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When Feminism Dovetails With White Supremacy
Are we truly equal if there is a pecking order of privilege?
White feminism.
Simply using the term rankles. White people don’t like being called White. It’s taken as a threat that they might suffer the fate of the Other one day. Whiteness is meant to confer a kind of invisibility. It is meant to mask the power and privilege it has granted itself. It is meant to elide and obfuscate. It is meant to place the White person above being questioned. Whiteness is a construct. That doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
Whiteness confers power. Femaleness does not. Power is the enemy of equality, and the fork in the road where we are forced to choose between the two is where feminism and White supremacy combine into something noxious: White feminism.
White Feminists do not want equality; they want power. Specifically, they want the same privileges and immunities as White men. Their struggle is about climbing to the top rung of the oppressor class. It’s why “smashing the glass ceiling” is so central to the narrative. There is room for only so many people at the top, though, and widening the applicant pool is bad strategy. The result: White Feminists tell on themselves whenever race comes up.
White Feminists are to discussions of White supremacy what Men’s Rights Activists are to discussions of patriarchy. They pretend to be against it, but in reality, they are among its staunchest defenders and weaponize phony, completely self-serving notions of equality that erase the dynamics of power. They derail, they center themselves, they claim victimhood where there is none, they diminish and erase the suffering of others, they co-opt, they disrespect, they seek to dominate and control. They also can’t see how embarrassingly self-parodic they’re being.
There is a long history of White women choosing to align themselves with the power of Whiteness instead of seeking their own liberation. The 53% of them who voted for President Donald Trump is the most obvious contemporary cohort. I’m not sure how many of these women would identify as feminists, though. White Feminists are a liberal problem.
The White supremacy practiced by American liberals presents as more paternalistic and…
