From the book Swimming Against the Tide, a book of feminist essays against abortion. Bobbi Sykes a black Australian woman, was at a televison interview with a pro-choice feminist who was white. She describes their conversation:
“A male interviewer organized a prominent white movement woman to debate the subject with me on television. Unfortunately, the woman used the opportunity to scream at me that I wasn’t the right sort of black, and that I didn’t have a dozen children and live in the creek bed at Alice Springs… That I, representing an opinion of the black community, brazenly dared to confront and oppose an option of the white community, was sufficient to crack the veneer over the movement woman’s racism, and through that crack spewed forth the most virulent and racist comments that I had heard publicly for some time… privately, many similar events occur constantly.”
Ramazanoglu, C . “Feminism and the Contradictions of Oppression” (Routledge , London, 1989) 191, quoting Sykes cap B. in Rowland, R. “Women Who Do and Women Who Don’t Join the Women’s Movement” (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1984) 64
“Swimming Against the Tide: Feminist Dissent on the Issue of Abortion” edited by Angela Kennedy (Dublin Ireland: Four Courts Press, 1997)
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