Kyla Schuller - The Trouble with White Women

ONE OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES I HAVE FACED AS A BLACK FEMINIST TEACHER AND WRITER has been convincing Black women that feminism is relevant to their lives. Black womens resistance to feminist politics and ideas has never been about a resistance to gender equality. We live with the intimate and structural consequences of patriarchy every day. The biggest stumbling block in Black womens journey to fly the flag of feminism has been white women. Somewhere a white woman is talking about how we all need to be united as women, regardless of race or creed. And somewhere a Black woman is giving that white woman a side eye.

Given the perennial challenge white women pose to cross-racial feminist solidarity, the clearer we get about the nature of that threat, the better equipped we will be to address the problem. Kyla Schullers The Trouble with White Women faces the challenge head-on with aplomb, erudition, and excellent storytelling. Schuller makes clear precisely what the problem is: The trouble with white feminist politics is not what it fails to address and whom it leaves out. The trouble with white feminism is what it does and whom it suppresses. Its not that white women cant do good in the world or be useful allies in feminist world-making. The problem, rather, is white feminism and its gravely limited conception of how to address the injustices that all women face.

This book is a deeply erudite and much needed historically grounded treatment of a phenomenon that mostly makes for wars among feminists on social media. It represents the signature approaches that Kyla Schuller is known fora rich textual analysis covered with both a broad and deep understanding of the archive.

Schuller traces the genesis of white feminism across several generations beginning with the shameless invocations of racism that marked Elizabeth Cady Stantons fight for suffrage. Though I am a student of this history, I was still floored at just how strident Stanton was in her willingness to throw Black men under the bus, trafficking in the most racist stereotypes of her day, in order to procure the vote for white women. Schuller goes on to demonstrate the changing same of white feminist politics among figures like Margaret Sanger, Betty Friedan, and Sheryl Sandberg. Admirably, Schuller manages to resist the kind of liberal self-flagellation that is a hallmark of an unhelpful white guilt, and desiccates white womens tears, refusing the safety, comfort, and space-taking that so often follow them.

One of our nations top gender studies scholars and, quite frankly, one of my favorite scholars to read period, Schuller pairs each white woman thinker under examination here with a generational peer who is Black or Indigenous, or Latinx, or trans. In doing so, she reminds us that cisgender white women did not invent feminism, and that white feminism as a project has been premised in large part on a refusal to engage the work of Black, Indigenous, and trans women who call into question the end goals, not to mention the organizing tactics, of white feminists. Its not that we havent been there; its that white women have refused to listen.

For the Black women who need white women to admit it, this book will do that. For white women who continually ask me how to get better, I say, begin here.

We can no longer afford a fractured feminist movement. All of the things women won for themselves a generation ago have come under pressing attack in these first two decades of the new millennium, and all of us are having to gird ourselves for battle again. It goes without saying that we will be stronger together, but part of the argument of this book is that white feminism is a feminist politics we can and should leave behind. In its place, white women can come together with other groups of women and embrace their visions of an intersectional, trans- and Indigenous inclusive future.

Anyone who knows me or has read me knows that I dont count very many white women among my friend groups, for precisely the reasons that this book so deftly analyzes. But I have called Kyla my friend for nearly a decade now. She produced this work because she lives her commitment to a feminism not grounded in white womens racism or civilizing imperatives. She is an ally for Black women and women of color colleagues both publicly and privately in ways that make a difference. Anyone can write a scholarly tome analyzing these issues, but living these politics is the thing that matters most. Kyla practices what she preaches in her teaching, her writing, and her relationships. Rich and rigorous in both method and content, this book is one I will return to again and again.

Brittney Cooper