assignment #16 - lily gardner: the fallacy of white feminism

When the white supremacists came for me in the YouTube comments of a Young Turks video in which I barely occupied more than a minute, I was honored that I had said something provocative enough to ignite their fury. I had the luxury of not being scared; it was an isolated activity, my ten minutes of hate comment fame.

When the white supremacists came for a friend, they sent thousands of messages into her DMs, filled with derogatory slurs about her Judaism, queerness, and dark skin. They were not what I had received, empty threats from thirty year old men in the basements in Georgia, but instead diatribes - “the Jews will not replace us”; “you should not exist”; “we will exterminate you.” She still receives them to this day, not a sign of clout, but of the need to be fearful. 

Recently, I saw a tweet that said “racism is as American as pie,” (Cargle). Admittedly, I can’t eat pie crust and don’t really know where I stand on this whole “America” thing, but my first reaction was self congratulatory, as I was already woke enough to accept this fact and didn’t need to be informed of it by way of a tweet. I’m guessing it was the same for many of you, acceptance, with some rejection of responsibility. We’re not the problem: the white supremacists are. 

That’s simply not the truth. 

So, for the next six minutes, we’re going to explore what white privilege is, how it developed, how it’s manifesting in our everyday lives, and ultimately, what we can do to mitigate its detrimental effects. But this time, we’re not going to focus on the white cisgendered straight Christian men in the room; y’all get told pretty often that you’re the bane of our society, Instead, it’s time to confront the truth that white women can also be vehicles of oppression, even behind our feminist facades. 

What is privilege? In an academic sense, privilege is “an advantage or a set of advantages that you have that others do not,” (Oluo 20). However, privilege encompasses more than that: it’s a set of advantages that, for most, are not due to their own efforts, and are instead the result of arbitrary factors like race, physical ability, gender, class, sexuality, body type, and neurological capabilities (McIntosh 7). 

Privilege becomes clear, not in the inherent advantages it provides individuals - many of us don’t feel an omnipresent sense of everyday safety - it becomes clear because of the juxtaposed disadvantages of others. If you have never gone into a store and been followed the whole time by the store’s managers because you appear to be suspicious, why would you think that would be the case for anyone? But, when you’re the person who is being profiled, it becomes explicitly clear who in our society does not experience the same discrimination (McIntosh 8). 

But let’s be clear: while this may be the first time any of you are talking about privilege, these systems did not develop by chance, but rather emerge from intentional societal stratification by the same individuals lauded in our history books. In this room, the vast majority of our privilege comes from our collective “whiteness,” but being “white” is a classification that evolved for social control following Bacon’s Rebellion (Allen 19). It’s creation justified the fact that poor white revolutionaries went down in history and were promoted to the “working class,” while the black participants were demoted to slaves. From that moment on, “whiteness” became social safety, enhanced over time by white women.

On one side of my family, it takes me only a few generations before I get to the “slave mistresses,” the commander of the farm house whose job was to “civilize” black women and children, making this “peculiar institution” palatable and consequently, M in normalized. What should have been considered mistreatment was glossed over by the manicured hands and lilting voice of the mistress. Thus, even when the institution of slavery was repealed by the 13th Amendment, the thoughts and norms that accompanied it, and justified it, remained the same, perpetuated by the white matriarchy (Crenshaw 20). 

When the women’s suffrage movement culminated in the 19th Amendment, white women across the country rejoiced; they had finally proven their inherent equality to their brothers and husbands. But for women of color, the radical black feminists we don’t learn about in schools, suffrage was a means of resistance to the surge of nationalist organizations (Staples). The black women’s quest was about community empowerment for systemic change. However, not only did the white suffragettes relegate their black sisters to the back of the protest, they intentionally halted progress for African Americans begun during Reconstruction. 

In this room, we, like many others, take collective pride in the fact that now, overt racism is not as socially acceptable as it once was and that we’ve had successful reforms following the Civil Rights Movement. But that doesn’t mean the problem of white privilege or systems of white supremacy have just magically disappeared. When someone on Twitter tells you to “check your privilege,” they’re asking you to stop for a moment and consider how what you just said or did perpetuates these systems (Cargle). But many of us don’t always know what we said or did to even warrant that charge. And for those of us who are white women in the room, we must reckon with the reality that although being female may cause us disadvantage, our whiteness also contributes to the continuation of racism. 

When we women actively ignore our role in racism in our society, choosing not to intervene at the Thanksgiving dinner table, staying silent when the white boy drops the N word in the group chat, we are perpetuating racism. When we women say we’re “powerless” or that we ”can’t personally be held responsible for white supremacy,” we are perpetuating racism. When we argue for incremental change, we fail to recognize the severity of the needs of black and brown citizens in the name of bipartisanship. Waiting for justice is a privilege afforded to whites (MacMillan). 

So, if you’re feeling uncomfortable or even guilty right now, that is powerful. But we cannot allow our guilt to consume us or bring us to tears, because this is not about us. The worst thing that can happen to us is not, contrary to popular belief, being called racists - it’s not doing anything radical about it (McRae). 

I did not pick this problem simply to yell at you or assuage my own guilt. And, as white women and feminists and students, we bear the responsibility to do something about it. Here are a few things, in no particular order.

1. Provide monetary support for women of color. This means supporting BIPOC owned businesses, and the work of black writers, Latinx performers, and Indigenous artisans. 
2. It also means supporting reparations on a national scale, because when two times as many Black families, Indigenous families, and Hispanic families are below the poverty line, it can’t simply be because of a “difference in work ethic.” 
3. Exercise your voice for the better, butt into those uncomfortable conversations, call out the racist joke. Have these conversations. 
4. But, make space for the voices of BIPOC women. If you’re dominating the conversation while women of color sit to the side, unable to interject because of your diatribes, stop talking and start listening. Understand when your words are warranted, and when, frankly, they’re nothing new. 
5. Support educational equity in academic outcomes and disciplinary actions. 
6. Vote local, demand an increase in the minimum wage, support police reform. Our systems have deeply racist laws ingrained within them, so show up to the ballot box.

So, to all my fellow white women out there: we may not be in the streets, rioting with our torches, but until we learn to step it up, we’re complicit in systems of oppression, complicit in systemic racism. In the wise words of Desmond Tutu, “If you are neutral in the face of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”