Reviews with content warning for Sexism - White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color

Reviews tagging 'Sexism'

White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color by Ruby Hamad

42 reviews

jessthanthree's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative slow-paced

3.5

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tmchopra's review against another edition

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challenging informative medium-paced

4.0

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alyssa_s10's review against another edition

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informative fast-paced

5.0

This book was a very informative read. The authors do a great job in exposing the ways in which white feminism has historically excluded and silenced women of color. This book made me take a real note of the privilege I have as a white woman. Highly recommend!

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fkshg8465's review against another edition

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emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

Some things you can’t unsee, and this book, you can’t unknow. Would’ve given it five stars except she lost me at the very end when one of the paragraphs came off way too reductive (e.g., blaming colonialism for homosexuality - totally lost me and her credibility, momentarily, on that one given homosexuality has been around since probably Adam and Eve). Otherwise, a deeply profound and compelling book stacked and supported by a ton of research, all fully documented with footnotes and a long bibliography. Lots to be learned here and great antiracism material for discussion and debate. The big question is who is courageous enough to be “woke” enough to listen and wrestle with all she has provided. I beg all people to listen (with the exception of that one paragraph I mentioned). Listening might save our planet and our species!

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unsuccessfulbookclub's review against another edition

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challenging informative fast-paced

4.25

In White Tears/Brown Scars, Ruby Hamad investigates and elaborates on how white feminism has hurt and continues to hurt BIPOC the world over. Ahmad’s particularly compelling argument is that white women have simultaneously played both damsels in distress and arbiters of power since European colonialism began. A microcosm of this behavior is regularly captured in videos of white women who start confrontations with BIPOC as aggressors (calling the cops on people having a barbecue, for instance) and end the video in tears, claiming they are being threatened. The key takeaway for me here is that *this is not new behavior* and white women, historically, have clung to power first (through whiteness) and called on the “sisterhood” of feminism only when it benefitted their proximity to power. I have personally witnessed behavior like this many times and as a young person, was absolutely socialized to use my tears as a weapon. It’s something I continue to work hard to unlearn.

I enjoyed Hamad’s more global perspective. Most of the books I have read on racial and social justice have been centered on US problems and examples, so Ruby’s Australian voice was welcome. My biggest critique of this book is Hamad’s multiple references to Robin D’Angelo, who has shown herself to be pretty problematic, but on balance they’re not a deal breaker for recommending the rest of the book.

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