Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria discusses how white feminism has let down and, in many cases, actively harmed BIPOC women. Zakaria concisely defines what she means by the label white feminist (see quote below) before describing, in great detail and with a number of statistics and real-world anecdotes, where, when, and how white feminism is maintaining the status quo of white-supremacy and patriarchy. In this book, Zakaria talks about everything from the tendency of white feminists to see themselves as “White Saviors” to the reality that many national feminist organizations in the US are deeply entrenched with racism.
A white feminist is someone who refuses to consider the role that whiteness and the racial privilege attached to it have played and continue to play in universalizing white feminist concerns, agendas, and beliefs as being those of all feminism and all of feminists. You do not have to be white to be a white feminist. It is also perfectly possible to be white and feminist and not be a white feminist. The term describes a set of assumptions and behaviors which have been baked into mainstream Western feminism, rather than describing the racial identity of its subjects. At the same time, it is true that most white feminists are indeed white, and that whiteness itself is at the core of white feminism.
Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria, Author’s Note (pg. ix)
While reading this book, it struck me how obvious a major failure of white feminism should be: white feminists, myself included, don’t actually ask other ethnic and cultural groups of women what they need or what. We just assume that other groups want the same things we do.
A big example that Zakaria mentions throughout the book is the tendency for white women to focus on individuality and capitalism–on getting a job and earning money and choosing where that money gets spent. But not all women are worried about whether they can get a job and earn money.
In India, for example, many groups of women living in rural areas highly value their time spent preparing food and caring for their household. They build up their female communities while gathering wood for their wood-burning stoves. They exercise control and power in how they care for their households with family recipes and cooking techniques passed down for generations.
Why would these women want to replace that community and power with farm work, which would result in only a trivial income? But that’s essentially what a white feminist organization assumed.
Rather than asking these women what help they needed, this organization decided to replace their wood-burning stoves with modern ovens. These ovens were not only difficult and expensive to maintain, but were also useless for the recipes that required a wood-burning stove.
This feminist organization assumed that all women wanted the same thing (more time to get a job and earn money). Or if they didn’t, they would as soon as they were “educated”. Nevermind that the white feminists were the ones acting in ignorance.
While I was reading this book, an image occurred to me. White feminists–we’re like Mother Gothel in Tangled. We live off the power of other women (in the movie’s case, Rapunzel), and we’re acting like we care about them and are trying to help them (by bringing her hazelnuts and fancy paint). But the reality is, we only have as much power as we do because we’re stealing from BIPOC women.
The metaphor breaks down, however, when looking at the role of BIPOC women. They’re not really Rapunzel, living a life of tiring, boring, blissful ignorance. They can see each and every micro and macroaggression that white feminists make.
I’m not trying to speak for people of color here–I’m white, after all. But I think it’s fair to say that there’s no Coming of Age adventure taking place in their lives.
I mean, let’s just take a brief glimpse of American history. Black Americans were kidnapped and sold into chattel slavery, then “given” their freedom but still in constant danger of oppression, torture, rape, and murder. Brown Americans have been repeatedly linked to terrorism–despite most domestic terrorists being white–and have similarly faced innumerable instances of oppression, assault, and murder. Indigenous Americans were under attack repeatedly as European Americans pushed to take more and more land, finally resulting in a forced march that left countless dead. Asian Americans were placed in internment camps during WWII, and many BIPOC women were sterilized without their consent due to belief in the same eugenics that led to the Holocaust.
And have you ever noticed that the only Americans who don’t have a descriptive qualifier are the white ones? How does that even make sense? We’re not European Americans (though we should be)–we’re just Americans. And the people who have been here far longer than we have are Indigenous Americans.
With all of this history feeding into how each cultural and ethnic group lives and is treated, how could I assume that my idea of feminism was universal? That my focus on myself–on individuality–is representative of the focus of all women? Or even that it’s the “right” thing to focus on?
As a Christian, shouldn’t I recognize that the Bible doesn’t encourage individuality like white American culture does? The Bible doesn’t say “do what you want to do”. It doesn’t say “leave people behind if they aren’t helping you reach your goals”. It definitely doesn’t say “you earn everything you get, so don’t let others say you didn’t”.
No, the Bible says that in order to be a disciple of God, we need to deny ourselves and follow him. It says that we are to love and serve our neighbors–and that everyone is our neighbor. It that the only wages we can earn–the wages of sin–are death.
It says God came to earth in the form of a human being, lived a perfect life despite temptation I cannot fully imagine, despite constant doubt about his identity from the people he created, despite humans rebelling against him constantly, making themselves into his enemy, and he died for them. And it wasn’t a quick death, either. It was a torturous death that was so painful, so gruesome, that Roman citizens were exempt from it, no matter what they did. And in this death, he took on all of our sin–all of my sin–and was forced to separate from himself, separate the son from the father, in order to redeem people who will never deserve this redemption–namely, me.
Against White Feminism is not a Christian book by any stretch of the word (and, to be clear, I’m not saying it should be). But reading it as a Christian, I’m struck by the depth of the gap between what I claim to believe and how I actually live. I knew it was a wide chasm, but I’m still learning just how wide it is.
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