"The film’s White woman director (bursting with good intentions as white women always are) unwittingly demonstrates why White women and Black women have not been able to forge a true sisterhood-the white sister can’t see the Black sister’s reality even when staring straight at her. And because of that inability to see us, the image chosen to represent Nina becomes a mocking dehumanization, an erasure of Nina’s swarthy and robust Black victory. Everything Nina stood for while surviving in that Black body becomes whitened and desensitized by the cloying signature of dishonesty. But of course, White people are making this film for White people anyway. None of these films from ‘Django Unchained’ to ‘Nina’ give a care about the Black people they’re depicting."
— Kola Boof
Exquisite. This is a part of her open letter to Cynthia Mort, the director of the Nina Simone film. This is EXACTLY the sentiment I feel when I wrote my post White Women and White Privilege: Telling Them NO. Until things like this change (which cannot even occur since so many White women are actively engaged in these attacks [yet ironically see them as flattery or kindness] on Black women, from their smallest fashion blogs, fashion editorials, and artwork to major motion pictures) the concept of inclusive, intersectional feminism or sisterhood are academic and theoretical exercises at best, not reality.
