White women’s delayed acknowledgment of racism left black women feeling betrayed

Evidence

Yet there was no con current collective zeal to create a body of feminist scholarship that would address the specific realities of black women. Again and again black female activists, scholars, and writers found ourselves isolated within feminist movement and often the targets of misguided white women who were threatened by all attempts to deconstruct the category “woman” or to bring a discourse on race into feminist scholarship. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 222 (#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 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Women’s cross-race dialogue fails partly from internalized racist hopelessness; White feminists dismissed black women’s attention to racial difference; Black female rage toward white women masks sorrow over failed contact (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• White feminists dismissed black women’s attention to racial difference #corroborates (0.83)
• White feminists resisted deconstructing ‘woman’ to include race #corroborates (0.82) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 222
• Empathy toward women of color requires white women accepting racist complicity. #corroborates (0.80) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 202
• Black female rage toward white women masks sorrow over failed contact #expands (0.78)
• Black women faced pressure from both whites and blacks to separate racism from sexism #qualifies (0.74) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 46
• White women’s affection for black servants coexisted with status domination they denied #complicates (0.72) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 191