A review by lucasunshine
Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism, and History by Vron Ware

challenging hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

Written in the 90s, this book is still pretty relevant today. It uses historical analysis of how white feminists in various eras in the UK interacted with race and class, especially race, to think about the issues facing feminism in the 90s (and today). If womanhood is not an immutable, unified category, how can feminists create solidarity? How can white women address the racism in their feminism? For anyone who has read critiques of contemporary white feminism a lot of Ware’s conclusions will be familiar. The most valuable part for a contemporary reader is probably the specificity with which she traces the historical roots of current issues. Ware is in conversation, explicitly or implicitly, with other important theorists and theories that emerged in the 90s such as Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, and Edward Said's Orientalism. My favorite part was the account of white British women  anti-lynching advocates , especially those who worked with Ida B. Wells.