Ilhan Omar, AOC, and the silencing of women of color in Congress
Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, and Tlaib have a few things in common: They are all young, progressive women of color who took office this winter and immediately challenged conventional Washington thinking on everything from foreign policy to climate change to economics. They’ve all faced considerable backlash not only from Republicans, but their own party as well. And they have all been met with a very specific reprimand: Be quiet.
This isn’t something new to women of color: Studies have shown that women of color in the workplace are routinely marginalized, stereotyped, excluded, and silenced — a trend that’s only exacerbated in Congress’s overwhelmingly white and male halls.
That’s why the attacks feel all too familiar to many women of color — they’re part of a long, established pattern of attempts to silence those who step out of the roles society has ascribed to them.
Omar, Tlaib, and Ocasio-Cortez’s stances are certainly worth debating on ideological grounds. And were they white men making the same comments, perhaps they would be. But that’s not always what’s happening.
Instead, these three outspoken women have become the public faces of the shift toward a more diverse Congress and have become a locus for the same patterns of biased behavior that researchers and experts have found women of color in leadership often encounter.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/8/18272072/ilhan-omar-rashida-tlaib-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-racism-sexism
= new reply since forum marked as read
