Thoughts on Audrey Lorde's Speech

I had to read Audrey Lorde's speech "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" for my Feminist Philosophy class, and then give an assessment. 

Audrey Lorde is calling fellow feminist to give more attention to poor and colored minorities, as well as other minorities. To ignore such perspectives is to be part of the racist patriarchy, which is antithetical to feminism. She cites one paper in the conference she was attending, saying it was too limited in scope by not acknowledging her point of view, it presumes she had nothing to say. Shes goes on to emphasize that differences are good, and can be strengths, so they shouldn’t be ignored, and so she shouldn’t be ignored either. It is these differences that will defeat the racist patriarchy. She brings up an interesting point that if the women who attend such conferences are really concerned about the plight of women in the racist patriarchy, then they would be hypocrites to ignore poor and colored women. She preempts a reply of innocent ignorance by saying they should just know who colored and poor feminists are anyways without being educated by them.

Her diatribe is unimpressive. She rhetorically asks, “Why don’t you have more black feminists?” to which she implies it is because they, the hosts, are racist patriarchs. But without a fair hearing from those whom she is asking, we cannot make an honest assessment as to why that is. We must remain agnostic. After all, it is at least possible that no black feminist were called upon because there simply are no black feminists who have published anything worth noting. She cites one paper as ignoring her perspective, but why is that problematic? I write tons of philosophical papers and limit my consideration of views all the time for various reasons (because some views aren’t good enough to consider, because it might be too obscure, because it isn’t too relevant in the current literature, because it’s been dealt with a number of times elsewhere, etc.). She never justifies why differences are strengths, other than it is a threat to the patriarchy, but this assumes that her perspective was ignored for that reason, and not any of the possible reasons I listed. The most outlandish of her comments seem to be the one that says that it is not her responsibility to know who is out there as a black feminists, and that white feminists should just know anyways. This sounds self-entitled. White feminists ought to know what black feminists are there if there black feminists worth knowing. If they don’t, then sure, there seems to be a problem because black feminists aren’t on the scene despite their merit. But this was never justified, and she could have easily named dropped a few. The only interesting claim she makes is where she points out where some feminists might be hypocrites in ignoring the struggles of women of color and unfortunate economic circumstances. This is not obviously true however, since they suffer not woman qua woman, but for being poor or colored, and they have their own advocacy groups for those circumstances.