A Series on Continuous Improvements: Episode 1
Contextualising my experiences with white feminism, starting with White Tears, Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad
A Series of Continuous Improvement is a series of essays I use to explore how to learn further and apply theories that help me become a more informed and understanding person, feminist, and activist.
I began reading White Tears, Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad in a fit of rage. My emotions running high from feeling I was mad for noticing certain patterns in my life, I was told by my sisters of colour that this book would bring some much-needed vindication. Feeling like you are not alone is a powerful thing.
The book opens with a tale I have corporate nightmares of. A woman of colour on the other side of the world shared the author’s article in her private Facebook page, and was fired shortly thereafter for ‘creating a hostile working environment based on race and gender’. I am certainly strong enough in my views, if by strong I mean expressing more than a passing sentiment.
One can argue all they want that if one should get fired for being a Nazi, surely espousing any belief on your private social media channels should also be a terminable offense. To that I say: one set of beliefs champions mass death. The other just wants to survive.
I both empathised and felt horrified by Chapter 3: Only White Women Can Be Damsels in Distress. Although it is difficult to pinpoint the origins of the trope, the book does go into detail on how the fetishisation and infantilisation of women of colour does the same for white women. As a South East Asian woman by phenotype, I fall into the petite, dainty, submissive stereotype. Is that the way I am perceived at first, without calling out their biases? How many people have been surprised when I have been more like Beatrice rather than Hero?
About halfway through the book, on my morning commute, I read this and thought, ‘ah, there it is’:
Meanwhile, women of color have to not only battle white patriarchy and that of their own culture, but must also contend with colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, and other forms of racism. Given white women have never had to deal with racial and colonial oppression, it is not surprising-though it is certainly regrettable— that so many of them still regard feminism as a movement purely concerned with gender, leaving racialized women to keep trying to draw their attention to the ways in which various oppressions affect our lives.
In a nutshell, this quote is why I am so deeply frustrated with so many feminist movements and networks. The layperson’s understanding is that everyone is fighting for their own, separate, standalone rights. I can’t help but think of the Rebel squabbles on the second season of Andor, never agreeing on who the leader was for a solid thirty minutes on my screen.
In reality, this is all the same fight.
The book also touches on righteous racism, how it had a hand in Jeremy Corbyn’s downfall in 2019 - I might not be able to vote, but I can complain that we never saw his appointment as Prime Minister - but also the role of Western political and military intervention. I am reading a book on exactly this in my home country of Indonesia, so the introductory nature of it did not faze me. I would be intrigued by how someone less aware of its impacts would receive it.
And finally, I hit it. The thing that enrages me thoroughly, and encapsulates so perfectly the rationale behind my first Substack post:
Immigrants are given promises of acceptance and assimilation that come with implicit and sometimes explicit threats of ostracism if we don't comply. At the same time, we remain excluded from the inner circle as the lack of people of color in leadership positions attests. This "two birds with one stone" approach is just one of the ways in which white domination maintains itself. What is saddening is how often and how deeply people of color buy into it. Across the world, whiteness has become so attached to the symbols of privilege, wealth, and status that it no longer even needs European-derived white people themselves to perpetuate it.
Fresh off reading In Defence of Barbarism by Louisa Yousfi, it felt crystal clear to me how the modern workplace and social scene continue to perpetuate the values traditionally valued in white, Western men: stoicism, listening to who shouts the loudest, and almost all social gatherings being inextricably linked to alcohol as the more you can drink, the more of a man you are.
The fact that I am good at humanising is my USP as an employee. I have always respected thoughtful, considered words and actions over those crying wolf: highly ironic in my pastime as a firecracker, but reflective of my culture. Asking the quiet ones for their opinion and including them in the conversation in a way that made them feel comfortable had always been common sense.
And I haven’t gotten into dress sense or how you’re perceived. Skin colour and Eurocentric beauty standards aside, I wear batik as a badge of honour. As far as I see, bar the Scottish kilt, I have yet to see many others wear their traditional clothing at work. Some of them are highly impractical, but surely some components can be mixed and matched as many cultures hurtle towards globalisation and adapt?
I am not going to say that this book was perfect in its portrayal: I did wish it went a little bit deeper, but then again, it is a contemporary non-fiction book sitting at 250 pages exclusive of bibliography. As a reader, I commend how readable it is, how visceral my emotional reactions were. Hamad does a great job in creating a version of white feminism you can stomach: a feat for a lead-weight topic.
For those who want to start unpacking their beliefs, this book provides a comprehensive start. As with all things, don’t rely on one source as truth. Use this book to help gain your bearings. From there, it’s up to you to chart your course to becoming a more inclusive feminist.