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Jessie Daniels, PhDHunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY
FemSem YWCANYC - Columbia University - July 14, 2016
“Feminism, Politics & Activism: The Trouble with White Feminism”
Twitter: @JessieNYC
introduction
5
7
8
situating myself
epistemology of lived experience
14
2009
“Without an explicit challenge to racism, white feminism is
easily grafted onto white supremacy and
useful for arguing for equality for white
women and possibly for white gays and lesbians
within a white supremacist context."
17th-19th century
how have white women
& white feminists
been connected to racism
historically?
active participants in & beneficiaries of slavery
30
a tiny handful of white women
resistors & advocates for social justice
abolitionists & (pre)-feminists
early suffragists split from abolitionists
Susan B. Anthony
“I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.”
“You have put the ballot in the hands of your black men, thus making them political superiors of white women. Never before in the history of the world have men made former slaves the political masters of their former mistresses!”
~ Anna Howard Shaw
Black Women Suffragists
39
“Suffragette” (2015)
40
More Reading on This• Louise Michelle Newman, White Women’s Rights:
The Racial Origins of Feminism in the US (Oxford UP, 1999). http://digital.library.upenn.edu/ebooks-public/pdfs/0195086929.pdf
• Ware, Vron. Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History, 2nd Ed., (Verso Books, 2015).
• Wilson, Midge & Kathy Russell, One of Divided Sisters: Bridging the Gap Between Black and White Women (Anchor, 1996)
20th century
white womanhood& white feminism
Or, what happened after suffrage?
‘flapper’ girls & consumerism as feminism
45
46
“lynching central to American culture”
white women active participants in lynchings
48
“defense” of white womanhood used to justify lynchings
millions of white women organized
54
a tiny handful of white women resisted
Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL)
Read More About This• Blee, Kathleen. Women of the Klan.
(University of California Press, 1991). • Giddens, Paula. Ida: A Sword Among
Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching (Harper Paperbacks, 2009).
• Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd. Revolt Against Chivalry. (Columbia UP, 1993).
economic depression
59
World War II
61
post-World War II
63
64
Read More About This• Coontz, Stephanie. The Way We Never
Were: The American Family and the Nostalgia Trap. (Basic Books, 1992).
• Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns. (Vintage, 2010).
Civil Rights Movement
67
millions of white women
supported segregation
a tiny handful resisted
3 Evils: Militarism, Racism & Economic Exploitation
Gender Trouble in Anti-War & Black Power Movements
Read More About This• Nelson, Alondra. Body & Soul: The Black
Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination (University of Minnesota Press, 2011).
• Wu, Judy Tzu-Chuh. Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era. (Cornell University Press, 2013).
“second wave” feminism
“the problem with no name”
75
78
white women & ERA
Read More About This• Marshall, Susan E. "Ladies against
women: Mobilization dilemmas of antifeminist movements." Social Problems (1985): 348-362.
• Roth, Benita. Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana and White Feminist Movements in America’s Second Wave (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Read More About This• Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist
Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd Ed. (Routledge, 2002).
• hooks, bell. Feminist theory: From Margin to Center. (Pluto Press, 2000).
• Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. (Random House LLC, 2007).
2016
3 Case Studies
white feminism #epicfails
Case Study: Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In
the critique
“Sandberg uses feminist rhetoric as a front to cover her commitment to western cultural imperialism, to white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” ~ bell hooks
Case Study: “Slut Walk”
“It’s painful and embarrassing for white feminists to be called out around race and racism, but the
obligation to learn how to deal with those emotions productively is a
cost of privilege.”~ Jaclyn Friedman
Case Study 3: Carceral Feminism
White Women & ‘Central Park 5’
Prosecutor
District Attorney
Politicians
Carceral feminism + white womanhood
Read More About This
• Bernstein, Elizabeth. "Carceral politics as gender justice? The “traffic in women” and neoliberal circuits of crime, sex, and rights." Theory and Society 41, no. 3 (2012): 233-259.
• Davis, Angela Y. The meaning of freedom: And other difficult dialogues. City Lights Books, 2013.
how are WOC resisting &
reshaping &
hacking (white) feminism
Restorative Justice
Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia)
112
#SolidarityisforWhiteWomen
#BlackLivesMatter
a movement, not a moment
115
“The Charleston Imperative”
“As antiracist feminists of every color, we refute the patriarchal, racist practices that endanger Black people across the nation.” ~ Kimberle Crenshaw
“black feminism does not exist”
epistemological activism
125
Twitter: @JessieNYC
Thank you!
If you’d like to continue the conversation: