White Tears/Brown Scars

Definitely more of a 4.5.

It's a new year and I have many arcs to read but as usual I'm in a horrible mood and don't wanna judge them harshly because I wasn't in the right headspace. So I turn to nonfiction because that seems to be the only genre I'm able to read these days. I've made a specific nonfiction tbr for this year with varied kinds of books, and this just happens to be the first one I managed to get from my library from that list. And it was as amazing as I thought it would be.

I remember getting it from the library once before, maybe a year or so ago but never did manage to get to it. But this time when I started it, I just couldn't stop. The author does a tremendous job making her points and in a way I wasn't expecting. From the title, I assumed that this book would be mostly contemporaneous but it's not just that.

The author starts off giving context why she wrote this book. But then the book details the historical origins of many racist/sexist tropes that have been used to always oppress women of color like Jezebels, Exotic orientals, angry sapphires, black velvets, dragon ladies and more. It was very eye opening to see how these historical terms still persist and are used to discriminate, if not by using the same words, atleast in the same spirit. And the author is very informative about how these harmful tropes are rooted both in white supremacy and patriarchy and how they can't be separated. We also get to know how femininity itself has been constructed over centuries in a way to put white women on a pedestal as damsels in distress and pure/innocent, while any woman of color was impure and not feminine and deserved to be

While the historical origins were interesting to know, it's how white women weaponize their tears and fears and femininity to silence Black and Brown women when any woman of color tries to talk about the oppression they are facing, was a very important revelation. The author lays out example after example of experiences of many women who have reached out to her, and incidents in the author's own life which show clearly how a white woman's pain at being maybe incidentally called a racist or oppressor is given more credence than the actual harm being perpetrated at women of color. It's a very clear throughline from the days of slavery to today and it's unbelievable but also inevitable in some ways.

Ultimately, what I appreciated was how the author lays out that any feminist movement or labor rights movement against classism will not work if race is not considered. Because race has been historically constructed for the explicit purpose of discrimination, and to divorce race from any conversations about misogyny or classism or rights of individuals is being disingenuous. It's a purposeful maneuver to ensure that racial discrimination continues and white supremacy cements its legacy. This is a very important book, especially if you are interested in what intersectional feminism actually means, and about how just using the words are not enough. It takes work to understand the role racial discrimination plays in every form of oppression and how it is about upholding white supremacy, and we are still just at beginning of understanding all this.