White feminists must forfeit group privilege to earn black women’s trust

Evidence

Even though practically every black woman active in any aspect of feminist movement has a long record of horror stories documenting the insensitivity and racist aggression of individual white women, we can testify as well to those encounters that are positive, that enrich rather than diminish. Granted, such encounters are rare. They tend to take place with white women who are not in positions where they can assert power (which may be why these are seen as exceptional rather than as positive signs indicating the overall potential for growth and change, for greater togetherness). Perhaps we need to examine the degree to which white women (and all women) who assume powerful positions rely on conventional paradigms of domination to reinforce and maintain that power. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 201 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

One white woman said that she starts from the standpoint of accepting and acknowledging that “white people always have racist assumptions that we have to deal with.” Readiness to deal with these assumptions certainly makes forming ties with nonwhite women easier. She suggests that the degree to which a white woman can accept the truth of racist oppression— of white female complicity, of the privileges white women receive in a racist structure— determines the extent to which they can be empathic with women of color. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 202 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Guilt about group privilege may both require and discourage White identity — Janet K. Swim and Deborah L. Miller, White Guilt: Its Antecedents and…, 31; Empathy toward women of color requires white women accepting racist complicity. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 202; White refusal to yield privilege demands radical black action rather than patience (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Positive cross-race feminist encounters occur mainly where white women lack power over black women #corroborates (0.88) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 201
• Empathy toward women of color requires white women accepting racist complicity. #expands (0.85) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 202
• White refusal to yield privilege demands radical black action rather than patience #corroborates (0.83)
• Feminist politics must resist both white supremacy and patriarchy simultaneously #expands (0.79) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 363
• Guilt about group privilege may both require and discourage White identity #qualifies (0.75) — Janet K. Swim and Deborah L. Miller, White Guilt, 31
• Minority-group presumptions demand explicit respect from authority figures for institutional trust to form #expands (0.74) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1373
• Black women urged self-governed institutions rather than white-defined approbation #complicates (0.72) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 337
• Poor white Southerners harmed by white supremacy should not receive black reparations #complicates (0.72) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 552