women.

Skin color has defined that one would have a PhD, and the other would serve her table.

White women always have privileges.

White women tend to deny their privileges, hiding themselves within existing systems of domination.

A doctorate does not guarantee that the bearer is a good person, or even a person of good character.

Academic education tends to perpetuate the Eurocentric values of white superiority.

A white woman occupying places that were previously only for men, like Academia, rarely means something to a black woman.

And being a professor is not a free pass to a privileged and consequence-free lifestyle.

Until white people are seriously held accountable for being racist in their lives, their expression of special freedoms, and exclusive property, they will never stop humiliating black people. Be it the police framing a black councilwoman, be it the police hitting a black young person in the face, pointing their gun at you when riding a bike, or white women attacking black women.

White people need to know the harm they cause.

The fight must be to seize power for black people.

Because power only respects power.