WEBVTT - White Feminism Won't Save Us 0:00:11.880 --> 0:00:14.520 Good morning, peeps, and welcome to WIKA F Daily with 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:18.320 Meet your Girl Danielle Moody recording not so live from 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:21.799 my Brooklyn Silarium. Folks. As many of you know, it 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:25.280 is my birthday week, and as a person who advocates 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:29.080 for rest and recharging, I am taking the week off 0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:33.839 Monday and Tuesday. Was live Wednesday through Friday, prerecorded, but 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:37.839 in true scorpio form, I wanted to make sure to 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:41.120 deliver you the content that all of you deserve. So 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:45.880 today getting into a conversation with author of the book 0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:51.040 The Trouble with White Women, Kyla Schuler. Kyla Schuler is 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:56.880 a Rutgers University professor and has done a history right, 0:00:57.080 --> 0:01:02.120 almost a recounting of how we have arrived at this place. 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:05.200 Where As she will tell us in the interview that 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:10.440 Pew research showed over the summer that get this, folks, 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:19.040 forty percent of women who identify as feminists vote Republican, 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:25.840 forty percent for zero. And when Kyla utters this to me, 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:30.640 I am absolutely shocked because I'm saying to myself, how 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:33.959 is it that you one could call a white woman, 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:37.920 could call themselves a feminist and then vote for a 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:43.560 party that elected a man that was giddy about grabbing 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:47.840 women by the pussy, that has over twenty sexual assault 0:01:47.880 --> 0:01:53.160 and harassment cases pending against him and accusations. It's a 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:59.040 known womanizer articulated that himself the Republican Party pre Donald 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:03.160 Trump wasn't much better. They vote against the ability of 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:05.040 a woman to have autonomy or a person with a 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:09.000 uterus to have autonomy over their own body. They will 0:02:09.080 --> 0:02:12.079 not vote for an Equal Pay Act that would have 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:17.200 all women, regardless of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity, 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:21.600 to be able to be paid on par with her 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:25.400 male counterparts. They vote against that. Many of them voted 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:29.960 against the Violence Against Women Act, right, And so how 0:02:30.800 --> 0:02:36.280 could this twenty twenty report from Pew Research showcase that 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:40.760 forty percent of white women who deem themselves to be 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:43.720 feminists vote against their own interests. I mean, we have 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:47.600 this conversation every week with regard to dying of whiteness 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:52.840 with our friend Jonathan Metzo, and it is so dumbfounding 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:55.679 to those of us that exist outside of these communities 0:02:55.919 --> 0:02:58.560 to say, how can both of these things be true 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:01.440 at the same time? And in my humble opinion, they 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:04.760 fucking can't, because you can't on one hand, say that 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:08.760 you're a feminist, right, which is the articulation of the 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:14.880 equity of people regardless of gender. Right, and yet at 0:03:14.919 --> 0:03:19.320 that same time vote alongside party lines for a party 0:03:19.480 --> 0:03:23.400 that doesn't see you as equal. But this is where 0:03:23.400 --> 0:03:27.200 we are and what Kyla's book, The Trouble with White 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:29.720 Women gets to the heart of the heart is that 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:35.520 this is nothing new. Where we found ourselves in twenty sixteen, 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:40.800 right with the startling statistics of fifty percent over fifty 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:45.560 percent of white women voting against another white woman, Hillary Clinton, 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:51.800 in favor of a pussy grabbing Republican male candidate. Then 0:03:51.920 --> 0:03:59.720 that number, after watching Donald Trump ripped children away from breastfeeding, 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:06.360 putting children in cages right using the most horrific and 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:13.000 offensive language in which to discuss his political adversaries, that 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:17.040 he would gain ground with white women, not lose it. 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:20.359 And the thing is why I think that it's important 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:23.359 to have this conversation with Kyla, who is herself a 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:27.720 white woman, is because I am tired, as a black 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:33.919 queer woman trying to get white communities to come together 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:39.240 to recognize how they have been brainwashed, how their history 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:43.799 has purposely been whitewashed as a means to keep them 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:48.479 ignorant and beholden to the white suprema structure. And what 0:04:48.800 --> 0:04:55.039 is so troubling to me is that even now, following 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:58.880 the election in Virginia where once again white women showed 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:04.640 their full and entire your ass in voting for junkin Right, 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:10.719 a man that wants to ban a Pulitzer Prize winning 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:15.400 author Tony Morrison, a black woman from being taught in 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:19.320 schools because of the fragile emotions and feelings that he 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:24.000 believes that white children have around their own identity, which 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:27.920 frankly hasn't even been discussed as an identity at all. 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:34.840 And so what Kyla articulates in our interview and in 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:39.440 her book is that this goes all the way back, folks, 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:44.320 to slavery. This goes back hundreds of years. And I've 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:47.000 said this before in WOKF and I say it everywhere 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:49.200 that I have a mic in front of my face. 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:54.159 White women get their power, glean their power from white men. 0:05:55.120 --> 0:06:02.320 White men vote overwhelmingly Republican, regardless of education, regardless right 0:06:02.480 --> 0:06:08.359 of economic status. So that being said, then of course 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:12.560 you're going to continue to align yourself with white men 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:18.479 if that is where you find your security. Right. But 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:21.360 at the same time, I am not one to let 0:06:21.360 --> 0:06:23.440 white women off the hook and say like that is 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:28.279 totally acceptable, being as how we also know about the 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:31.839 weaponizing of tears. We also know that there are plenty 0:06:32.200 --> 0:06:36.000 of black men and black people that have been lynched, murdered, beaten, 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:39.559 and raped over the false accusations uttered from the lips 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:45.320 of white women, right. And so we also know that 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:49.960 we spend a particular amount of time in history discussing 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:54.000 the slave master, but we don't ever discuss the slave mistress, 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:58.200 the white woman that was just as vile, just as cruel, 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:04.560 just as vicious, but was just an address standing by 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:08.000 and watching atrocities be done in her name and in 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:15.200 her honor right and doing so on her own front. Right. So, 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:19.440 to me, this is a community that needs to be unpacked, 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:23.080 that we need to be interrogating and asking questions as 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:28.960 to why. Right. I don't think it is a why 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:33.080 in the belief that I feel like we're going to suade, 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:36.440 you know, move white women to a different place, because honestly, 0:07:36.480 --> 0:07:39.240 I don't think that that is the truth. I think 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:41.600 that what we are seeing right now in our society 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:44.200 is a complete and total doubling and tripling down of 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:47.120 white supremacy. And what we know to be true is 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:50.400 that when you look back at these movements from suffragists 0:07:50.440 --> 0:07:54.800 to third wave feminism, right, you're looking at the denial 0:07:54.960 --> 0:08:01.920 of any other representation, of any other identities in choice 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:06.840 of only putting forward the woman's agenda, namely making white 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:12.320 women the neutral palette for which we fight for women's rights. 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:18.120 And that is just bullshit because for me, as a 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:20.480 black queer woman, I don't get to part and parcel 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:25.600 out which sides of me society chooses to deem bad 0:08:25.680 --> 0:08:28.680 or good. It's just how the fuck I show up. 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:34.000 But what's fascinating is what we are seeing right, whether 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:37.600 it be from the Karens right, the calling of the police, 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:41.960 believing that every police person is basically your own security force. 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:45.719 When you feel unsafe and want to shriek and perform 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:49.360 fear right that you know that the cavalry will come 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:54.200 marching in, and there are no penalties for that, there's 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:59.440 no accountability for that. We saw it with Amy Cooper, right. 0:08:59.520 --> 0:09:01.720 She may have lost her job, but then she's suing 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:04.800 her employer saying that she was wrongfully terminated. Well, they 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:10.000 decided they don't want to work with a racist. But 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:15.360 it's this idea, it's you know, the conjuring of the mcclusky's. 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:19.280 If you remember that couple, the white couple in front 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:24.640 of their mansions brandishing their weapons, right, that is the 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:27.440 image that comes to mind of the stand by your 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:35.000 white man, white woman. And if we don't interrogate the 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:37.960 truth right and get to the heart of the matter, 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:40.840 then we're never moving anywhere. And I think that the 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:44.360 point and the purpose of this book is to want 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:49.000 to examine our history right from slavery to suffragist to 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:53.720 Jim Crow to civil rights and then onward to where 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:58.760 we find ourselves right now. The problem that we have 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:01.520 in our society is that there is a deep desire 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:06.240 and force at play that doesn't want critical thinking to 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:11.200 be a thing, that wants people to remain asleep. Right, 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:14.840 there's a war on wokeness that we've been talking about 0:10:15.679 --> 0:10:19.520 on this show and on others. And what did they say, Oh, 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:22.680 there's this woke culture, this cancel culture. Well, what is 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:26.120 the opposite of being woke. It's to be asleep. So 0:10:26.360 --> 0:10:32.000 instead of us going back and forth on this intellectually 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:37.400 dishonest volleying that we're doing about woke culture. We may 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:40.920 want to ask the question as to why Republicans, why 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:45.880 white supremacy want Americans to remain asleep, particularly white Americans, 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:50.080 to remain asleep unconscious, to how the systems of white 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:56.640 supremacy and patriarchy were built for their favor. Because you see, 0:10:56.640 --> 0:10:59.760 when you begin to think critically, when you start to 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:04.720 act questions, then you understand your power to be able 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:10.920 to shift things, because the beginning of change comes with 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:14.840 the questioning, comes with the asking of why and the 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:21.480 justification thereof. But if you formulate your life living right 0:11:21.600 --> 0:11:27.720 behind a veil rose colored glasses, hiding behind things like 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:32.959 patriotism and freedom and liberation which are just catchphrases with 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:36.920 no foundation and what it means to truly be free 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:42.520 in this country, if you find yourself articulating feminist values 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:50.080 but then being completely disconnected from the idea of intersectionality, 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:54.360 then you're not doing the work right. And that's the reality. 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:57.720 And so I think that you all will enjoy this 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:02.840 conversation with Kyla Schuler, and I encourage everyone to pick 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:06.560 up her book The Trouble with White Women, because I 0:12:06.640 --> 0:12:09.000 want I will be having this conversation and not just 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:12.960 a conversation out of anger, although anger is productive right 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:17.640 when it's formulated and targeted towards change. But the reality 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:19.760 is is that there is a lot of work to do, 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:22.520 and it's not going to be on my back that 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:24.840 this work is going to be done. It is going 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:28.960 to be in the communities of white women who are 0:12:29.480 --> 0:12:32.600 woke and conscious to be able to carry the water 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:35.680 to splash on their sisters faces and wake them the 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:38.960 fuck up. Coming up next is my conversation with the 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:45.840 author of The Trouble with White Women, Kayla Schuler. Folks. 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:49.400 I am so excited to welcome to wok F for 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:53.600 the very first time Kayla Schuler, who is the author 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:58.719 of the book The Trouble with White Women. And I 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:02.559 think that this book, love it, love it. I think 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:07.800 that this book is so incredibly timely Kyla, in so 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:12.760 many ways, because look, every single time that we have 0:13:12.800 --> 0:13:15.520 an election, every single time that we want to talk 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:18.880 about particular populations, we will talk about every other group. 0:13:19.040 --> 0:13:21.320 We will talk about white women, we will talk about 0:13:21.440 --> 0:13:27.079 Latin X women, we will talk about Asian Pacific Islander women, 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:30.000 we will talk about everyone, But we never talk about 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:33.040 white women. It is like the third rail not only 0:13:33.040 --> 0:13:36.880 in our politics, but in our society as well. And 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:40.600 I say that as somebody who started their professional career 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:44.359 believing that they were going to work for a storied 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:49.199 women's organization. My first internship in college was at the 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:52.360 National Organization for Women, which I'll tell you more about 0:13:52.440 --> 0:13:57.480 later and how that ended. But it wasn't great. So 0:13:57.520 --> 0:14:01.640 tell tell me about why this book is so important, 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:08.800 particularly now, Yeah, thank you. Um, you know, the one 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:13.800 of the key political tropes of our supposed universal voter 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:17.200 that Stragis would go after, which you would know much 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:19.920 better than I, you know, which was the soccer mom forever, 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:23.200 but for so long that soccer mom was totally devascinated 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:25.880 right like, of course, by by soccer mom, we often 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:29.320 means suburban white woman, but it just got stripped instead 0:14:29.440 --> 0:14:34.240 as if she's the female universal right, no race, no class, 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:37.240 just a soccer mom. And that did start to shift 0:14:37.400 --> 0:14:42.680 after twenty sixteen, um with you know, famously almost fifty 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:45.600 percent of white women voting for Trump and then also 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:49.600 voting for Roy Moore, um in the election, and then 0:14:49.600 --> 0:14:53.080 in the second Trump election, you know, um, he got 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:56.640 a slightly higher percentage of white women voters. Um, and 0:14:56.680 --> 0:14:58.840 you know, so then we did start to talk about 0:14:58.960 --> 0:15:02.840 white woman. But I found in doing this research that 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:05.880 even when we are repeating to ourselves, how can it 0:15:05.920 --> 0:15:10.840 be that of white women are voting for candidate to 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:16.760 run on white supremacist, anti women platforms, the problem is 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:20.440 even more confounding than that, and that is that recent 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:25.800 research last summer has shown that forty two percent of 0:15:25.920 --> 0:15:32.600 people who identify as feminists vote Republican. Wait saya say 0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:37.160 that statistic? One more time research poll, a Pure Research 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:41.440 poll in August of twenty twenty found that forty two 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:47.520 percent of women who identify as feminist vote Republican. And again, 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:51.360 this is not Republicanism has always been, you know, a 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:56.640 conservative party. It did not support racial and civil rights. 0:15:57.280 --> 0:16:00.880 That said, it has not weaponized itself against them for 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:03.440 a while to the degree that the Trump administration has. 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:06.600 And yet in this moment, what we actually have is 0:16:06.840 --> 0:16:10.880 an issue of not just white women supporting racist candidates. 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:15.240 We have a thriving feminism that understands itself to be 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:20.360 compatible with the worst forms of capitalism and white supremacy. 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:23.560 And so when I did the research and wrote The 0:16:23.560 --> 0:16:26.560 Trouble of white women. That's actually what I'm writing about. Like, 0:16:26.600 --> 0:16:30.640 how is it that in our current moment, Ivanka Trump 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:34.480 claims that her father is a feminist? How is it 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:38.400 the researchers have shown that white supremacist groups like Stormfront 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:43.200 online actually have thriving discussions about feminist topics? How do 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:47.080 we have feminist white supremacy? And that I wrote this 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:49.440 book to look backwards and find out how did we 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:53.000 get here? Is this a new rupture in the Trump 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:56.520 era or not? And what I found is that we 0:16:56.520 --> 0:16:59.760 were always going to end up here. Unfortunately, there is 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:03.560 a very long history from the very beginning of feminism 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:08.320 led by white women the understood itself to be compatible 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:13.040 with racism, capitalism, and empire that focused only on the 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:17.800 goals of privileged white women and securing their rights and 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:23.440 liberties and opportunities, and actually leaned into other existing structural 0:17:23.440 --> 0:17:27.800 inequalities in order to bolster their own position. Yeah, I mean, 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:33.120 you know, when we go back to the beginning of 0:17:33.280 --> 0:17:37.080 just the suffragists, right like, like, let's let's just start 0:17:37.080 --> 0:17:39.160 at that point. We won't even go all the way 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:42.199 back to slavery and talk about um, you know, we 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:44.439 always want to talk about the white slave master. But 0:17:44.520 --> 0:17:48.600 we never want to talk about the white slave mistress, right, um, 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:54.159 the white woman that stood exactly next to the slave 0:17:54.240 --> 0:17:59.200 master and participated in and condone the violence, the cruelty 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:04.719 that was bestowed upon enslaved Africans. But starting with the 0:18:04.760 --> 0:18:10.600 suffragist movement, you know, I find so many ties between 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:15.280 that and how I got involved in the LGBTQ plus movement, 0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:20.360 you know, a century if so later, where you're always 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:23.439 told if you are a person that exists at the 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:27.720 intersection of multiple identities, that you need to leave parts 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:31.360 of those identities behind if they are not in service 0:18:31.640 --> 0:18:34.360 of what those that are in charge of said movement 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:39.080 believe is going to be part of what they believe 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:43.359 progress looks like. And so during this time you have 0:18:43.840 --> 0:18:47.600 very racist and I want you to talk about that, 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:53.720 very racist white women that were leading the suffragist movement, who, 0:18:53.960 --> 0:19:00.600 when pointedly asked by black women right in particular, that 0:19:00.720 --> 0:19:04.200 we need to be more inclusive and encompassing, were literally 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:09.760 written out of that history. Yes, and when they were 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:12.639 written in, we're written incorrectly, like in the case of 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:16.160 a general truth, which y'all mention in the minute. So 0:19:17.480 --> 0:19:21.560 you know they by the very beginning of what we 0:19:21.640 --> 0:19:25.359 consider the dawn of women's rights in the US, which 0:19:25.440 --> 0:19:29.440 is the famous eighteen forty eight Seneca Falls Convention led 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:34.000 by elizabth KT Stanton and a number of others. She 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:38.600 staked her position in that speech as I am a 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:43.399 daughter of a Mayflower immigrant, I am a daughter of 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:48.760 a revolutionary war hero, and yet I am denied the 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:53.679 full rights and privileges. And you know, famously, at that 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:57.040 convention she first proposed that women should have the right 0:19:57.080 --> 0:20:00.439 to vote. And the only person who support ordered her 0:20:00.480 --> 0:20:05.640 publicly and immediately upon saying that was Frederick Douglas, who 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:08.760 was also the only man and the only black person 0:20:08.760 --> 0:20:12.560 in attendance out of several hundred. But he understood himself 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:15.399 to be a partner of the project of fighting for 0:20:15.480 --> 0:20:19.720 rights in the area of sex and of grace, and 0:20:19.760 --> 0:20:21.960 they did work together for a number of years, and 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:27.800 Stanton and Tutan B. Anthony were active abolitionists. But after 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:32.040 the Civil War, when the Fifteenth Amendment gave the right 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:36.280 to vote to black men and men of color for 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:39.600 the first time, and also introduced the word mail into 0:20:39.640 --> 0:20:42.160 the Constitution for the first time, but did not give 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:45.000 the right to vote to any women. Then Anthony and 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:48.480 Santon really went on the attack. Susan B. Anthony would 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:52.320 say things like I'll cut off my right hand before 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:57.680 I support rights for black men over women. Unlisa Katie 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:03.400 Stanton would give long speeches about how the morally pure 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:10.000 wives like her were being denied rights but illiterate ditch diggers, 0:21:10.080 --> 0:21:13.720 and she would be racial slurs and anti immigrant slurs 0:21:13.720 --> 0:21:17.919 were Chinese people and Irish people, but especially slurs against 0:21:17.960 --> 0:21:20.800 the formerly enslave. She said, you are letting letting the 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:26.080 most degraded elements of society vote before you let your 0:21:26.160 --> 0:21:30.680 upright wives vote. And they even partnered with a notorious 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:35.399 white supremacist in the West and so and then at 0:21:35.400 --> 0:21:38.520 that point Fredrict Douglas broke off from them and formed 0:21:38.520 --> 0:21:41.080 a different organization with a mixture of black and white 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:44.640 Ayellies to fight for voting rights for all. But they 0:21:44.680 --> 0:21:50.080 really weaponized the case for women for women's rights as 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:53.480 an issue of the rights of men of color and 0:21:53.480 --> 0:21:57.480 then formally enslavement, especially versus white women. And that's one 0:21:57.520 --> 0:22:00.360 reason that in this book, a key argument I make 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:03.960 is that in this process of studying the hundred and 0:22:04.000 --> 0:22:08.359 eighty year history of feminism and being really excited about 0:22:08.400 --> 0:22:11.280 the popularity of the term white feminism now and how 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:14.600 it helps us identify something we hadn't seen so clearly before. 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:17.320 But I also wanted to find out what is that 0:22:17.480 --> 0:22:20.400 term mean exactly? And what I found is that our 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:25.000 most common definition of white feminism as a feminism that 0:22:25.080 --> 0:22:32.520 ignores the conditions, the rights, the liberties of women of color, 0:22:33.119 --> 0:22:36.800 actually doesn't go far enough. The trouble with white feminism 0:22:36.880 --> 0:22:39.439 is not that it ignores women of color and the 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:42.520 more marginalized. The trouble of white feminism is that it 0:22:42.600 --> 0:22:46.880 actually exploits the more marginalized as a way to bolster 0:22:48.320 --> 0:22:51.440 the position of white women. It's not a sin of omission. 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:55.600 The trouble with white feminism is actually an active possession. 0:22:56.600 --> 0:23:00.199 To give you an example, you know the figure that 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:03.000 I so each chapter of this book, I give you 0:23:03.080 --> 0:23:07.520 a main woman would often know from history, like Eliza 0:23:07.640 --> 0:23:10.920 Katy Stanton or Margaret Sanger or in the contemporary moment, 0:23:11.960 --> 0:23:16.480 Cheryl Sandberg, and but show that at her time, at 0:23:16.480 --> 0:23:20.600 her moment, she was in struggle with a different kind 0:23:20.640 --> 0:23:23.200 of feminism and a different key figure who has been 0:23:23.200 --> 0:23:27.000 more erased from history, and I focus in particular in 0:23:27.000 --> 0:23:29.399 the suffrage era on Francis E. W. Harper, who was 0:23:29.440 --> 0:23:32.680 the best selling black poet of the nineteenth century. And 0:23:32.760 --> 0:23:36.120 yet it is often forgotten outside of college classrooms today. 0:23:36.400 --> 0:23:38.800 And who we hear about is so journ Our Truth. 0:23:38.920 --> 0:23:42.400 And so Journer Truth was an incredible activist. But what 0:23:42.440 --> 0:23:44.560 we know about her is that she said at one 0:23:44.600 --> 0:23:49.720 of these conventions at will. But the black feminist historian 0:23:49.880 --> 0:23:53.439 nel Urban Painter showed us twenty years ago that so 0:23:53.520 --> 0:23:57.000 journey Truth never said ain't woman. She wasn't from the South. 0:23:57.280 --> 0:24:00.959 She was from upstate New York. Her first language was Dutch. 0:24:01.359 --> 0:24:04.399 She learned English at age nine and prided herself in 0:24:04.520 --> 0:24:08.919 her impeccable English. There is a transcription of her speech 0:24:09.119 --> 0:24:13.080 publishing a black newspaper two weeks after, and the first 0:24:13.160 --> 0:24:16.560 line is something like, can I have a moment here? 0:24:17.200 --> 0:24:20.760 I like to speak for a moment here. Fifteen years later, 0:24:21.320 --> 0:24:24.840 Stanton and Anthony published a history of Woman's rights, and 0:24:24.880 --> 0:24:27.720 they tapped a white woman ally to write up so 0:24:27.920 --> 0:24:31.520 journal Truth speech, and that speech is anti woman and 0:24:31.680 --> 0:24:36.600 is entirely in dialect that's completely made up. Fifteen years 0:24:36.720 --> 0:24:39.439 later by a white woman to create a kind of 0:24:39.960 --> 0:24:44.440 plants many figure here, and even you know, one hundred 0:24:44.440 --> 0:24:46.239 and sixty years later, we still think that we are 0:24:46.280 --> 0:24:51.000 correcting history by giving the characters a version. But black 0:24:51.000 --> 0:24:53.560 newspapers and black womanists have been correcting us on that 0:24:53.800 --> 0:24:58.960 for since the eighteenth I mean, it's just what is 0:24:58.960 --> 0:25:02.879 so utterly disturbing to me. You know, at the top, 0:25:02.960 --> 0:25:08.760 you mentioned, you know, the weaponization right of you know, 0:25:09.720 --> 0:25:14.280 other people's struggles, right as in order to advance for 0:25:14.359 --> 0:25:17.440 white women as in order to advance their own And 0:25:17.480 --> 0:25:21.320 what is so disturbing and disgusting is that it persists, 0:25:21.760 --> 0:25:25.879 and it is so incredibly obvious, right you know, And 0:25:26.119 --> 0:25:29.520 what I have said on on Woke af and so 0:25:29.560 --> 0:25:34.439 many other shows is that white women find their power 0:25:34.680 --> 0:25:39.520 in proximity to white male patriarchy, right And that is 0:25:39.640 --> 0:25:42.000 that is where they find their power, That is where 0:25:42.040 --> 0:25:46.040 they find their influence and always have, right um. And 0:25:46.080 --> 0:25:49.440 I will go back, you know, to to the plantations 0:25:49.440 --> 0:25:52.320 and the slave masters and what have you that you know, 0:25:52.440 --> 0:25:57.040 there is a reason why there is no incredible pushback 0:25:57.160 --> 0:26:02.080 right now with regard to the anti abortion laws that 0:26:02.119 --> 0:26:05.280 are happening across the country because white women will always 0:26:05.400 --> 0:26:08.439 have access to an abortion right because they have the 0:26:08.520 --> 0:26:11.040 means and they have the ear and the attention of 0:26:11.080 --> 0:26:13.880 white men who have always been looked at as their 0:26:13.880 --> 0:26:16.720 caretakers in order to make sure that those things happen. 0:26:17.080 --> 0:26:19.720 It is everyone else who is low income, who is 0:26:19.720 --> 0:26:22.520 a person of color, um that is left out in 0:26:22.520 --> 0:26:26.879 the cold. My question for you is, you know, in 0:26:27.080 --> 0:26:32.240 studying this and understanding that to be true, and recognizing 0:26:32.280 --> 0:26:34.760 that we were always going to arrive at this point 0:26:35.320 --> 0:26:39.760 in our in our in our current day like was 0:26:39.840 --> 0:26:42.879 there there was no way to deter, you know, to 0:26:43.440 --> 0:26:48.640 throw to throw this off course. And if even if 0:26:48.760 --> 0:26:52.479 we're all recognizing this truth now in our own ways, 0:26:54.000 --> 0:26:56.800 how are we How are we shifting that narrative or 0:26:56.840 --> 0:27:01.520 can it not be shifted? Yeah, that's a great question. 0:27:02.119 --> 0:27:05.560 And one reason I did go with this provocative title 0:27:05.760 --> 0:27:08.320 the Trouble with White Women, is that I also see 0:27:08.359 --> 0:27:12.000 it to encompass the trouble that white women's face, and 0:27:12.040 --> 0:27:14.879 that trouble the white women themselves face is exactly what 0:27:14.920 --> 0:27:19.000 you mentioned of. There's always this carrot dangling there, especially 0:27:19.000 --> 0:27:22.800 from middle class and wealthier women, that they could of 0:27:22.880 --> 0:27:26.639 the lure of to have the privileges that their brothers 0:27:26.760 --> 0:27:30.919 and our husbands and our boyfriends, our family members have. Right, 0:27:31.000 --> 0:27:35.879 there's that lure of you could join the rest of 0:27:36.080 --> 0:27:38.840 the top of the power hierarchy if you just can 0:27:39.040 --> 0:27:44.800 get past that sex, which, of course, traditionally into this day, 0:27:44.880 --> 0:27:48.320 that hindreds of sex is still enormous. I don't mean 0:27:48.359 --> 0:27:52.920 to discount the structural inequalities of sex, but I would 0:27:52.920 --> 0:27:55.439 also point out that the people who gave us the 0:27:55.480 --> 0:27:58.920 political language to understand the structural and equalities of sex 0:27:59.119 --> 0:28:04.040 are people like Murray Right, Kimberly Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins, 0:28:04.080 --> 0:28:07.440 the black feminist who said, we can understand sex the 0:28:07.480 --> 0:28:11.520 structural and equality because we also understand race and class 0:28:11.560 --> 0:28:15.200 of structural equalities, and here's a framework for understanding them. 0:28:15.280 --> 0:28:17.359