ZORA

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When Feminism Dovetails With White Supremacy

Kitanya Harrison
ZORA
Published in
12 min readOct 9, 2018

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Credit: Amy Shamblen/Unsplash

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.

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ZORA
ZORA

Published in ZORA

A publication from Medium that centers the stories, poetry, essays and thoughts of women of color.

Kitanya Harrison
Kitanya Harrison

Written by Kitanya Harrison

Upcoming essay collection: WELCOME TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE: NOTES ON COLLAPSE FROM THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC | Rep: Deirdre Mullane

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