Using ‘women’ for white women alone perpetuates both racism and sexism.

Evidence

Throughout American history, the racial imperialism of whites has supported the custom of scholars using the term “women” even if they are referring solely to the experience of white women. Yet such a custom, whether practiced consciously or unconsciously, perpetuates racism in that it denies the existence of non-white women in America. It also perpetuates sexism in that it assumes that sexuality is the sole self-defining trait of white women and denies their racial identity. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 38

Categorization

• XREF: Prefigures intersectionality and analyses of how universal categories erase specificity. — connects to: A racist and classist feminism merely perpetuates women’s bondage to patriarchy. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 457; The women-and-blacks analogy erased black women by equating women with whites

Related

• The women-and-blacks analogy erased black women by equating women with whites (similarity 0.87)
• The women-blacks analogy depends on erasing black women’s existence. (similarity 0.86)
• A racist and classist feminism merely perpetuates women’s bondage to patriarchy. (similarity 0.86)
• White women’s linguistic erasure of black women served their own political interests (similarity 0.85)
• American women perpetuate the very racism and sexism that oppress them (similarity 0.84)
• White feminists excluded black women by analogy rather than overt discrimination (similarity 0.84)
• White women hold privileges exceeding all US groups except white men. (similarity 0.83)
• White feminists dismissed black women’s attention to racial difference (similarity 0.83)
• White men created the race-sex hierarchy that black men accept and support. (similarity 0.83)
• Racial imperialism let white women act as oppressors of black people despite sexism (similarity 0.82)
• Adopting feminist rhetoric did not free white feminists from sexist-racist attitudes. (similarity 0.82)
• Racist, sexist socialization conditioned black women to devalue femaleness and identify only with race (similarity 0.82)
• Black women’s exploitation is better described as masculinization than black men’s de-masculinization. (similarity 0.81)
• Black men’s inter-racial choices reveal sexist double standards against black women. (similarity 0.81)
• White-scholarship findings about women workers were misapplied to Black women (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• The women-and-blacks analogy erased black women by equating women with whites #expands (0.70)