“When challenged by a woman of color, a white woman will often lean into her racial privilege to turn the tables and accuse the other woman of hurting, attacking, or bullying her. This process almost always siphons the sympathy and support of onlookers to the apparently distressed white woman, helping her avoid accountability and leaving the woman of color out in the cold, often with no realistic option—particularly if it is a workplace interaction—but to accept blame and apologize.”
— Ruby Hamad, White Tears / Brown Scars
I was very nervous [about] writing [the article] because I thought it would be misinterpreted. [White women] are not going to see what I’m really trying to say: This is an issue of unacknowledged power being wielded to either rebuff criticism or to punish a friend for stepping out of line. White women aren’t born like this. It’s all about social conditioning and they learn it the same way that women of color learn, “If I push this any further—even though I know or believe I’m not in the wrong or I’ve got a legitimate case—it’s not gonna work out well. I have to just suck it up.” We implicitly know this, which means white women implicitly know that they have this trump card they can use. It can be weeping or it can be quite aggressive and vicious.
from this interview, for further context
sorry i feel insane actually. i read white tears/brown scars when it came out 3 years ago and sometimes i forget how revolutionarily accurate hamad's thesis is
Image Transcript of The Screenshotted Interview Article Excerpt:
In the first part of your book, you write about the stereotypes constructed primarily by settler colonialists. It's very instructive in depicting just how entrenched these racist perceptions are. You write, "Racism isn't woven into the fabric of our civilization. It is the fabric of our civilization." How do those stereotypes still affect our modern life?
When I was writing the book proposal, I went through the Guardian article and the line that jumped out at me was: "Even before we speak, we're positioned as aggressors; whether we're shouting, or pleading, it comes across the same way." Clearly, there's something about the way we're perceived. Why is it so easy to position a Black woman as angry? Why is it so easy to dismiss an Arab woman as aggressive and crazy? Where did this come from?
Initially I thought [the stereotypes] would just be a small part of the book, but the history was just so incredible. These archetypes were tweaked to fit a particular racial group at a particular time, which all had to do with their relationship to whiteness. So the Jezebel or the "promiscuous Black woman" was initially [created] to rationalize the sexual abuse of [enslaved women]. [White settlers] told themselves that [Black women] were easy. [These stereotypes were being created] in different contexts, like Australia, where there wasn't institutionalized slavery, but [white settlers] were still like "They're so easy. Their culture just doesn't respect women, so [sexual abuse] doesn't count." The "China Doll" stereotype wasn't so much about wanton promiscuity, but was tweaked to be about submissiveness and just really desiring the white man. [White settlers] wanted to rationalize going there and taking over.
Initially, [there were] hypersexualized, objectified stereotypes, but when resistance started—abolition, colonial resistance, the colonial movements—the angry stereotypes and archetypes came in to play so that [white people] could just say [people of color] are irrational and dismiss their legitimate grievance and anger. We now have the angry Brown woman that came out of the angry Black woman stereotype. The "Dragon Lady," a cunning East Asian woman who uses white men and then discards them, is just completely constructed. [White people] completely projected themselves and they did it so successfully [that] they believed it and still do. That's why it's so difficult to talk about racism. The white self—not the white person as a human being, but as a white person in the society—is built on this myth of morality and goodness surrounded by heathens and disease-ridden savages.
