"Legitimate revolution must be led by, made by those who have been most oppressed: black, brown, yellow, red, and white women-with men relating to that the best they can"
About this Quote
A “legitimate revolution” is a gatekeeping phrase, and Robin Morgan wields it like a scalpel. She’s not romanticizing upheaval; she’s auditing who gets to claim it. The sentence flips the default revolutionary casting call: not charismatic men with manifestos, but those most structurally pinned down by race, class, and gender. “Led by, made by” doubles the insistence that leadership and labor can’t be outsourced to sympathetic allies. If the people bearing the brunt aren’t directing the change, Morgan implies, it’s not revolution so much as a regime upgrade.
The roll call - “black, brown, yellow, red, and white women” - is deliberately expansive and risky. It reaches for an internationalist feminism shaped by the late-1960s/1970s women’s liberation movement, when “sisterhood” was being argued into existence across sharp internal divides. Naming race colors is a move against a then-dominant white feminist center of gravity; it signals that “women” can’t be treated as a single-interest bloc without reproducing the same hierarchies the revolution claims to abolish.
Then comes the provocation: “with men relating to that the best they can.” It’s not a kumbaya invitation; it’s a demotion. Men aren’t exiled, but they’re reassigned from authors to respondents, from drivers to passengers expected to practice solidarity as a discipline rather than a performance. The subtext is blunt: if men feel displaced, that discomfort is evidence of how thoroughly revolutions have been treated as their inheritance.
The roll call - “black, brown, yellow, red, and white women” - is deliberately expansive and risky. It reaches for an internationalist feminism shaped by the late-1960s/1970s women’s liberation movement, when “sisterhood” was being argued into existence across sharp internal divides. Naming race colors is a move against a then-dominant white feminist center of gravity; it signals that “women” can’t be treated as a single-interest bloc without reproducing the same hierarchies the revolution claims to abolish.
Then comes the provocation: “with men relating to that the best they can.” It’s not a kumbaya invitation; it’s a demotion. Men aren’t exiled, but they’re reassigned from authors to respondents, from drivers to passengers expected to practice solidarity as a discipline rather than a performance. The subtext is blunt: if men feel displaced, that discomfort is evidence of how thoroughly revolutions have been treated as their inheritance.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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