White Tears/Brown Scars by In the author’s note, Hamad describes the challenges of writing about race or gender, the risks of being intentionally and dishonestly misquoted, and the goal of discussing the rationale behind her choice of terms and their meaning with hope of dissuading some of these disingenuous interpretations without any real expectation that it will be successful. She discusses the socio-political construction of whiteness and its relation to privilege; how it has little to do with skin colour and just as much to do with cultural and religious identities. Hamad also describes her process of interviewing women in preparation for this book and explains that names with an asterisk are pseudonyms fabricated for anonymity and first names presented on their own without an asterisk are real.
In the introduction, Hamad provides real-world examples of how white women have used tears as a way of deflecting accountability and silencing BIPOC. Hamad begins by describing a situation that occurred on Fox News, where a white woman host starts crying when being corrected by a Black co-host about Trump's alignment with white supremacy. The white woman weeps freely on television, while her BIPOC co-hosts remain composed and comfort her. Hamad also shares her own story of the backlash received when she published an article about the racism that Arabs face. She then defines the term "white fragility", and its symptom, "white tears", not as a display of weakness as their names might imply, but on the contrary, as an assertion of power. Hamad invites us to consider that, while white women do experience sexism, this sexism is often used to victimize themselves against BIPOC women and detract from the racism they face.
Hamad opens the chapter with a discussion of the ways society responds to racially diverse portrayals of female characters in popular media. The negative backlash towards racialized actors stems from implicit and explicit bias towards non-white women, who have always been stereotyped as promiscuous, animalistic, and immoral. They were used to emphasize the superiority of white women who would naturally embody moral, Christian values. Black women were stereotyped as the Jezebel, who was “governed by her physical sensations and carnal desires” (p.23), who could not be sexually abused. Black female slaves were objectified for white men's taking. Hamad then describes that Aboriginal women in Australia were treated similarly, where White male settlers degraded them as “prostitutes.” In both contexts, Hamad notes that white women were aware of these abuses, but they either remained silent or blamed the victims.
Hamad describes the specific exoticization of Arab women and how the veil has long since been misconstrued by Western society in different ways – where now it is often interpreted as a sign of oppression, long ago it was seen as a tool of seduction. Next, Hamad exposes the tragic story of the real-life Pocahauntus, which was then appropriated into a Disney princess tale. Hamad argues that this narrative of Indigenous women as animalistic, “one with nature”, and hypersexual, is a contributing factor to the overrepresentation of murdered and missing Indigenous women. Finally, she unpacks Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, which depicts the China Doll as submissive and docile, only deserving of the white man’s affection on a temporary basis while he searches for the perfect white wife. This chapter demonstrates how women have colour have all been exoticized and hyper-sexualized, though in unique and nuanced ways.
Drawing upon many of the examples from the previous chapter, here Hamad examines how the anger of women of colour is manipulated and dismissed. She opens with the example of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who faced ongoing criticism both from fellow members of Congress in both parties, ultimately being painted as the "quintessential Angry Brown Woman". Hamad then expands on the Angry Brown Woman, the Angry Sapphire, Dragon Lady, and Spicy Sexpot stereotypes, arguing that in many cases these are used to diminish real expressions of anger in the face of systemic injustices. She then charts the development of these stereotypes through popular media as responses to challenges of White Supremacy, ranging from the Chiquita Banana advertisements to ongoing TV shows. Hamad also discusses another stereotype that afflicts Indigenous women – The Sq*w, which means “vagina” in Algonquin. Thousands of place names in the United States contain this word and it has been a challenge to get these names changed. Arab women have not been spared from these contradictory stereotypes, either. While at one point the veil was seen as a tool of seduction, now it is perceived as a symbol of repression. The chapter closes with a discussion of how white supremacy has imposed a binary perception of humanity, not just when it comes to race, but also when it comes to gender. Indeed, what it means to be “man” or “woman” is often synonymous for what it means to be white.
Hamad starts this chapter by telling a story about a white woman, Mrs. Cromer, who was a British colonizer in what was then Southern Rhodesia (now part of Zimbabwe). She had a love affair with a Black man, Alukuleta, who was one of her servants, and when it was discovered, she decided to claim that it was rape to save her own reputation even though he could be given the death sentence. In the rest of this chapter, Hamad shares stories of many cases of assault by Black men against white women in Southern Rhodesia, the United States, and Papua, where the court systems enthusiastically doled out harsh sentences with thin or shaky (or made-up) evidence. However, in some rare cases, the status and perceived respectability of the women played a large part in the sentencing - being a single mother, having financial independence, or consuming alcohol were all factors that led to cases being thrown out. Hamad asserts that the role of these trials was both for maintaining white authority as well as controlling the behaviour of women. Ida B. Wells, a pioneering Black female journalist, made the argument that lynching of Black men and the rape of Black women by white men were tools of terrorization with the goal to assert control and attain submission of the Black population. Hamad then speaks about the ways the model of White Womanhood was critiqued through the words of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Harper spoke about the ways the suffragists were simultaneously arguing for their own rights while remaining complicit in the oppression of black women, which Hamad compares to the modern push for female CEOs or presidents without addressing root systemic inequalities. Hamad further compares past discourse of innocence and virtue to the words of politicians like Donald Trump in regards to the migrant caravan or the ongoing examples of white women in apparent distress calling the police on black people. This, Hamad argues, demonstrates how white women are strategically using their privileged positions to further dominate people of colour.
Hamad begins the chapter by describing an online interaction between two women who are both academics. The white woman, a history professor named Mary Beard minimized the accusations of abuse by Oxfam staff in Haiti by claiming that it must be difficult to "sustain 'civilized' values in a disaster zone." Her colleague, a POC and professor of post-colonial studies named Priyamvada Gopal, called her out in a post on Medium. Beard reacted to this criticism by posting a picture of herself crying and a statement claiming that she's "not the nasty colonialist you think I am", to which she received more criticism from Black and Brown women academics for wrapping her tears and many other white women who came to her defense. She goes on to talk about other examples of how white women can become defensive when criticized for their racism, derailing the conversations and centering themselves and their own comfort. One such example was a Palestinian Canadian woman named Zeina who worked at Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) another was a woman named Kristina who worked at an NGO in Turkey, and a third was a woman named Rashida who also works in the non-profit sector. All of them experienced white women wielding their hurt feelings as a weapon, resulting in two of them leaving their jobs and one ending a friendship. Even though women of colour attempt to engage in dialogue about harmful behaviours in a calm and respectful manner, they are called aggressive, toxic, and/or divisive. This is called strategic White Womanhood, which is different from other concepts such as toxic masculinity. Strategic White Womanhood brings political conversations into a personal realm; it empowers white women at the expense of women of colour. This White Womanhood is asserted and maintained through biopolitics, maintaining White dominance over the society. Within this system, White women are expected to express and draw attention to their emotions, leaving white men to think and act. Moreover, biopolitics pits people of colour against each other. Ultimately, White Womanhood is “power pretending to be powerless” (p.132), and Western feminism fails to address this issue.
This chapter parses out the phrases “White Womanhood”, ‘‘maternal colonialism”, and “maternal imperialism”, which effectively encapsulate horrific events. The first recounts the Brett Kavanaugh case, in which Christine Blasey Ford received backlash, largely from other white women, for testifying against him. These groups of white women showing support for Kavanaugh are used as an example of White Womanhood, where “the role of the woman is to smooth ‘over the flow of sensation and feeling that makes up the public sphere, ensuring that white men…are susceptible only to further progress’” (p. 138). This chapter also recounts settler-colonial history in which women such as Helen Gibson Stockdell, Estelle Reel, and Annie Lock played large roles in the violent removal of Indigenous children from their families. The chapter mentions an important symbol of resistance, Zitkala-Sa, who was a Nakota Sioux writer, poet, and activist, who wrote powerful works about the horrors and aftermath of “maternal colonialism”. Rahaf Mohammed is a key example of the third phrase “maternal imperialism”, i.e. white supremacy in action. The media coverage of her case as a ‘call for help from a country that seemingly doesn’t respect women and girls’ was in fact a brave act to seek asylum from the guardianship system in Saudi Arabia. This quote sums up Mohammed’s case in a nutshell: “It is most audacious: the West helps make the Saudi government’s draconian rule possible and then generously ‘saves’ one Saudi woman from this very oppression, using white women as its mouthpiece” (p. 150). The remainder of the chapter delves into oppression and white supremacy; the history of white women as co-conspirators in the suffragette movement, as mistresses i.e. slave owners who were women, as members of the KKK (and WKKK), and in the eugenics movement.
Early in the chapter, it speaks to major steps in Arab representation in films such as Aladdin and Bohemian Rhapsody and the disparity in the way this news was portrayed and received in social media in comparison to the announcement of a white female role casting for Doctor Who, as well as (white) feminists’ critical acclaim of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. These are used as examples of how feminism largely centers white, middle-class women and the importance of representation and its effect on social progress. The chapter builds on this through the description of Hilary Clinton’s actions as secretary of state during Barack Obama’s first term: her support of the Iraq War, evidence of an Orientalist attitude through her verbal remarks, and disregard for the suffering of Iranian and Palestinian civilians. Hamad refers to how her own actions at the time–her appeals to feminists to “temper their rhetoric away from excited declarations that a Clinton victory would be a win for the rights of all women…and to cease dismissing any critique of Clinton as inherently sexist”–were in vain, demonstrating that the oppression of women is not solely informed by an oppression of gender but also by colonization and imperialism. Effectually, IBPOC women’s valid concerns towards Hilary Clinton were seen as anti-feminist, 'hindering a woman from winning the election'. This rhetoric continued even during the 2020 US Elections. Mainstream feminism claims to be accepting of intersectionality, but in reality, it weaponizes the term by using it to dismiss legitimate concerns from IBPOC women. Hamad also shows that white feminism is also very prevalent in workplaces. In recent years, white women are slowly making their way up to managerial positions, but they have not been using the newfound power to dismantle barriers against IBPOC women. Ultimately, white women are not being held accountable for their actions, which in turn disempower and silence IBPOC women.
Hamad opens the chapter by explaining what she means by the Lovejoy Trap. It is an ethical bait and switch used to neutralize someone who is challenging the status quo that upholds a racist system by first distracting from the issue at hand and then using a victim figure to question the morality of the challenger. Hamad describes the beginnings of the Children’s Aid Society that saw one hundred thousand children from the Lower East Side of New York City shipped west to be labourers; any challengers of this project were criticized of “not caring about lifting the kids out of poverty”. She goes on to discuss how solidarity between impoverished whites and POC could have the potential of dismantling white supremacy, but that the illusion of the potential of power for white people (if they just work hard enough to pull themselves from poverty) and its weaponization by those who already hold power neutralizes this possibility. Hamad then links this to her concept of Classwashing, which claims that either racism doesn’t exist in the lower strata of our society or, if it does, it is not their fault but the fault of being disenfranchised or uneducated. The accusation that identity politics, or talking about racism or sexism and their intersections, divides the left and is the reason why it is not successful is how white “progressives” silence the discourse of IBPOC women (and almost succeeded in silencing this author). Hamad goes on to connect the Lovejoy Trap to the rhetoric of western governments to justify military interventions in the Middle East, while also drawing attention to the prevelence of sexual crimes both by and within military forces. Drawing on examples from previous chapters, she notes how the few sexual crimes that are persecuted are almost universally committed by men of colour, while those committed by white men are left ambiguous or ignored. Hamad closes the chapter by noting how often people of colour are used as a wedge, noting how immigrants are 'promised' mandatory acceptance and assimilation while excluded from positions of power.
Hamad begins with a childhood anecdote on internalized white supremacy and colorism within her own family, moving on to describe how pervasive these sentiments are historically across various cultural groups. At the same time, she debunks some personal false beliefs about colorism within certain cultures and highlights the cosmetic industry’s marketing of skin lightening products and its continued impact in the present day. Later in the chapter, Hamad discusses the lasting effects of the transatlantic slave trade, highlighting how the economic and racial demand of slavery in America was a separating factor from slavery in Europe. Additionally, she highlights how white people adopted the identity of slave owners, hinging on white supremacy. When the Emancipation Proclamation took place, many white slave owning women were hysterical over the threat it posed to their wealth and livelihood- taking drastic measures to avoid the liberation of their slaves. Hamad also notes that the association of slavery with blackness is perpetuated in the Middle East as well as the West, using examples such as Black Pete and Haji Firuz. Lastly, she discusses how passing as white and internalized racism impact People of Colour.
The conclusion opens with Lisa Benson's case against KSHB-TV Channel 41. Her contract was terminated following a Facebook post she shared of Hamad's article, or, as referred to in court, "an attack on white women". Hamad then recounts some key points made throughout the book on race, racism, White Womanhood, i.e. "the maternal arm of empire" (p.235), and White society. Hamad makes connections between characteristics of narcissism and folks upholding whiteness, quoting professor and author Gloria Wekker's work which states that "white society is incapable of admitting to its own atrocities so it consistently seeks to exonerate itself by projecting the blame onto its victims, and this often happens...subconscious[ly]...[a] dissonance between reality and perception" (p. 241). Hamad continues, saying that throughout history white women have consistently failed to demonstrate solidarity with women of colour, instead joining white men in positions of power. She provides several examples of white women in positions of power within government agencies and corporations, yet there remains entrenched stereotypes about women of colour. The chapter concludes by drawing a link between whiteness and the impending climate crisis and argues that much of what we see as draconian and/or economically backwards regimes have their roots in western imperialism. Hamad closes by speaking to the importance of returning to a way of thinking that is integrated within the local environment.
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