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1 " White women can oscillate between their gender and their race, between being the oppressed and the oppressor. Women of color are never permitted to exist outside of these constraints: we are both women and people of color and we are always seen and treated as such. "
― Ruby Hamad , White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color
2 " Yes, it is true women of color have been the targets of a setup of monumental proportions, something that amounts to nothing short of a covert war against us. But it is also true that these attacks are their own proof of just how serious a threat to the status quo all women of color really are. So serious, in fact, that the very concept of the innocent white woman was constructed to keep us firmly in our place. "
3 " it is simply impossible for any white woman to be genuinely "not okay with racism" when we as a society have not yet reckoned with the fact that this model of strategic White Womanhood that has been honed and entrenched by centuries of colonialism is itself a racist concept. "
― Ruby Hamad
4 " Women of color are rarely given the benefit of the doubt and even more rarely considered worthy of sympathy and support. If we are angry it is because we are bullies, if we are crying it is because we are indulging in the cult of victimhood, if we are poised it is because we lack emotion, if we are emotional it is because we are less rational human and more primitive animal. "
5 " Women of color have to not only battle white patriarchy and that of their own culture, but must also contend with colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, and other forms of racism. Given white women have never had to deal with racial and colonial oppression, it is not surprising — though it is certainly regrettable — that so many of them still regard feminism as a movement purely concerned with gender, leaving racialized women to keep trying to draw their attention to the ways in which various oppressions affect our lives. Until white women reckon with this, mainstream Western feminism cannot be anything more than another iteration of white supremacy. "
6 " White women’s tears are fundamental to the success of whiteness. Their distress is a weapon that prevents people of color from being able to assert themselves or to effectively challenge white racism and alter the fundamental inequalities built into the system. "
7 " This is how whiteness reasserts itself: through a white feminist movement that aligns itself with diversity and inclusion to get white women through the door but then slams it shut in brown and black women’s faces. "
8 " And so “white damsel” as an archetype was one of racial purity, Christian morality, sexual innocence, demureness, and financial dependence on men all rolled into one. A privilege, yes, but a perilous one, for to step off this pedestal meant no longer being regarded as a “woman. "
9 " Those tears may well be genuine, but that does not make them innocent and harmless: the opposite in fact. "
10 " Trying to reason with whiteness is akin to reasoning with a clinical narcissist who refuses to go to therapy: frustratingly impossible because the untreated narcissist simply does not have the requisite tools to see themselves as anything other than “good, "
11 " This weaponization of White Womanhood continues to be the centerpiece of an arsenal used to maintain the status quo and punish anyone who dares challenge it. "
12 " A white woman may well be punished for an emotional outburst when interacting with men, but if she is engaged in a terse interaction with a woman of color and she becomes emotional, by which I mean either angry or distraught, with or without actual tears, the deeply embedded notions of gender and femininity are triggered and it is the white woman who is likely to be vindicated. "
13 " For centuries, the West has regurgitated representations of colonized women that came to be accepted as more real than the real. Jezebels. Black velvet. Harem girls. China Dolls. Princess Pocahontas. All of these reduced complex human beings to cardboard cutout sexual objects without agency and whose surrendered sexuality was de facto justification for white supremacy. "
14 " Arab women came to be seen as they are largely seen today: sexually repressed, frigid, virginal, burdened by virtue, shame, and family honor, and more or less silenced—ironically, pretty much the things that supposedly made white women so special for so long. "
15 " White feminists have to do what they expect of men: to separate the act from the person and look at racism as they look at sexism, as a structural problem that can only begin to be solved when they stop putting their hurt feelings ahead of our material harm. It is not enough for white women to have their hearts in the right place or to claim they don’t see color and treat everyone equally. Feminism must commit to an explicitly anti-racist platform. And that means severing themselves from their historical and emotional attachment to inherent innocence and goodness. "
16 " There is no sisterhood. How can there be, when white supremacy has done such a thorough job of setting White Womanhood apart from the rest of us? There’s a division, all right, but it is not caused by us. Yes, "
17 " For all the “I’m With Her” and “The Future Is Female” high-fiving floating around, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that merely having more white women in powerful positions isn’t going to result in a more just and equitable world. This reality continues to be glossed over by the rhetoric of “empowerment” and “lean-in” corporate feminism. "
18 " The Taliban emerged from former U.S. allies the mujahideen (“holy warriors”), who were partly funded by the United States in order to counter the Soviet invasion in 1979. There is a Western tendency to view Islamist extremism as intrinsic to Islam and as popular among Muslims, but groups such as the Taliban enjoyed only very minimal support from the Afghan population before the war against the Soviets. "
19 " This image has so dominated Western views of Southeast Asian women that it became a key driver of Thailand’s sex industry. Sex tours of Southeast Asia remain hugely popular among white men, which ensures that the distorted image of Asian women persists. "
20 " The existence of a binary means that one pole in the structure is almost always going to dominate. It is better to be a man than it is to be a woman, and if one must be a woman then it is far better to be a virgin than a whore. It is better to be from the West than the East and white is better than black, but if you can’t be white then it is better to be as close to white as you can. "
