The Silence of White Feminists
The past month I have been working on cultivating new projects and also unpacking a lot of resistance fatigue that I was smacked in the face with at the end of last year.
The fatigue was brought on by a lot of reasons but the main culprit that kept rearing its ugly head was white feminism.
I am going to be honest — I have never proclaimed myself a hard core feminist. I am an activist, a movement leader, a social justice seeker, an accomplice and more — but feminist has never been top of that list. Mostly, again, because of the insidiousness of white feminism. This point was driven home once again when I read Ann Friedman’s newsletter over the weekend.
In her most recent newsletter Friedman dedicates a section in sharing her disappointment in being involved with a newly published book — Rage Baking. I read through Friedman’s explanation and read through all the links that Friedman shared. I read through Tangerine Jones’s Medium piece and read the messages of the publishers of this new book and their tone deaf whitewashing response on their intentions for the book. I read through all the receipts Jones shares in her process of starting, building and cultivating the #RageBaking movement. I read through Rebecca Traister’s Twitter thread and at the end of processing and reading everything and re-reading I wanted to throw my computer against the wall.
Friedman and Traister are noted white feminists and loud voices in the women’s empowerment space, yet in their explanations they never once noted or spoke out about the insipid nature of white feminism.
They never spoke about how white feminism was and continues to build upon white supremacy to ensure that black and brown voices are only seen and heard through a lense which is palatable to white women.
These women expressed self-disappointment with their noted lack of doing the homework to ensure they weren’t appropriating and causing harm. But nowhere in their explanations did they say that this methodology IS the dominant paradigm of white feminism. It’s feeds the vicious cycle where black women and women of color in the movement, social justice space and life in general continue to hear, “I’m so sorry I took/stole/plagiarised/co-opted your work/art/writing/style, etc. I didn’t know about you, I didn’t know it belonged to you or that you started it.” Or even better the non-apology that Jones’s received instead: “This wasn’t our intention.”
Let’s face it — a majority of white feminists DO NOT talk about white supremacy in the feminist movement and so the feminist movement continues to be a space for white women to feel good, do the bare minimum (in holding themselves accountable), and send an apology every so often reminding their readers and audience to check their unconscious bias.
This level of topical feminism is dangerous, harmful and toxic to black women and women of color on a daily basis and it cannot continue. Tangerine Jones started, built and grew #RageBaking into the space it is today. A quick web browser and Instagram search reveals this. Yet the white women involved couldn’t do even 2 minutes of a quick search on a web browser?
The apathy, failure and silence by white women to truly be committed to ensuring that harmful systemic white supremacy isn’t reified within the feminist movement space is the very reason I struggle to call myself a feminist. And I don’t see this changing anytime soon.
Read and Follow::
- Tangerine Jones — The Privilege of Rage, Twitter, Instagram
- Reni Eddo-Lodge — Why I am no Longer Talking to White people About Race.
- Kitanya Harrison — White Feminism Dovetails with White Supremacy
- Wear Your Voice Mag: WHITE SUFFRAGETTES CHOSE WHITE SUPREMACY OVER COLLECTIVE LIBERATION
- How the Suffrage Movement Betrayed Black Women.
