book-summaries/against-white-feminism.ms

.so macros.ms
.TITLE Against White Feminism
.AUTHOR Rafia Zakaria
.AUTHOR
.ft CW
summarised by
.ft
Philippe Pittoli
.
.ABSTRACT1
The book talks about Rafia Zakaria and "the problem" of whiteness in feminism (which is completely different from white women, as she promises).
Some stories about the author are related, which is a lot about throwing venom to about every white person she encounters in her life, including people seemingly interested in her story.

.INFORMATIONS \\*[WEBSITE]/against-white-feminism.pdf \\*[EMAIL]
.ABSTRACT2
.TWO_COLUMNS
.SECTION Summary
.PARAGRAPH_INDENTED
Rafia is a woman of color, single mother and she has a difficult story to tell.
And as we'll see, the difficulty partly comes from her inability to overcome her hate and obsession over white people.

In the first 10 pages, we learn that she can be at a party with
.I "other privileged white women"
and still whine about trivial stuff, like
.B "being asked her story" .
Yes, Rafia can be with white feminists, invited at their table, drink and share a good moment with them, being asked to talk about herself and she will still be bitching about not having a chance to talk.
Even
.B before
they had the chance to even say a freaking word she knew she hated them.

.PARAGRAPH_INDENTED
The more the author talks about how
.I whiteness
is the worst, the more we discover she actually is incredibly ignorant, self-absorbed and
.B obsessed
with identity.
That's just plain racism, and without much anything else.
There isn't much substance here.
Talking about a social issue, describing a problem affecting people, isn't the subject of the book.
For Rafia, the problem is white women doing stuff, whatever they are actually doing, without kissing some black women butts by giving them their job.

Let's take an example.
At some point, Rafia described a few things about feminism, notably that they don't take the word of a victim of abuse as an ultimate truth.
For any sane person, this is completely normal.
Someone subjected to fearful or painful situations may not be thinking clearly.
Furthermore, people sometimes lie, exaggerate or diminish the importance of some parts of a story, even real victims.
But for Rafia this is a problem with
.I whiteness
in feminism, because apparently this could have been different with other people in charge, people of color, with a different perspective on things.
The author would like you to ignore the
.B "massive implications"
of taking the word of people for granted, and persuade yourself that white women are the worst.

Here is a brief summary of the general idea being the book:
.CITATION1
Let's put blacks and asian women on stage regardless of what they have to say, or if they have any talent.
As long as it is different from what white women have to say on the matter, this is fine.
Also, bitching about white women (oops, I mean
.B whiteness )
is great, so buy my $15 rant.
.CITATION2

.PARAGRAPH_INDENTED
Also, Rafia uses a series of expressions that are clearly charged to talk about totally harmless stuff.
For example:
.UL "white supremacy"
to talk about the fact that women in feminist organizations are mostly white, and that they don't give away their job to a more
.I diverse
cast.
She also uses very strong words to express her opinions, to a point that the exaggeration is just plain absurd.
For example, she says that
.I "white supremacy within feminism actively suppress the voice of women of color"
and that this is a
.I "colonial domination and white silencing".
She hates white people, she just can't stand them, and want everything to change (without thinking too much of the consequences, apparently).

.PARAGRAPH_INDENTED
In the first chapter, Rafia relates the story a white woman, Eve Ensler, writing for Glamour in 2007.
The essay she wrote was about rape victims in Congo.
Difficult subject, and enduring even just talking with the victims, so Eve wrote how she felt during the inverviews, to give an insight of the situation.
And guess what?
For Rafia, this is a problem: Eve talking about herself, how she felt, or even just using "I" or "me" is clearly a way to center the attention on herself.
The chapter is then about the
.I "white savior complex"
Rafia detected in the essay.
.br
So, someone trying to talk about a subject but talking (maybe a bit too much) about himself is a race problem according to Rafia, for some reason.
Selfish, self-centered people exist, and some of them are using virtue signaling, yeah, so what?
Why this has anything to do with race?

The rest of the chapter is a melting pot of stories, with little to nothing related to each other.
Let's browse: white people wanting to bang brown people on tinder, virtue signaling billionaires, women's suffrage, old ladies in the late nineteenth century having some power in oriental countries, etc.
For Rafia, this constitutes a good way to introduce the problem of
.I whiteness
in our society, as if billionaires and old rich women in the late nineteenth century (let alone being in foreign countries) are anything remotely related to today's common folks.
Also, not wanting to wait before someone before starting a lecture is
.I "white fragility" ,
apparently, and the list of stupid remarks like this goes on.
It seems that everything has to do with race for the author, always, and in case there is a difference between two cultures, as a white person you should accept and maybe even adopt the foreign culture, for reasons.
.NH
Conclusion, my point of view
.PARAGRAPH_INDENTED
This book is an excellent example of the worst; identity politics at its finest.
The author advocates for a massive societal shift, mostly towards an
.UL "absurdly dangerous"
new system.
For example, by throwing away the benefit of the doubt, or said otherwise
.UL "innocent until proven guilty" ,
a pilar of any free society.
And she proceeds by using lenses on race, as it had anything to do with it\*[*].
.FOOTNOTE1
I have no idea if this is a diversion or the real thoughts of the author, so I won't comment on her honesty.
.FOOTNOTE2

Also, the lack of restraint in the use of very charged expressions diminishes their intensity.
We should be careful about this.
White supremacy was about putting some people into slavery or seeing them as dispendable objects.
Now, a mere disagreement of a black person with a group of white people is talking in terms of
.I "white silencing" .
Words are devoid of meaning, and that's harmful for the entire society.

As a fun note, I don't call myself feminist (and I have my reasons\*[*]).
.FOOTNOTE1
Mainly because I think everybody has their own definition, so this doesn't say much about the person.
Let's just throw away labels when they aren't useful, and in this case I do think they are actually harmful.
.FOOTNOTE2
Though, often in the book the author talked about why
.I "whiteness feminism"
was a problem, and the more she described it, the more I found myself rooting for them.
Some of the "problems" were actually just good practices, and I'm glad to know that, even today, feminism isn't just a bunch of stupid hysterical cunts.

In the end, this book was entertaining to me: this is plain hate and jealousy.
I won't comment about the whole book, I only read the first two chapters (and that's enough for me) but they clearly give away the hateful vibes of the author.
I knew I wouldn't find anything convincing, but seeing adult people being this cringeworthy, selfish and childish is, at small dosage, an enjoyable experience.