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

Taking us from the slave era, when white women fought in court to keep “ownership” of their slaves, through the centuries of colonialism, when they offered a soft face for brutal tactics, to the modern workplace, White Tears/Brown Scars tells a charged story of white women’s active participation in campaigns of oppression. Author Ruby Hamad undertakes a new investigation of gender and race, validating the experiences of women of color by discussing subjects as varied as The Hunger Games, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the viral BBQ Becky video, 19th century lynchings of Mexicans in the American Southwest, and more. Most importantly, she shows how the division between innocent white women and racialized, sexualized women of color was created, and why this division is crucial to confront. With rigor and precision, Hamad builds a powerful argument about the legacy of white superiority that we are socialized within—a reality that we must apprehend in order to fight.