Confronting White Womanhood:

“It’s time that we stop the white womanhood and move forward to sisterhood” - Rhiannon Childs

Last weekend, I was fortunate enough to attend the Women’s Convention on Friday. One of the most popular sessions was entitled “Confronting White Womanhood.” The room was overflowing with women standing in the corners and sitting in the aisle just to be a part of the discussion. Unfortunately, many were unable to attend because of space limitations, but they were able to create a second session dedicated to it. The description for this seminar read:

For centuries, violence has been done in the name of – and even physically enacted by – white women. While all people are welcome to attend, this workshop is designed for white women committed to being a part of an intersectional feminist movement to unpack the ways white women uphold and benefit from white supremacy. The workshop will include personal story-sharing, vulnerable discussions about complicity, and empower attendees to disrupt white supremacy from within their own communities (Women’s Convention).

Speakers - Sophie Ellman-Golan, Rhiannon Childs, and Heather Marie Scholl gave accounts of their experiences and, also, gave a brief history of how white womanhood has been harmful to communities of color in the past. One horrific example they cited was the case of Emmet Till, a 14 year old African American boy who was tortured and murdered in Mississippi in 1955 after a white woman named Carolyn Bryant told people he sexually harassed her. This year, after every member of his family had died and when she, herself, was on her deathbed, she admitted to lying about it (New York Times).

Yet, the most deceptive form of violence, does not appear to be violence at all – in fact, it would seem to be quite the opposite. The terminology of the cult of true womanhood or white womanhood originated in the 19^th century and focused on family life (though the philosophy existed long before then). The most prized virtues within this ideology were piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. These typically originated from an enforcement of a distorted Christianity which justified inequality of the genders. In turn, this religious fervor extended to forcing Native Americans to convert after their communities had been demolished, and their land had been taken, and even justified kidnapping and enslaving African Americans.

One of the most important takeaways for myself was acknowledging the “white saviorism” ideology that I enact. On Everyday Feminism, Celia Edell describes this phenomenon as racializing “morality by making us consistently identify with the good white person saving the non-white people... It also frames people of color as being unable to solve their own problems. It implies that they always need saving, and that white people are the only ones competent enough to save them. This is very obviously untrue, and it’s a harmful message to relay.” Examples of this happen when mission trip photos with children of color flood a white person’s social media. And although I have not done this, it is only because I never had the opportunity to. I would have easily been one of those people if I could have raised the money to go on one of those trips in the first place.

The truth is that people of color are not one monolithic community, and more importantly they are not responsible for alleviating our white guilt. They have individual experiences and perspectives, but because they are not in the privileged, dominant community, they have only been given a single story: one that claims they are impoverished, incapable, and in need of rescue. While it may be true that poverty and world hunger are serious issues, we are quick to go and rescue those communities of color across the globe while simultaneously condemning communities of color at home right outside our neighborhoods labeling them as "less than" and "lazy."

Instead of bulldozing over the voices of those communities of color in Africa and in America, we (white people) need to stop and listen. Just listen to what their wants and desires and solutions are. We need to give them a platform to speak and support them as leaders of their communities. Support grassroot programs rather than treetop programs. Instead of being saviors, we need to be supporters.

(One easy step towards that is checking out the Black Lives Matter website. Even if initially, your gut reaction is to get defensive of either yourself or the police, take a moment to listen and read what they have to say. Instead of shutting down and ignoring their protests of injustice, listen to their stories and try to see it from their perspective.)