And that means severing themselves from their historical and emotional attachment to inherent innocence and goodness. I know what is in my heart and I know that I don’t think anyone is different, better or worse based on the colour of their skin,’ her voice cracked.

But for the first time in my career, and on the piece where I had perhaps least expected it, the positive response tipped the balance and shouted down the very loud, very outraged and very numerous haters. Raelee Lancaster in The Saturday Paper praises Hamad as she “challenges society to face the discrimination it has normalised, and to commit to a future where white women let go of their privilege and stand with women of colour. And until we all do the work of unlearning racism, people of colour will continue to suffer and die.White women told me they had seen this very thing happen too many times; some told me they were ashamed to say that they themselves were guilty of it. Even before the pandemic, I was becoming increasingly aware of and concerned about growing inequality in Australia. The fear of Black Peril—the name whites gave to the specter of black male sexual desire for white women—was so wildly disproportionate to the actual threat that historians now regard it as a kind of psychopathology. From colonialism to the election of Donald Trump, Hamad takes a closer look at how White women’s performance of victimhood keeps White male patriarchy in place.

Most devastating is when this happens in interactions with white women, often women they consider friends or at least friendly. Greetings and welcome to the publisher’s office for a brief visit into the world of Penguin Classics where our editorial team shares some insight into our daily lives through classics. As the Black Lives Matter movement and conversations about anti-racism gain momentum worldwide, White Tears/Brown Scars as well as Ruby Hamad’s work in journalism have attracted international attention. Despite Christine Blasey Ford’s tearful recollection of Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault, he was sworn in. In this context, their tearful displays are a form of emotional and psychological violence that reinforce the very system of white dominance that many white women claim to oppose.

Discussing subjects as varied as The Hunger Games, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the viral BBQ Becky video, and 19th century lynchings of Mexicans in the American Southwest, Ruby Hamad undertakes a new investigation of gender and race. It has been so common for so long for people of colour to tiptoe around the feelings of white people that, until relatively recently, it was barely ever commented on in the mainstream.

I have minor issues with the consistency of the book, since not all chapters were as strong as others.In a similar vein, bell hooks notes that although white American men in that era appeared to revere the virtue of white women, they didn’t seem to like them very much. White women share the same racial characteristics as white men and so are more easily able to transcend gender-based oppression. A white man raping a white woman is not a threat to white male power, and if it destroys or threatens to destroy the woman’s life, then so be it. Highly anecdotal – full of first-person accounts based on exhaustive reporting – but also meticulously cited, the essays outline how this tactical effect upholds the status quo of white privilege and power, and its global and social ramifications.

What I did not predict was that the backlash would be global and would even rouse the ire of prominent conservatives, such as Jordan Peterson. For all the “I’m With Her” and “The Future Is Female” high-fiving floating around, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that merely having more white women in powerful positions isn’t going to result in a more just and equitable world.

Their proximity to white men gives them, as Lorde pointed out, access to rewards for identifying with patriarchy when it suits them. White women can dry their tears and join us, or they can continue on the path of the damsel—a path that leads not toward the light of liberation but only into the dead end of the colonial past. White women’s “care” and commitment to Western notions of civility helmed the mass removal of Indigenous children from their communities in Australia and North America from 1880 to 1940. Catalysed by Hamad’s viral 2018 Guardian article, “How white women use strategic tears to silence women of colour,” White Tears/Brown Scars posits that White women’s tears signal power, not weakness. It clearly explores the power dynamics between white women and women of colour, and how white women often weaponise themselves and their tears.