I am not completely surprised that racism is an issue within the crafting community, as it seems to insert itself in all aspects of life in the west. However, I did think that the way racism is a problem in the crafting/knitting community was surprising. Personally, I did not know about the assumptions that knitting was seen as a “white woman’s activity”.
I thought it was interesting that the articles mentioned people’s surprise when they engage with the knitting group in Ferguson because they don’t associate an activity like knitting to causes like the Black Lives Matter cause because knitting is seen as “passive”. It gives the knitting group an advantage and a way to get their message out to people who could potentially be unreceptive to the cause.