Because Feminists claimed they were about "equality for all, not just women". Sort of hard to be that when your group is named "Women's Liberation."
And you want to know why Feminism has gotten such a negative connotation? Here's a quote from a black woman named sophia33 at
The Huffington Post thread titled
Obama Ferraro Race Flap Roils RaceOne only need to read the writings of Paula Giddings and bell hooks or the essays of Angela Davis or Alice Walker to see how white women in the women's rights movement all but ignored the issues faced by women of color. In bell hooks' book, "Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center", hooks wrote: Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique is still heralded as having paved the way for contemporary feminist movement - it was written as if these women did not exist. Friedan's famous phrase, "the problem that has no name," often quoted to describe the condition of women in this society, actually referred to the plight of a select group of college-educated, middle and upper class, married white women - housewives bored with leisure, with the home, with the children, with buying products, who wanted more out of life......... She did not discuss who would be called in to take care of the children and maintain the home if more women like herself were freed from their house labor and given equal access with white men to the professions.
Who? Of course it was going to be POOR, black, brown, asian women, and white women from foreign countries, that's who. These "leisure class women" didn't want to have to be stuck at home doing housework and child care, but someone had to do it, and THEY KNEW it wasn't going to be men. The "leisure class women" didn't give a damn about these some OTHER woman doing scrubbing their toilets, and wiping their kids' dirty noses and bottom as long as it got done.
She did not speak to the needs of women without men, without children, without homes. She ignored the existence of all non-white women and poor women. She did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute, then to be a leisure class housewife. She made her plight and the plight of white women like herself synonymous with a condition affecting all American women. In so doing, she deflected attention away from her classism, her racism, her sexist attitudes towards the masses of American women. In the context of her book, Friedan makes clear that the women she saw as victimized by sexism were college-educated, white women who were compelled by sexist conditioning to remain in the home... Specific problems and dilemmas of leisure class white house-wives were real concerns that merited consideration and change but they were not the pressing political concerns of the masses of women. Masses of women were concerned about economic survival, ethnic and racial discrimination, etc. In essence, to many of the staunch feminists have always asked people of color and the poor to step aside so that they can have what they want. With the false promise that when they get in the power position they will not forget about the masses. ........ Too many of these staunch feminists are fine with equality as along as people of color are second fiddle to them. ....... As a woman of color, I am not surprised by this. It is to be expected. Having worked in a corporate environment for many years, I experienced this elitism of white women in positions of power. ....... Their shenanigans this week have demonstrated that old feminist stance that their needs should come before anyone else's.
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