Feminists Talk Whiteness offers a multidimensional introduction to whiteness as an ideology and a system of institutional practices, exploring how and why whiteness is a feminist issue. It will work well as a main or companion text in courses in Womens, Gender, and Feminist Studies.
Feminists Talk Whiteness offers a multidimensional introduction to whiteness as an ideology and a system of institutional practices, exploring how and why whiteness is a feminist issue.
Readers will gain insights and strategies for action from the chapters and poems, which approach whiteness through multiple perspectives and disciplinary approaches. The contents are organized into sections on history, theory and self-reflection, and antiracist praxis. Each section includes suggested questions for writing or discussion, as well as varied activitiesfrom quick research to community action.
Feminists Talk Whiteness is for college students, community groups, and book clubs studying whiteness and antiracism. It will work well as a main or companion text in courses in womens, gender, and feminist studies, as well as other courses across the humanities and social sciences.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Facing the dragon
LeighAnne Francis and Janet Gray
PART I
Histories and counterstories 17
1 Strategic white womanhood: Challenging white feminist perceptions of
Karen
Ruby Hamad
2 White womens participation in the attempted genocide of Native American
peoples
Karla J. Strand
3 White women as white supremacist political actors: From the suffragists to
the Karens
Christina Cavener
4 The good, the bad, and the indifferent: The political pedagogy of Frances
Ellen Watkins Harper
Leslie K. Dunlap
5 The unbearable whiteness of lesbian studies
Stephanie Andrea Allen
6 bell hooks: Black indigeneity, ancestral memory, and lessons on resistance
Reanae McNeal
Poem: La sangre llama
Denise Zubizarreta
Questions, activities, and resources
PART II
Theory and selfreflection
7 On white privilege and anesthesia: Why does Peggy McIntoshs knapsack feel
weightless?
Alison Bailey
8 Fear, loathing, and las whiteness: Whiteness as fearfulness
Andrea Dionne Warmack
9 Academic survival: Troubling the tensions between race, gender, and class
in a predominantly white academic institution
Carolyn Tinglin
10 Colorism in the Latina community: The internalization of racialized
sexism
Melissa K. Ochoa
11 Feminists talk whiteness: Disrupting the grip of white supremacy culture
on feminist movement building
Ann Russo
12 Beyond choice: A dialogue on the whiteness of liberal feminism and
reimagining freedom beyond individual choice
Houda Ali and Britt Munro
Poem: Amazing Grace (For the children of John Newton)
Liseli A. Fitzpatrick
Poem: My body is a river
Rachel OHanlonodriguez
Poem: What chou mean we, white girl, revisited
Becky Thompson
Questions, activities, and resources
PART III
Feminist antiracism praxis 229
13 From performing equity to loving equity: Combating whiteness in emerging
allyship movements
Meena Mangat
14 The allys tools: Racialized power and privilege within the antiracist
praxis
Samantha L. Vandermeade
15 Whiteness and indigeneity: Feminism as a settler colonial discourse
Ruth Alminas and Cory Pillen
16 Teaching transgender studies: Experiential knowledge and race
Dana T. Ahern
17 Shame work: Reducing supremacy and the violence of white men
Cameron Rasmussen
18 Like, share, tweet: Antiracist cyberactivism vs. performative slacktivism
Sara Blanchard and Misasha Suzuki Graham
19 Making mistakes: A conversation
Peggy Diggs and Lucy R. Lippard
Poem: and i am sorry
Anaļs Peterson
Poem: White me: A check list
Ivy T. Schweitzer
Poem: Miranda Waiver for white people
Becky Thompson
Questions, activities, and resources
Index
Leigh-Anne Francis is a Black queer associate professor of womens, gender, and sexuality studies and African American studies at The College of New Jersey. Her publications examine Black women and the carceral state, queer and trans people of color, and the continuum of subaltern resistive strategies in US history.
Janet Gray is a white professor emerita of womens, gender, and sexuality studies at The College of New Jersey. She has published on whiteness in nineteenth-century American womens poetry and on the convergences of feminist, peace, and environmental studies.
