Jessie Daniels, PhDFemSem

YWCANYC - Columbia University

July 10, 2015

“Gender, Feminism Politics & Activism:

The Trouble with White Feminism”

Twitter: @JessieNYC

introduction

5

situating myself

epistemology of lived experience

10

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."

how have white women

& white feminists

been connected to racism

historically?

21

white women: active participants & beneficiaries of slavery

23

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.”

white supremacy & suffragists

“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

31

Suffragette (2015)

32

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

37

38

“lynching central to American culture”

white women active participants in lynchings

40

“defense” of white womanhood used to justify lynchings

millions of white women organized

46

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

51

World War II

53

post-World War II

55

56

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

59

millions of white women supported segregation

60

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”

66

68

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).

2015

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: Patricia Arquette ‘s Speech

the critique

87

equality for which women?

equal to which group?

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

Read More About This

• Daniels, Jessie. The Trouble with White Women & White Feminism (blog series, 2014). http://bit.ly/1d63wfk

• Ware, Vron. Beyond the pale: White Women, Racism, and History, 2nd Ed., with a new preface by Mikki Kendall (Verso Books, 2015).

how are WOC resisting &

reshaping &

hacking (white) feminism

Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia)

99

#SolidarityisforWhiteWomen

#BlackLivesMatter

a movement, not a moment

102

“The Charleston Imperative”

104

“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

112

Twitter: @JessieNYC

Thank you!

If you’d like to continue the conversation: