White Tears/Brown Scars

How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color

By: Ruby Hamad

Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò

Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

Called "powerful and provocative" by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, author of the New York Times best-selling How to Be an Antiracist, this explosive book of history and cultural criticism reveals how White feminism has been used as a weapon of white supremacy and patriarchy deployed against Black and Indigenous women and women of color.

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. It offers a long overdue validation of the experiences of women of color.

Discussing subjects as varied as The Hunger Games, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the viral BBQ Becky video, and 19th-century lynchings of Mexicans in the American Southwest, Ruby Hamad undertakes a new investigation of gender and race. 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.

Along the way, there are revelatory responses to questions like: Why are White men not troubled by sexual assault on women? (See Christine Blasey Ford.) 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.

©2020 Ruby Hamad (P)2020 Random House Audio

Expertly narrated and important book

Highly recommend. I appreciated the narrator’s skill and clear voice. The lessons in this book are important.

A must read for all White Women

Excellent read and breakdown of colonial history and its influence on how we view and interact with Brown women. Will be loaning to all my friends to read and will hear echoes of Ruby’s words daily going forward.

How White tears Betrays Women of color

Another great 📚. Ruby highlights how dangerous the white woman is. Historically how she kept to keep her spot next to the white man no what. How the damsel in distress is a power tactic that works every time, cue the tears and they'll be sure to change the narrative every single time. She brings up situation after situation, where it indeed worked despite lies or proof, to include Emmett Till's murder and BBQ Becky. The title is fitting, and unfortunately true. When white women cry, there's a Black or Brown person who gets a scary behind it. Why the need to rush to their aid when the sight of tears is baffling, when 9 times out of 10 they're not the victim but the preportrator? There's even a challenge going around on tick tok where they show how fast they can cry and stop and smile. DANGEROUS 😳. Very informative, just read the book you won't regret it. #Book12of2022 #Bookworm #Whatsnext

Liberation for all

Great book, lots of research, examples, and clear explanations. Allows the reader to understand her points. Recommend for all white women esp during this current genocide

A must read for all people

This book is eye-opening. It reveals and sheds light on things known to many minorities and POC. Challenge yourself and change the narrative. Please read this book!

Excellently Excoriating

I am a white woman. Ruby Hamad’s book is a necessary examination of historical + current oppression. It invites and requires personal reflection, and challenges me to constantly monitor and evaluate my motives + actions.

Read!

Every person who wants to learn, who knows and needs to do better needs to read this book! It is heartbreaking, captivating and essential to understanding biases we carry. Thank you, Ruby Hamad, for your words and your voice!

So important if you’re a white ally

If you’re like me and really want a more equitable world but often don’t know where to start or feel like there’s so much context you’re missing: this book is it. Succinct, explicit and broken down clearly, and the narrator is great too. Some of it is overwhelming but the slowing the speed down to 0.8 or 0.9 was perfect for those moments

Though provoking and Important

This book is very well constructed and throughout the book the author draws on lots of historical resources and clearly articulated her thought process and conclusions regarding white women’s pivotal role in colonialism and upholding the patriarchy. That being said, the clear and systematic way the author laid out her ideas and sources was key in how she conveys her argument: so I was a bit surprised how in the conclusion of the book the author chooses to focus on environmental colonialism (mostly because it was really not a major point of her book thus far at all and seemed to be newly introduced in the conclusion) amongst other things, and relies mostly on conjecture and doesn’t lay out her argument with the same academic rigor that was present throughout the entire book.

That’s not to say I disagree with most of her statements in the conclusion, it’s just that it was a stark difference from the previous 90% of the book. It was just a very jarring change to bring up topics that were at best tangentially mentioned earlier in the book and then the latter half of the conclusion is devoted to them.

Overall it was a very good book, and the author draws on sources from the United States as well as Australia, amongst other places, and the sources from Australia were very interesting because while they mirror the colonial history of so many different parts of the world, I personally hadn’t read much of Australia’s colonial history and found them insightful. Would definitely recommend this book as a must read for anyone.

Everyone needs to read and understand this.

White supremacy hurts everyone. It is our responsibility it deprogram. This author articulates very well how white women still uphold this toxic worldview which enable white supremacy to continue to thrive...all the while wondering why their own struggles with sexual assault (#metoo) and abortion rights keep being threatened and downplayed.