Words: Maya Statham (She/Her)
CW: Racism / Violence
The liberation of women cannot exist when women of colour remain subordinated by white society.
Throughout the course of history, “white purity” has been fashioned as a weapon, one deployed against non-white people to keep them subordinate. This phenomenon is most apparent in the contrasting constructions of womanhood for white and racialised women. So wide is the chasm between the ‘pure’ white woman and the ‘corrupt’ women of colour, that in many ways, non-white women are understood as lesser beings. The power dynamic this paradigm creates is routinely used by white women for their own gain. Seldom have I known a woman of colour who has not come face-to-face with a weeping white woman when raising a legitimate grievance or challenge. To challenge a white woman is to challenge her racial comfort, her position of power. The troubled white woman benefits from her inherent association with innocence and femininity, she is understood as a damsel in distress. The non-white woman however, no matter her intent or demeanor, always plays the role of the aggressor.
White women’s position as the virtuous victim has always been central to the oppression of non-white people. Lynchings of black men, particularly in the United States, were often predicated on dubious accusations of sexual transgressions against white women. These women were essential, wilful participants in the perpetration of racial violence, reveling in the spectacle of lynchings, proud that they were orchestrated on their behalf. Perhaps these women enjoyed seeing their men go to horrific lengths to defend their purity, and, by proxy, ensure the protection of the white race. Constructions of dangerous racialised others as a threat to the safety of women are a result of a long history of the weaponisation of white womanhood, in a manner that absolves white masculinity of its transgressions. This is not to say that non-white men are incapable of committing such harms, but that white male violence is consistently treated with a lack of gravity in comparison violence perpetrated by non-white men. Society does not take violence against women seriously as a whole, and cannot, whilst systems of white male power remain entrenched.
The vision of the innocent white woman, in need of protection from dangerous black and brown men, is not an artefact of the past. One look to our present day political landscape demonstrates its endurance. Far-right politicians, notably Nigel Farage, weaponise concerns over women’s safety to fan the flames of their racist and anti-migrant agendas. Farage’s concern for women only stretches so far though, if it cannot be used as a political battering ram to belittle non-white men, it’s left in the dust. When it was revealed Reform MP James McMurdock held a conviction of assault against his former partner, Farage described the offence as ‘irrelevant.’ Such paternalistic attempts to vilify immigrants legitimise and reframe racist hostility as justified concern, bastardising feminist issues in the process.
All women are, and have been constrained extensively by gendered oppression. White women, however, possess the privilege of oscillating between womanhood and whiteness, between the roles of oppressed and oppressor, and it is this that has afforded them superiority. Non-white women meanwhile are resigned to constantly experiencing the subordinate position of both their racial and gender identities. The construction of white womanhood as a bastion of purity relies on non-white women being understood as “impure” , being routinely denied access to femininity, being reduced to stereotypes, and stripped of individuality and personhood. Consistently placed into racialised boxes, whether that be angry, hypersexual, or exotic, women of colour are forced to navigate these expectations in every tenet of our lives. The tears of white women are just one strategic tool of white dominance used to constrain women of colour within these confines. When the comfort of a white woman is disturbed, she responds in opposition, retreating to the placeholders white society has fashioned, and framing women of colour as aggressors. In doing so, these women come not only to their own defense, but to the defense of racialised society.
The defaulting of white womanhood as ‘pure’ and ‘virtuous’ has real and enduring consequences for women of colour today. These consequences persist even within the feminist movement, where white feminists too often prioritise their own interests in their activism, leaving other women behind. The liberation of women cannot exist when women of colour remain subordinated by white society. Incorporation of intersectionality is essential to the feminist movement. As Ruby Hamad has put it, ‘Race has always been gendered, just as gender has always been raced.’ For white women, womanhood exists both as a privilege and as a weapon, and their tears as a show of relative power. For women of colour, these tears serve as a reminder that, even when she responds with reason, there is no world in which white society will let her win over a ‘pure’ and protected white woman.
