| Title | : | White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 194822674X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781948226745 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 284 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2020 |
| Awards | : | Reading Women Award Nonfiction (2020) |
Examining subjects as varied as The Hunger Games, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the viral BBQ Becky video, and nineteenth-century lynchings of Mexicans in the American Southwest, Ruby Hamad builds a powerful argument about the entrenched systems of white supremacy that we are socialized within, a reality that we must apprehend in order to fight.
White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color Reviews
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I fluctuate between rating this 4 or 5 stars, but will go ahead and bump this to 5 because we need more race and feminism discussions that specifically focus on Indigenous and Middle Eastern women, especially from a non-US perspective. The book is insightful, concise, and comprehensive, blending both historical contexts for how these power dynamics came to be along with modern-day examples of the ways white women oppress or shut the door on women of color. It also does a great job at explaining how the vulnerability of white women is both a weakness (under white patriarchy) and a weapon (against people of color), then expertly marks the difference between “equality” for white women and “justice” for people of color.
I have minor issues with the consistency of the book, since not all chapters were as strong as others. Earlier chapters go over racial stereotypes across multiple races to provide context, but not all groups had as strong or in-depth of an argument. I liked the seeds that she planted with the China Doll vs Dragon Lady stereotype that Asians face, but thought it was a huge stretch to compare the Dragon Lady stereotype to the To All the Boys franchise (I don’t think that's true at all, and it’s a bit odd to critique a story written by an Asian woman). I wonder if the book would have been better if Ruby Hamad focused solely on Indigenous and Middle Eastern women and expanded upon those topics so we could get even more in-depth discussions. She did the most research on those groups (and has her own experience) with tons of examples and strong arguments, and that’s where the book really shined.
Still, the book is very solid, and I’ll leave this with one of my favorite quotes. I find this especially resonant after seeing white women celebrating the US government’s decision to bomb Syria. After she points out the multiple white women who take leadership positions in the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security organizations, she asks: “What does it mean for the rest of us that white women can be in control of almost all of the weapons belonging to the world’s most powerful country and still claim to be an oppressed group on the same level as other women?” -
“Non-white women as the object of the white male power fantasy, it seems, are simply expected to sacrifice themselves.”
Hamad's White Tears/Brown Scars depicts poignantly the effects white feminism has had on women of colour. It is a book that I would consider required reading, along with other books that discuss white feminism's link to white supremacy and the oppression of women of colour. This has also been recommended as reading for the StopAsianHate and other anti-racist movements, as this book discusses the stereotypes faced by women of colour (jezebel, dragon lady, etc.) and how the system is always rigged against them.
Whilst I did have a minor issue with some of the examples Hamad used, nonetheless, it is an important and fairly solid book. It is concise, easily understandable and Hamad ensures to use first-hand accounts and/or research to back her points. It clearly explores the power dynamics between white women and women of colour, and how white women often weaponise themselves and their tears. All in all, if your feminism isn't intersectional, it isn't feminism bestie.
Furthering my knowledge on the impact of white feminism on women of colour, I'm looking forward to reading Hood Feminism! -
One of the best books I've read on race and racism
Author Ruby Hamad wrote this book primarily for women of color, but it is also a book every white person should read, especially those of us who call ourselves feminists. Extremely insightful and comprehensive. It's White Fragility plus a whole lot more.
While I recommend this to all white people, I warn you: it's not the easiest book to read. It WILL put you in your place and call you out. You WILL feel uncomfortable. You might even get angry. That's OK, you still need to read it.
If you're just starting out on your anti-racism journey, I recommend reading
So You Want to Talk About Race or
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism first to get you in the right mindset and knock down some of your defenses.
Most anti-racism books I've read have been mainly about racism towards African Americans. This book encompasses racism and stereotypes of all people of color: African Americans, Asians, Australian Aboriginals, Native Americans, Latinx, people of Arab descent.
Ruby Hamad writes with insight and clarity, sharing personal stories and the stories of several other women of colour. She decided to write this book to let women of colour everywhere know they aren't alone by explaining what is happening when they confront white tears and "distress" as soon as they try to assert themselves or confront the racism they are subjected to.
Ms. Hamad explains how and why the damsel in distress in need of protection was created and how white men use it to keep both women (all of us) and men of color in a subordinate position. As she explains, "White women’s tears have little effect on white men... because the damsel was never intended to implicate white men."
She further notes, "A white man raping a white woman is not a threat to white male power, and if it destroys or threatens to destroy the woman’s life, then so be it... It is only when white women are violated or even imagined to be violated by nonwhite men that white society suddenly seems to find its moral compass."
Ms. Hamad shows how white women have historically played into (and upheld) white supremacy by taking on this stereotype of delicate white woman in need of protection. She demonstrates how we continue to play this role when it suits us and use white tears to drown out the voices of people of colour. We do this to keep ourselves in the dominant spot. Often this is unconscious and thus it's even more important to read books like this and learn where we are complicit in upholding structural racism. We all are. And until we all do the work of unlearning racism, people of colour will continue to suffer and die. If we want to claim we're not racist, we need to do the work to not be racist. It's not enough simply to claim we aren't.
It's long past time we start caring more about actually not being racist than whether people think we are.
I leave you with these words from Ms. Hamad:
"For five centuries white society has forced women of color to dwell in its shadows. But our true lives are calling us and no longer will we be denied our place in the sun.... White women can dry their tears and join us, or they can continue on the path of the damsel—a path that leads not toward the light of liberation but only into the dead end of the colonial past." -
I received a copy of this book as part of
libro.fm's ALC program.
4.5 stars
This was well written and informative. I picked this up after some conversation on TikTok following a trend where white women were fake crying and then "turning it off." While it started as a harmless acting trend, these conversations about the history of white tears was exactly right. And Hamad's work spells out why, in a comprehensive way.
The one weakness of this book doubles as a strength. Hamad is writing from a specific POV as an Arabic, Australian woman, but she does a really wonderful job positioning that and pulling in other experiences. In doing so, it also means that there are times we are more wide than deep. And while her attempts at intersectionality at often successful, there were moments I wished we had a bit more of that depth.
I ended up listening to passages of this multiple time as the historical elements and the overall argument were incredibly thought provoking.
[March 2022] Marking for reread. -
4.5 stars
This is feels like the next step in anyone's work in learning about racism and how it manifests itself in our society. I loved how this book had a more international POV and covered a variety of racial backgrounds. This does mean it takes a broader view on the topics but it is a great read
Watch me discuss it in my November wrap up:
https://youtu.be/RXAPTOsWqH0 -
“The crimes of white supremacy have not gone unrecorded. They are etched into the bodies of brown and black people the world over. Our scars, past and present, physical and emotional, bear witness to the violence white men and women insisted they were not inflicting. … white people will eventually have to reckon with the true horror of their own brutal history. Frances Harper’s challenge rings as clear in its truth now as ever, whether white women are ready to face it or not. For women of color to be free of racism and for white women to be rid of patriarchy, it is the damsel who must be damned.”
Reading Ruby Hamad’s White Tears/Brown Scars was a clarifying experience, one that gives voice and vocabulary to the physical, emotional, and generational trauma so many Black people and people of color are enduring today. I read this book with mad, reddening eyes and with clenched fists. Yet, for all its honesty and horror, I read this book with the harbinger that it might haunt me. But I do not feel haunted, I feel empowered.
Ruby is an incredible researcher, a savant of truth, an ally of authority and merit. For all I thought I knew of white supremacy and its female co-conspirators, I learned so much from reading this book — from settler-colonial theory to maternal colonialism to the unforgotten accounts of white women disguising themselves as feminists while remaining complicit in causing irreparable harm to women of color and maiming entire generations of peoples under the pretense of harmless femininity.
Today, we call them “Karens,” but they’ve been around for centuries. They are our coworkers, family members, and — as Ruby painstakingly points out — some turn out to be our friends. To anyone who’s ever been gaslit by white folx (of any gender), to anyone who's ever felt anchored by the "bootstrap theory" and to those of you striving to unlearn your implicit racial biases, let Ruby's words be the ones to guide you. -
3.5 stars! i'm glad this book exists, and i will certainly be drawing upon its ideas in discussions with white feminists in my life.
white tears/brown scars is thoroughly researched and compellingly articulated, but not altogether groundbreaking for me. i also personally did not go in expecting the majority of the book to rehash history; the initial chapters, for instance, delve into the historical origins of racialized and gendered stereotypes (e.g., the "china doll"), while one of the last chapters details a history of slavery in africa without clear connections to gender and feminism.
i especially appreciated the writings about and inclusion of Indigenous and Aboriginal women in australia and north america, and also arab women across the globe. the author's explicit and consistent centring of colonialism - its material harm, erasure from western history, and continued perpetuation - was also powerful. -
yeah i need everyone to read this book
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Intersectional Feminism is where it's at sis! I will never get tired of saying this!
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White Tears/Brown Scars is an explosive book of history and cultural criticism that argues that white feminism, from Australia to Zimbabwe to the United States, has been a weapon of white supremacy and patriarchy deployed against black and indigenous women, and women of colour. Taking us from the slave era, when white women fought in court to keep “ownership” of their slaves, through the centuries of colonialism, when they offered a soft face for brutal tactics, to the modern workplace, White Tears/Brown Scars tells a charged story of white women’s active participation in campaigns of oppression. It offers a long-overdue validation of the experiences of women of colour. Using examples of impressive breadth and depth, Hamad’s extensive research informs the narrative superbly.
Discussing subjects as varied as The Hunger Games, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the viral BBQ Becky video, and 19th-century lynchings of Mexicans in the American Southwest, Ruby Hamad undertakes a new investigation of gender and race. She shows how the division between innocent white women and racialised, sexualised women of colour was created, and why this division is crucial to confront. Along the way, there are revelatory responses to questions like: Why are white men not troubled by sexual assault on women? (See Christine Blasey Ford.) With rigour and precision, Hamad builds a powerful argument about the legacy of white superiority that we are socialised within, a reality that we must apprehend in order to fight.
Hamad has written a fascinating, searingly honest and vitally important book inspired by her 2018 Guardian article "How White Women Use Strategic Tears to Silence Women of Colour” which became a global flashpoint for discussions of white feminism and racism. It is a timely, thought-provoking and exhaustive look at how White women perpetuate White supremacy at the expense of women of colour. Utilising personal anecdotes and geopolitical histories, Hamad’s accessible, engaging, yet authoritative, prose lures you in and forces you to confront some genuinely ugly truths. This is an eye-opening must-read for anyone who claims to be an intersectional feminist and those intent on dismantling White supremacy. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Trapeze for an ARC. -
Another one for the 2021 favourites list. RTC.
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With all the fuss over “Karens”, those insufferably vile American white women whose bigotry surpasses the worst of the all-male white supremacist alt right, it is very timely that Ruby Hamad is releasing her book White Tears/Brown Scars. Its thesis is that white women use tears as a first line weapon to deflect from their racism. This is a new angle for me; I’d never heard of it before. And certainly never seen it myself. It is as fascinating as it is horrifying.
Hamad, and a couple of dozen women of color from around the world whom she interviewed, have long noticed this curious phenomenon. At first, every one of them thought they had overstepped and offended a white woman, and thereby damaged an important relationship with a potentially useful and powerful ally. And so they pulled back rather than hurt their own cause. But over the years, they have come to realize they are not the problem, but that they have been the continual victims of a white female ruse. White women cry when accused of insensitivity or racism. They turn the tables on their accusers: “White feminists have learned to silence us by claiming that our pain is hurting them, “ Hamad says.
It is both amazing and sad how many times and ways this tool gets employed. It seems to be instinctive rather than conspiratorial. And it seems to work every time. Pity the poor white woman. Faced with a real victim – a woman of color – she instead positions herself as a lifelong victim, being accused of victimizing other women! How could anyone think that of her? And so she bursts into tears in the midst of the conversation, effectively ending it before any accusation can be examined for what it might be worth. It is one-upmanship over victimhood, like something out of Monty Python.
Hamad says it shows white women are part of the problem, not the solution. They have decided they are a rung above women of color, and have hitched their wagons to white males on the top wrung. It is more important for them to be associated with white supremacy than female equality. They would rather fit into the hierarchy of the patriarchy where they are a poor second, than with women of color, who are an even poorer third. Women of color are a lower caste, definitely not worth associating with. The result is this odd habit of white women suddenly bursting into tears when accused, challenged or even just discussing their own racism.
Hamad’s book, which evolved out of a magazine article that took her on a whirlwind of global interest, led of course to attracting all kinds of trolls, from whom she learned a lot. But it also gave her thesis depth. It led her to investigate the history of white feminism, going back in history and around the world. She found the same things everywhere she looked: white women dominating slaves and other women of color, crying crocodile tears, and posing as white supremacists beside their white supremacist males. And when it wasn’t tears, it was the damsel in distress. Poor, weak, innocent and fragile white woman in a hostile land. They carved their own little niche in the patriarchy, and defended (and continue to defend) it with every wile and tool at their disposal. Tears are easy for them to produce, and the results are quick to let them off the hook and deflect to another conversation, away from themselves.
To her credit, Hamad also found that racism is not merely white over color. All over the world, as I have written numerous times, master races dominate and discriminate against other races. The Malaysians discriminate against their Chinese co-citizens right in the constitution. Mexico has an entire caste system based on skin shades. So does India, where skin lighteners are in constant demand. Japanese men are simply superior to everyone else in the world, especially their own women. It’s not just American whites.
As for European whites, everywhere they settled, they dominated everyone else, by extreme force. Women could accuse any man of another color of assault or rape, and they would all but automatically be sentenced to death or long prison terms. Protecting the supposed virtue and saintliness of white women got baked into laws promulgated by top wrung white men. Raping a black woman wouldn’t raise an eyebrow (Jezebel that she must be). But accusing young black Emmett Till of just whistling at a white woman, even though it wasn’t even true, cost him his life. Simply bumping past a white woman in a crowded hallway could mean execution.
Hamad, who repeatedly mentions she is olive-skinned with voluminous hair she pointlessly struggled to tame for years, found her fellow victims attacked with the same labels: toxic, bully, hostile, troublemaker, aggressive, irrational, divisive. The coincidences are global. The so-called sisterhood of feminists is an exclusive club for hypocritical white women. They will climb the corporate ladder, pushing women of color aside and burying them, rather than mentoring them. Is it any wonder that so many women leading major corporations has not resulted in equality for women employees?
It doesn’t stop at tears, either. The claimants in most US racial discrimination lawsuits resulting from affirmative action are white women, Hamad found. It appears “We can be both targets of racial abuse and perpetrators of it.”
Ironically, perhaps, it is the women of color, most especially Indigenous women, who are at the forefront of environmental rights,” because their own rights are inseparable from the battle for the environment.” They don’t have time for the games white women play. Their families and their lives are at stake, and they make real headway and real progress without the drama white women engender. Because they have to.
Hamad ends with two contradictory thoughts, as befits this mind-numbing discovery: ”I’d be lying if I said I knew how to reconcile all this,” she says.
And “White women can dry their tears and join us, or they can continue on the path of the damsel, a path that leads not toward the light of liberation, but only into the dead end of the colonial past.”
David Wineberg -
White Tears/Brown Scars is a scathing indictment of what White Womanhood means, from its weaponisation against people of colour to its role as an enforcer of white supremacy. Throughout various spatial and temporal configurations, white women have in turn acted like the damsels in distress when confronted about their racism and the damsels in defence when the stewards of white male domination were challenged, and it is systematically women of colour who pay the highest price of this teary game of bait-and-switch. It begins with an overview of some of the stereotypes used to dehumanise women of colour, placing them as the foil to what womanhood should represent through the pure, innocent, GOOD white woman, and works its way towards the various layers that have led to and enforced the subordination of women of colour to this day, and the ramifications of racism from the workplace to the environment.
This reading experience was both triggering for me - as a woman of colour who has evolved in overwhelmingly white, Western European academic and professional spaces - and cathartic, with testimonials that I could relate to on-page. It is saddening and enraging that this phenomenon of white female victimhood is so widespread but heartening (in a weird way) to see that our struggles are so interconnected and that we can find strength in our shared experiences. It made me think "at least we have one another". I especially appreciated the emphasis on anti-blackness/colourism and how people of colour are also guilty of perpetuating this particular brand of racism for the sake of proximity to whiteness and all that it entails (increased social status, upward economic mobility at the expense of our own communities, etc.) towards the end, which I think is always an important point to make in order to not present the situation as a simplistic monolith.
The book itself has a strong throughline with the different chapters being connected in a logical manner and leading up to a well-thought progression. I did feel like chapter 7 was the weakest part, with Hamad's clumsy analysis of class struggles and the erasure of class solidarity - which earned the rather silly moniker of "classwashing" from Hamad and which I do not find useful in any way in terms of structural and materialist analysis - and fumbling to tie it to... rape culture? Not the brightest moment of this book imho, but it didn't particularly throw me off as there still were interesting bits to this chapter.
Overall, I think Hamad did a brilliant job at unpacking the concept of white tears, how it has historically and continues to affect to this day people of colour - with an emphasis on the impact of women of colour, but let us not forget that it was a white woman's false cries that caused the murder of Emmett Till and countless other black children and men, among many other examples and testimonials cited in this book - and most importantly what white woman can do to grow beyond the compulsive, narcissistic appeal of aligning with whiteness rather than their gender to further their own vested interests. What does it matter to the liberation of the oppressed and the disenfranchised that the head of the CIA is a white woman? Why should we cheer for it when the victims of US imperialism are people from the global south? Why should whiteness continue to be the default and why should white women's comfort (aka inability to confront their own racism) be more important than an actual reckoning of their racism? In the godless year of 2021, I think it is time white women answer these questions THEMSELVES and come up with solutions THEMSELVES. I do not care that it is a woman who is allowing the bombing of black and brown people in the Middle East and East Africa. It is not a "win for womanhood", it is a win for Western imperialism. White comfort cannot trump the urgent need for respect and dignity that has been denied to people of colour for so long for the sake of coddling white fragility and enforcing white supremacy.
Hamad concludes the book with a strong point on what women of colour have done up until now to grow their awareness of the limitations imposed upon them. Now, it is up to white women to answer the challenge of decrying a system that has in turn oppressed and utilised them, and with which they continue to align themselves to uphold white supremacy. It's not enough to write "intersectional feminist" in your Twitter bio. It is highly laughable to see white women decry the sins of "mediocre white men" as if they hadn't actively participated in upholding said white mediocrity as a whole. Step the fuck up, or stop crying when people of colour call you out on your bullshit. No more time for white fragility. You have a choice to make: fess up, or keep on being a large part of the problem.
Tl;dr: "Throughout settler-colonial history, white women have had a choice either to uphold this disorder we call white supremacy and with it their own subordination, or to reach across and take the hands of come of colour in order to work toward the liberation of all. Not only have they, as a group, invariably chosen the former, but they have done so with at least as much gusto as their white male counterparts. [...] Is it more likely that this was coincidental, or that when white women join white men in the ranks for power, whiteness coalesces, hardens, and metastasizes? It's not that the women are any more racist than the men, it's that White Womanhood consolidates white domination." Read the book! -
Book 70 of 2021
4.5 stars rounded up
A must read! I learnt so much from this book wow. It is so intersectional, and talks about the danger of white women's refusal to acknowledge their privilege.
Let me start by saying my review can't even begin to cover the very many important topics covered and explored by Ruby Hamad in this book. I enjoyed it a lot and I think everyone should read this book for themselves because there is so much for them.
So many topics were covered in this book, both in modern day and with historical context.
The media - news, books, TV, and movies - and it's portrayal of women of color throughout history and how women of different racial origins have some stereotypical role they always seem to play. The angry/sassy black girl/woman, the sexy latina/the Latina maid, the overachieving Asian, the oppressed Arabian girl/woman forced to wear a hijab, the whitewashed role of pocahontas and so on and so forth.
A lot of historical context and references were given by Ruby Hamad in this book, digging deep into the origin of the "white damsel in distress" and the roles white women have played at different points in time in upholding the patriarchy and racist structures. For instance, white women weren't just passive during the slave trade Era, many of them owned slaves as well and mistreated slaves as badly as white men did. To cover up the fact that they were having consensual sex with black men, they would rather accuse these men of rape and have them hanged.
White women's position in the hierarchy of power and refusal go acknowledge their privilege. In the universal hierarchy of power from centuries ago up till today, it's been - white men, white women, men of color, women of color (this hierarchy makes no mention of trans and non binary people, and this exclusion wasn't mentioned by the author). White women continue to refuse to admit the amount of privilege they have and instead choose to play victim all the time.
White women as gatekeepers of racism and white supremacy is another concept explored in this book. For many decades, white women have been harmful and instrumental in racist institutions, and instead of taking the side of fellow women, the prefer to side with white men and institutions that uphold white supremacy.
White women and their treatment of women of color in the workplace was also explored in depth in this book. Touching women of color's hair, making racist and snide remarks, and micro aggressions of different forms. When called out on this, they turn on the white tears and take on the role of the victim, further propagating the angry women of color myth when woc try to stand up for themselves
These issues and so many more were raised and discussed in this book, and it is a must read! -
How is it that we have been so conditioned to prioritize the emotional comfort of white people? Why does the sight of a white woman crying provoke such placatory responses, even in a context such as this where people have every reason to be seared, upset, and even angry?
In White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color, Ruby Hamad does a phenomenal job creating a space to discuss the weaponizing of white women’s tears. Using historical evidence and anecdotal support, Hamad makes a more than compelling case that when challenged by a woman of color, a whites woman will oftentimes than not lean into her racial privilege and turn the tables to accuse the other woman of bullying or attacking her. She explores many concepts to outline her case to create a very convincing story that reveal white women’s active participation in campaigns of oppression including but not limited to: white fragility, respectability, jezebel, angry black woman, angry brown woman, mammy, and sapphire.
I found this book to be exceptionally comprehensive and very well researched. It will make some uncomfortable sure, but that is all the more reason to read it and read it again. You’ll also in the very least gain understanding on a very general level why it is extremely offensive to touch a black woman’s hair, for example. Incredible read. I encourage you to grab a copy! -
To say this book is a must read feels like a gross understatement. I have never felt more seen and acknowledged as a woman of color, than when I was reading this amazing literary work.
Hamad brilliantly examined the “pivot” between the one-up, one-down relationships between white women, white men and people of color as she analyzes the role white femininity plays in stereotypes, politics and anti-blackness. She explains the symbolism of the term “white tears” and how fragility can be both wielded as a weapon and used as a step-stool. And she doesn’t mince words when describing the role white feminism has played in international conflict and domestic degradation.
I absolutely love and recommend this book to anyone who has a yearning to learn about the dichotomy between white supremacy and white feminism. This book should honestly be a required reading for sociology, women’s studies, African American studies, international history, and so many other majors as it really invites the reader to check their own biases and question how they perceive women from the lens of their own cultural indoctrination.
If I could give it 6 stars, I would. This book deserves all of the praise for gutsy and well-researched subject matter. A resounding 5-star read! -
I love Ruby Hamad for this attempt to navigate the knotty nexus of gender, race, and feminism. I felt more like I was talking with a friend than I was reading a manifesto. That approach has pros and cons.
It reminded me of the reading experience I have with Richard Dawkins. With both of these authors I feel they are making assumptions about what’s obvious to them—that everyone already knows this thing they’re talking about—and in other cases they overexplain what really does feel obvious. I just didn’t fit well with Hamad’s assumptions about her general reader.
Another thing I found interesting here is that Hamad sometimes wrote as “we” in her sentences, and sometimes addresses “you” or “women,” and I wasn’t always sure who belonged to “we” or “you” or “women.”
On the whole it was enjoyable and enlightening. -
“Concepts like the definition of racism itself, arrived at over generations of painstaking scholarship, research and experience, are stubbornly brushed aside in favour of ‘the dictionary definition’.”
“When we talk about ‘white people’, we are not really talking about skin colour but about those who most benefit from whiteness. When we talk about ‘people of colour’ we talk about those who are excluded. I continue to have misgivings about the terms—due to the proximity of ‘people of colour’ to ‘coloured’ as well as the danger it can collapse the needs and issues of certain marginalised racial groups into others—but the lack of better terms necessitates their use at times.”
“It got off to a slow start because the Northern Hemisphere was still asleep and Australia, as ever, rarely acknowledges the value of anything unless it has an international stamp of approval.”
“White women can oscillate between their gender and their race, between being the oppressed and the oppressor. Women of colour are never permitted to exist outside of these constraints: we are both women and people of colour and we are always seen and treated as such.”
“The details and severity often differ, but what is common about the experiences of women of colour is an unspoken assumption that we always lack a defining feature of womanhood that white women have by default.”
“Like African women in what was to become the United States, Aboriginal women were blamed for their own victimisation. However, whereas the children of the former were funnelled into the slavery economy, those of the latter were first neglected and denied and then brought by force into white society. In both places, the labelling of black women as ‘easy’ served a double purpose: as well as absolving white men of any shame or wrongdoing by positioning black women as less evolved, animalistic and ruled by their own carnal desires, it differentiated black women from white women, thereby justifying the sexualisation of the former and the sexual repression of the latter.”
“That financially independent and sexually active single women were excluded from the ‘protected’ class indicates that Black Peril was about controlling white women as well as subduing the black population.”
“A popular genre of romantic fiction in the Jim Crow South revolved around the ‘tragedy’ of a white Southern belle or gentleman who discovers on the eve of their wedding day that one of them is ‘black’; the wedding, naturally, has to be called off.”
“The damsel in distress is always white because in order to justify white men’s self-granted right of access to the body of any woman they chose, regardless of how she felt about it, only white women were considered capable of being in distress: of being raped. Think about this for a moment. Rather than consider respecting the bodies of brown and black women, white men and their female accomplices removed them from the concept of womanhood and humanity altogether.”
“These defenders really, really didn’t get it. In this context, Beard’s tears were not a sign of weakness: they were a reminder of her relative power. It is significant that of all the times she has been dragged on Twitter, usually by sexist, racist trolls, this is the first and only time—when her critics were women of colour—that she responded by publicly crying.”
“White women’s racial privilege is predicated on their acceptance of their role of virtue and goodness, which is, ultimately, powerlessness. It is this powerlessness—or, I would argue, this appearance of powerlessness—that governs the nature of White Womanhood.”
“DiAngelo is right, of course: I do put up with a lot more racism than I bother to point out—and I am someone who writes about racism for a living.”
“The system was designed to make it as hard as possible for us, but in such a way that white people can pretend the barriers simply do not exist.”
“The alleged threats made against Dutton are one thing, but using them to whitewash his public record by presenting him as a virtuous father and victim is another. This is how White Womanhood stabilises white society: by turning the tables, downplaying its violence and ensuring power stays firmly in white hands.”
“The Commonwealth Franchise Act of 1902 that granted white women the vote also explicitly barred Aboriginal people, Asians and Pacific Islanders from voting, with the sole exception of Maoris in the hope that New Zealand, which did not similarly discriminate against its Indigenous population when it came to the vote, would eventually change its mind and join the newly established federation.”
“Because colonised women did not adhere to cultural roles akin to White Womanhood, white women assumed they were oppressed, and this status was used to actually oppress them further.”
“The language of the White Saviour is not one of liberation or sisterhood: it is a language of imperialism.”
“It all leads back to the same place, and that place is the rift that European colonialism deliberately created between women, making white women complicit in the racism they have since been all too eager to blame solely on white men.”
“Does misogynistic violence really not count until it is inflicted on the body of a white woman?”
“People are fond of describing forward-thinking people as ‘ahead of their time’. I think this is a mischaracterisation that feeds a false belief in an inherently linear social progress where change is inevitable, as if people are naturally inclined to change and some of us just happen to change before everyone else. As much as Lorde’s words seem prescient today, it would do her a disservice to describe her this way. No one is really ahead of their time. If anything, such people are exactly of their time because they have the capacity to diagnose the maladies of their era and prescribe the remedies.”
“newspaper reports detailed the ‘poaching’ of Aboriginal women by Japanese pearlers. There was ... outrage that Japanese fisherman were engaging in sexual liaisons with Aboriginal women and paying for the services of Aboriginal sex workers. Apparently keen to preserve the entitlement they felt to the bodies of Aboriginal women, white men accused the Japanese of sexual exploitation and abuse of Aboriginal women, previously the prerogative of white men. ... pointing out the hypocrisy of demonising Japanese men when white men had been doing this ... for decades would only have led to accusations of defending forced prostitution and the abuse of Aboriginal women.”
“Too black or not black enough: colourism does not always directly involve black people, but at its core it is driven by anti-blackness, by the desire to distance oneself from blackness in order to be included in whiteness.”
“The racialisation of slavery and its pecuniary place in American society meant it wasn’t a minor feature but what that society was constructed around.”
“What does it mean to be an Arab when your lands were colonised first by the Arabians, then by the Ottomans, then by the Europeans, and finally by capitalism itself?”
“Those of us who are not African must likewise contend with this history and where we fit into it. It may be the peculiar legacy of Euro-American colonialism and slavery that cemented racism and capitalism in the global consciousness, but our ancestors played a role too. This role lives on in the anti-blackness and colourism that also manifests outside the Western world, and eventually turns itself back on us. Those of us who are non-black and non-Indigenous people of colour cannot divorce the racism inflicted on us in the West by white people from the anti-blackness and colourism that live on in the lands our parents left behind.”
“People of colour have never systematically oppressed white people but this has little meaning to whiteness, which, having never experienced it, regards racism as existing in nothing else but words.”
“Women of colour are in an abusive relationship with whiteness more broadly but especially with white women, who pivot between professing sisterhood and solidarity with us based on gender identification, and silencing and oppressing us by weaponising their White Womanhood to keep us boxed into the binary.”
“Why the Middle East has to suffer for women in the West to ‘rise’ is a question still in need of an answer.”
“What does it mean for the rest of us that white women can be in control of almost all of the weapons belonging to the world’s most powerful country and still claim to be an oppressed group on the same level as other women?”
“White women have a choice. It is a choice they have always had to some degree, but never before have they been in such a strong position to make the right one. Will white women choose to keep upholding white supremacy under the guise of ‘equality’, or will they stand with women of colour as we edge ever closer to liberation?”
Quotes from reread
"White women can oscillate between their gender and their race, between being the oppressed and the oppressor. Women of colour are never permitted to exist outside of these constraints: we are both women and people of colour and we are always seen and treated as such.
The crimes of white supremacy have not gone unrecorded. They are etched into the bodies of brown and black people the world over. Our scars, past and present, physical and emotional, bear witness to the violence white men and women insisted they were not inflicting. White society marked the bodies of women of colour as a receptacle for its sins so that it could claim innocence for itself and, as the chosen symbol of the innocent perfection of whiteness, the white damsel with her tears of distress functions as both denial of and absolution for this violence.
Does misogynistic violence really not count until it is inflicted on the body of a white woman?
For all the talk about how offensive it is to call someone a racist, it doesn’t seem to do much harm to the career of white people.
What does it mean for the rest of us that white women can be in control of almost all of the weapons belonging to the world’s most powerful country and still claim to be an oppressed group on the same level as other women? -
A MUST READ FOR ALL
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The hypocrisy of white feminism is on full display in this concise piece. Belongs on the shelf alongside the work of Angela Y Davis and Isabel Wilkerson. Highly recommended!
Audiobook read by Mozhan Marnò. -
"White men brutalized, while white women 'civilized'"
Every white person with a uterus should read this. -
I listened to the audiobook daily while I workout in the gym, and my first thought when the book was over was to yell in my head: “NOOOOO!! I NEED TO HEAR MORE FROM THIS AWESOME AUTHOR!”
I never felt heard like this before!! The author was so articulate and brought up so many relevant points and issues that are usually dismissed and overshadowed... And as a woman, you’d think there’s a mutual goal, support, and empowerment for each other, but unfortunately, this is not always the case when race plays a major role! Even though I was very lucky and was surrounded by AMAZING and supportive women from all races, there are always challenges and obstacles to overcome .. And few incidents to remember and think of while reading.
I can’t think of how often I remained silent or felt scared or discouraged from speaking my mind around others simply because I was a woman of color. And even when I’m in a room full of women, I’m fully aware that I’m (most likely) the only woman of color. And it hit me so hard when the author mentioned that some women of color had to apologize for disagreeing and/or “daring” to question an idea while having a civil conversation with a white woman just because that woman felt personally attacked when the cultural and racial appropriation was brought up.
I highly recommend reading this book to EVERYONE regardless of your race! It was so well written and so personal. -
This book is incredibly ambitious in its examination of white feminism and white tears through so many historical accounts, current events and pop culture in recent years as well as personal stories from women of colour and it was executed brilliantly. Such an important and valuable read with a truly powerful end. I would highly recommend this book to anybody but for any white women who also consider themselves feminists this is an essential read.
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This book was amazing. If you want things to be put in perspective, especially if you're a white feminist, this is exactly what you need. I was reading reviews that were like 'makes you feel bad for being white :(' and if you think that, you're exactly who this book is talking about. The author states that a lot of the time that these people who use their tears to silence women of color often do not do this out of malice, but because they've been so conditioned to be the damsel that they don't understand what they're doing. This book is not in anyway harmful. I listened to this as an audiobook on Libby, but I will definitely be buying a physical copy so I can annotate the hell out of it.
I loved (well not loved, because it's quite sad, more interested) the sections about the history of stereotypes such as 'the angry brown woman' and 'the dragon lady.' I don't know why I wasn't expecting this. I didn't read the summary again before going into it, I got it off of Libby on a whim, but I was pleasantly surprised. I'll be writing a more in depth review when I get a physical copy and make notes.
Overall, not something I would usually reach for, but still great. -
This book hit me like a ton of bricks. Everyone should read it.
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"[The] greatest obstacle to liberation and equity: [is] the conscious and unconscious biases against women of color that we all carry and that are shaped and cemented by years of socialization into a system that is fundamentally racist and sexist."
Ruby Hamad's White Tears/Brown Scars illuminates the question: what happens when race and sexism collide? How does white womanhood aid and abet in the oppression of women of color, albeit covertly. Hamad explains how tears shed by white women act as weapons of white supremacy, silencing the lived experiences of women of color-- if not adding to their trauma.
Hamad argues how settler-colonialism across the world created archetypes of people of color, and especially that of women of color such as Jezebels, Dragon Ladies, China Dolls, & Bad Arabs to name a few, in order to entrench the idea of women of color as animals or promiscuous to justify their subjugation.
Personally, the idea of Arabs women as "pets or threats" eminitates from the jarring media portrayal of Arabs as either dangerous or silenced. Many examples given by Hamad show how personal and professional lives of Arab women have been either boxed to be a pet (as Arab women's hair being petted in the workplace-- and deemed completely fine by superiors) or a threat.
As such, white supremacy systematically institutionalized binaries, leveling white society as civilized, humane and advanced, and pitying the rest to the other binary of uncivilized, barbaric and backwards. This deliberate subjugation is enforced by white feminism, in which the needs of middle-class white women are elevated, while those of women of color (or any other marginalized identity) are pushed aside.
Hamad elevates the voices of women of color who have been shunned, bullied, harassed and silenced by white society and in specific white women. It is a must read for those who believe that no woman is free until we all are.
A spectacular book. -
In highlighting the brutal and particularly cruel acts of violence white men and women have done in upholding and establishing white supremacy, this book helps move us away from viewing white women as being born into the role of the damsel in distress. In pushing this well-documented history of active participation in the systemic oppression of people of color, we see trends today that were also prevalent hundreds of years ago.
It was interesting to see which current pop culture and political news line up with what’s being explored.
CW: heavy focus on: racism, colorism, colonialism, slavery, rape + sexual abuse, sexism, kidnapping
