Dr. Barkley Brown,

I was fascinated to read your article that showed Black women's lives and white women's lives as necessarily interconnected: each group lives the lives they do because of other groups. I think this point is particularly interesting because, as you said, we tend to separate groups from each other and analyse them in a vacuum. We acknowledge the differences without looking at the cause for the differences.

The sentence that particularly struck me was, "Middle-class women live the lives they do precisely because working-class women live the lives they do." While this is true, I think there is more to the story. You talk about the transition from an industrial to a technological economy, which was "grounded in...the export of capital to other parts of the world where primarily people of color-many of them female-face overwhelming exploitation from multinational corporation's industrial activities...and thus the tremendous rise in unemployment and the underemployment among African American women and men."

I think this is a key fact to hone in on. Note only do middle-class women live the lives they do because working class-women live the lives they do, but both live the lives they do because of upper-class women and men. It is the upper-class, not the working or middle class, who make the decisions to move jobs, exploit workers, and create class relationships.

Today, it becomes increasingly clear that white middle-class women were sold the racist lie that they can liberate themselves on the backs of working class Black women. The middle class is shrinking and the quality of jobs, healthcare, etc is worsening such that middle class women no longer have the choice to work; it is a necessity. It is clear that the middle class has not been able to escape sexism or exploitation by the methods you described. As long as capitalists pull the strings, no working person can be liberated from sexism or exploitation. Working people cannot get ahead by using other working people; as you have showed, all of our lives are inseparably linked.

I am not trying to excuse white, middle-class women for their racism. Rather, I am trying to show that not only is their thinking morally wrong, but also economically impractical. White working women must see Black working women not as their enemy or as someone to be used, but as leaders in the struggle for all our liberation from racism, sexism, and oppression. Historically, they have provided some of the most powerful and inspiring leadership that we must all learn from.

I really enjoyed reading your paper and I definitely learned a lot. It is so crucial to see that women experience sexism differently by their race. I hope we can use this knowledge to better understand our relationships to each other and to not erase or mistake the unique experiences of Black women. Understanding each other and our unique experiences is the only way we can begin to properly value each other, build solidarity, and eventually eliminate the system that creates such disgusting oppressions in the first place. Thank you for writing such a clear and crucially enlightening piece.

In solidarity,
Emily Guthrie