White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color

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Notice it is the white woman – Jeanne Beker – who first interrupts the black woman – Jully Black – who takes the interruption in her stride. What makes white women’s tears so potent and renders black and brown women so apparently ‘aggressive’?

As I explained in the column, it was not weakness or guilt that had led me to capitulate to these white women so many times but an awful realisation that I could not win, that there was simply no way I could convince others to see the issue from my perspective.I had taken something that was common knowledge among communities of colour and lobbed it like a grenade into one of the bastions of white liberalism, naming it loudly and clearly in one of the most recognisable mastheads in the Western media.

In breaking down examples from history, as well as from her own life as an Arab woman working in Australian media, Hamad offers a haunting but powerful reading of white feminism and its lasting impacts on marginalized communities. On a whole, these items undermine the veracity of Hamad's examples to backup her claims, especially since most of her claims are bold and inflammatory. 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. They would use it to attack me again and again, to discredit everything I said and did from that moment on. DiAngelo explores white fragility in explicitly race-based workplace interactions between women, but the issue goes further back in history and deeper into the present and it is important to look at gendered racial dynamics beyond the professional context.Hamad asserts that by “keeping this false image of impeccable white Womanhood alive, white masculinity was absolved of its terrible crimes and black sexuality could be demonised and mythologised”. Greetings and welcome to the publisher’s office for a brief visit into the world of Penguin Classics where our editorial team shares some insight into our daily lives through classics. The term ‘white fragility’ was coined by sociologist Robin DiAngelo to describe the defensiveness into which many white people retreat in any discussion that reminds them of their race. In a similar vein, bell hooks notes that although white American men in that era appeared to revere the virtue of white women, they didn’t seem to like them very much. I shared these tweets as well as Ajayi’s blog post on my public Facebook page, asking brown and black women if they’d experienced anything similar.

The article that apparently cost Lisa her contract and brought us into each other’s orbit was titled ‘How white women use strategic tears to silence women of colour’. When broader society refuses to validate women of color, it becomes vital for us to share our experiences with each other as a means of coping with these damaging stereotypes and archetypes, and to help us recognize the gaslighting techniques and stereotypes that keep us in a subordinate position. Even knowing all this, when the editors finally gave it the green light, asking only for a minor change to update the opening paragraphs, I knew I couldn’t withdraw it and that these kinds of things have to be said precisely because they make people uncomfortable in the best way—the way that forces them to examine their own implicit biases and question their own relative power and privilege. Amid a sea of recent books about white women’s commitment to white supremacy, White Tears/Brown Scars stands out. Mridula Nath Chakraborty in The Sydney Morning Herald commends White Tears/Brown Scars as “a compelling critique of the ways in which the woman of colour is pilloried and crucified at the altar of white fragility”, while Rashida Murphy applauds Hamad for exposing “tough, unpalatable truths” in a review in ArtsHub.The next day, Dubill and McMaster complained to management and Lisa was suspended immediately for ‘creating a hostile working environment based on race and gender’.