Whenever I'm in predominantly white spaces with my Salvadoran grandparents, I'm on high alert because at any second, some racist bigot can harass them for speaking Spanish. I haven't had to defend them yet, but given the recent rise in hate crimes and related incidents, it's likely I will one day.
We've seen it happen at restaurants, retail stores, and schools, but a recent incident took place at a grocery store in Colorado, was captured on camera, and went viral. Unlike the other times, a white woman stepped up. Her name is Kamira Trent, and because she called the police, Linda Dwire was arrested and charged for bias-motivated harassment. I’m always ready to protect my grandparents, but if a white woman like Trent is fighting by my side, it will make a great difference.
We are two years into the resistance against Trump's white supremacist agenda, and yet, not nearly enough white women stand up for women of color the way Trent did in everyday life and at the polls. Fifty-two percent of white women elected Trump in the first place, according to exit polls conducted at the time. (Recent research found that number was probably closer to 47 percent of white women.) According to a CNN exit poll, even more white women — 63 percent — voted for Roy Moore, an accused child molester from Alabama who said America was "great" during slavery.
"White women are constantly choosing their whiteness over their womanhood, and they're choosing to vote for people who will help maintain their white supremacy as opposed to what will help maintain the safety of women overall," says Rachel Cargle, an activist, writer, and lecturer whose work explores "the intersection of race and womanhood."
"White women are constantly choosing their whiteness over their womanhood."
The midterm elections are just a few days away, and white women need to vote for candidates who are not racist, which people can determine by researching voting records. They also need to elect progressive women of color, which is now more possible than ever because the number of women of color candidates for Congress has increased 75 percent since 2012. White women should follow the lead of black female voters, who as Cargle points out, have continuously made better choices by voting for progressive candidates who will help, not harm, marginalized communities.
While elections fuel partisanship, it's important to note that the issue of racism goes beyond party lines. Conservative and liberal white women continue to perpetrate racism and anti-blackness.
Catrice Jackson, a racial justice educator, speaker, and author, says that when working with white women in her courses and workshops, they often other themselves and make themselves out to be the exceptional white woman, which in turn means they have not addressed their own racism.
It's for this reason Jackson echoes Martin Luther King Jr.'s sentiment and says the "most dangerous and threatening" white people in the U.S. are white liberals. Take a moment to consider the white liberal woman who attends the Women's March but won't go to a Black Lives Matter rally, or the progressive white mom who puts her kid in a private school to access better resources, contributing to school segregation.
"They don’t see themselves as being part of the problem, and so, one of the first things that white women allies need to do is to accept and own their own racism and begin to do their own, personal inner work to continuously uproot those racist behaviors and those implicit biases," says Jackson.
So while participating in the midterm elections — or any election — is a great step, it's just the start to the life-long work required of white women to effectively support women of color in their fight to end racism and create equitable systems in the U.S. Jackson emphasizes that being an ally is not a noun or something a person becomes.
"You don’t take three workshops, read seven books, and now you’re an ally," says Jackson. "It is a constant, deliberate, intentional way of being, every single day and every single moment, until you take your last breath."
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Although it's expected of white women to acknowledge their privilege, many feel defensive about the term. Jackson views that type of response as a signal that they are not doing their own anti-racist work by confronting and uprooting their own racism.
"It is a clear, red flag that they do not understand that white supremacy and racism is not just a personal way of being in the world, but it is a systemic set of rules, beliefs, thoughts, behaviors, policies, and laws that are set in place to silence black and brown folks, to keep them marginalized, and to keep them further oppressed," she says.
Jackson recognizes that white women did not choose their whiteness, but instead of being paralyzed by fear, shame, or guilt, and causing more harm, she expects them to take daily actions to continue to dismantle personal and systemic racism and support women of color. Those actions could include sharing the work of women of color, buying from black and brown business owners, and connecting women of color to networks and resources.
"Just like they didn't choose to be white, we didn't choose to be black or brown. But every day, black and brown women have to get up and fight the system and deal with racism, whether we want to deal with it or not," she says.
"Just like they didn't choose to be white, we didn't choose to be black or brown."
Jackson says that as long as racism exists, white women who want to behave as allies cannot opt out or take a break from fighting racism. She also explains that on a daily basis, black and brown women experience racial battle fatigue, and so it's important that white women find ways to help nourish black and brown women. Jackson launched a fundraiser to build Harriet's Dream, a space for black women to heal from "the lethal effects of racism." Cargle started a fundraiser to help give black women and girls access to therapy sessions and support their mental health, which people can donate to here.
When searching for education and ideas about how to be a part of the solution, Jackson says white women should turn to online articles, videos, and other resources. For a more in-depth education, she says white women must turn to women of color, specifically black women, who are racial justice educators and buy their books, sign-up for their courses and workshops, and pay women of color for their labor. When learning and engaging with women of color, they need to listen more than they speak. However, white women so often fail to do that, and instead try to lead conversations about race.
"One of the biggest and most important actions of an ally is to follow the lead of black and brown people, and what we see happening is a lot of 'so-called' allies, possibly performative allies, taking up space, taking the platform, hosting the workshops, and leading the discussions," says Jackson.
Cargle notes that it's not enough for white women to want to learn about racism. They need to help end it. The 2017 Women's March was deemed a setback for the intersectional feminist movement and an example of performative activism by many women of color because it did not address the issues they face. The Women's March organizers have addressed this criticism, but some women of color have yet to see changes at the leadership level trickle down to the movement itself.
Cargle attended the rally in Washington, D.C., and carried a poster that said, "If you don't fight for all women, you fight for no women." There, she says she witnessed a parade for white women, not a protest.
Although white women like Kamira Trent have stood up for women of color, they should not be hailed as heroes, according to Cargle. "You're not a hero for being a basic human," she says.
If a white woman comes to my aid personally, in the event that my grandparents are harassed for speaking Spanish, I also wouldn't want her to play the hero. I would want her to intervene because she can and should, because it's the right thing to do.
"I think that we need to stop celebrating the base level of humanity, and instead have that as an expectation of the baseline and not some heroic act," says Cargle. "We need to start implementing that type of action of protecting the most marginalized as a normalized way of existing in the world."
UPDATE: Nov. 5, 2018, 4:27 p.m. EST This story was updated to include recent research on the percentage of white women who voted for Trump.
UPDATE: Feb. 3, 2019, 2:08 p.m. ET An earlier version of this story included a tweet in which Rachel Cargle unknowingly acknowledged an account belonging to a Russian troll. The tweet has been removed.
Topics Activism Social Good Racial Justice
