White Feminism

The ugly fact about the movement toward gender equality is that feminism as a movement has a history of being racist. White Feminism brilliantly addresses these issues. I was first introduced to this book when Feminist Book Club did a podcast episode interviewing Koa Beck about her experience writing this book. I was blown away by her perspectives and was excited to obtain a copy of her book.

 Beck unpacks so many aspects of the racism in contemporary feminism with a lot of substantial research. One of the examples of issues that are discussed in depth was regarding how the protests that occurred after Trump was elected to office were stressing that protests were for women’s issues only…which was quite detrimental to women of color and non-gender conforming women.  Another issue that is explored was ow the popular book Lean In had tips that were quite elitist that women of color were disproportionally unable to take advantage of.  These facts and many more were very well supported with a wide variety of resources that were cited with a meaty bibliography. The result of this was tat for a reader like me who likes to track down books that sound interesting in other books was that my TBR list expanded.    

I also really appreciate how this book unearths the downfalls of having an individualistic capitalistic approach to feminism. It ends with a call to collective action. I appreciate this; however, I would have liked a few tips as to where to start on the collective action in the end so that it does not just seem like an idea, but rather as having something practical to work towards.  The author does acknowledge that this is not something that should be dealt with on an individual basis only, but having suggestions about organizations to get involved with and/or tips on how to deal with this more directly in work situations would have made it more practical.  Despite this criticism, I can’t recommend this book enough for really examining the paradigm around feminism.  Reading this book was eye opening and thought provoking. I would strongly suggest getting your hands on a copy of this book and then setting down to allow yourself to get uncomfortable about what needs to change for feminism to truly be about equality for all people.

I am also posting my review on Goodreads.