White Tears/Brown Scars

4,5 out of 5

My summer job and the associated hour-long bus commute each way gave me ample time to finally read this book, and I'm so glad I did. Didn't know what to expect, but I ended up learning so much and getting plenty food for thought. White Tears/Brown Scars traces a line from a historical depiction of white women as innocent and virtuous people who frequently also played the role of the 'damsel in distress', to today's world where they use this image to avoid criticism and help uphold white supremacy. The author even uses 'white tearing' as a verb, as in, 'I was white teared today when I tried to bring up racism in my workplace to my female colleague'.

Women of colour are of course awarded no similar leniency and are...

...rarely given the benefit of the doubt, and even more rarely considered worthy of sympathy or support. If we are angry, it's because we are bullies. If we are poised, it is because we lack emotion. If we are emotional, it is because we are less rational human and more primitive animal.

It also mentions how they were/are frequently put into stereotypes like Angry Arabs, Dragon Ladies, etc.

It details how the idea of the 'damsel in distress' and the need to protect white women was used as an excuse to lynch black men, with false accusations of sexual assault being common. Not only white women needed protecting, though, there's also the prevalent idea of 'saving' coloured children from their primitive parents to give them a civilized upbringing. We see this idea even today, with white women from Western aid organizations posing for photos with black babies in their arms.

The book also discusses how women who finally attained voting rights, and fought their way into positions of power, would 'pull up the ladder behind them' and transform spaces of power from 'male spaces' to 'white spaces', by shutting out women of colour instead of including them, essentially joining forces with white men to act as their 'second in command'. They use the idea of a global 'sisterhood' to silence and white tear attempts at discussion about racism, asking women of colour to not be divisive so that feminists can work together for gender equality.

It also goes into detail on how white women have, throughout Western history, played a central role in expanding and perpetuating colonialism, by taking responsibility for raising kidnapped native children and, in America's case, to owning and disciplining the slave population. We learn how even non-white countries today suffer from 'colourism', where having brighter skin awards higher status, and that this is in fact a byproduct of white colonialism where the bright-skinned colonizers oppressed the darker-skinned native population.

In short, I highly recommend this book to everyone. I didn't agree with all of it (of course), and in some places it basically preaches to the choir, but it's still so chock-full of facts and has so much food for thought that it's highly worth a read. I've rarely dog-eared so many pages in a book I've read.