2004
Volume 27, Issue 4
  • ISSN: 1388-3186
  • E-ISSN: 2352-2437

Abstract

Abstract

The present article attempts towards theorising Strategic White Womanhood in the Dutch context, borrowing from and building on existing intersectional and critical-race frameworks addressing racism within and outside the Netherlands. It asserts that strategic white womanhood constitutes a tangible identity category that holds immense power due to the curious intersection of race and gender. The analysis utilises a variety of ethnographic methods, including participant observations and semi-structured interviews to identify a set of strategies deployed by white women to invoke innocence and avoid accountability in encountering the racialised other. These strategies include white fragility, white tears, white fear, white feminist racism, and colour-blindness. It argues that recognising said strategies is a step towards becoming critically conscious of mechanisms in place that enable the evasion of responsibility and undermine our collective potential for anti-racist solidarity building.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.5117/TVGN2024.4.003.SPOE
2024-12-01
2025-03-29
The full text of this item is not currently available.

References

  1. Accapadi, M.M. (2007). When White Women Cry: How White Women’s Tears Oppress Women of Color. College Student Affairs Journal, 26(2), 208–215.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Ahmed, S. (2007). A phenomenology of whiteness. Feminist theory, 8(2), 149–168.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Ahmed, S. (2010a). Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. London: Duke.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Ahmed, S. (2010b). Killing joy: Feminism and the history of happiness. Signs: Journal of women in Culture and Society, 35(3), 571-594.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Ahmed, S. (2012). On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. London: Duke.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Ahmed, S. (2013a). Embodying diversity: Problems and paradoxes for Black feminists. In Black and Postcolonial feminisms in New Times (pp. 41–52). New York: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Ahmed, S. (2013b). Strange encounters: Embodied others in post-coloniality. London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Ahmed, S. (2020). On being included: Racism and diversity in institutional life. New York: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Alcoff, L. M. (2015). The Future of Whiteness. Cambridge: Polity.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Armstrong, M. (2021). From lynching to Central Park Karen: how white women weaponise white womanhood. Hastings Women’s LJ, 32, 27.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Baehr, A.R. (2017). A capacious account of liberal feminism. Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, 3(1).
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Baldwin, J. (1998). On being white… and other lies. In D.R.Roediger (Ed.), Black on white: Black writers on what it means to be white: Tel Aviv: Schocken.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Cho, S. (2002). Understanding White women’s ambivalence towards affirmative action: Theorising political accountability in coalitions. UMKC L. Rev., 71, 399.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Combahee River Collective. 1983. The Combahee river collective statement. Home girls: A Black feminist anthology, 264-74
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Crenshaw, K. (1997). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. The legal response to violence against women, 5, 91.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Crenshaw, K. (2013). Demarginalising the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. In Feminist legal theories (23–51). New York: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. DiAngelo, R. (2011). White fragility. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 3 (3), 54–70. In.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Ehrenreich, N. (2002). Subordination and symbiosis: Mechanisms of mutual support between subordinating systems. UMKC L. Rev., 71, 251.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Essed, P. (1990). Everyday racism: Reports from women of two cultures. Claremont: Hunter House.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Essed, P., & Hoving, I. (2014). Dutch racism, 27. New York: Rodopi.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Frankenberg, R. (1993). White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Hall, C. (1992). White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History. Cambridge: Polity Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Harris, A.P. (2013). Race and essentialism in feminist legal theory. In Feminist legal theories (73–108). New York: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. hooks, B. (1987). Ain’t I a Woman Black Women and Feminism. London: Pluto Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. hooks, B. (1992). Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination. Cultural Studies, 338–346.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. hooks, B. (2000). Feminist theory: From margin to center. London: Pluto Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. hooks, B. (2004). We real cool: Black men and masculinity. New York: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. hooks, B., & McKinnon, T. (1996). Sisterhood: beyond public and private. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 21(4), 814–829.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Hoving, I. (1996). Het plezier van de koprol. In G.Wekker & R.Braidotti (Eds.) Praten in het Donker: Multiculturalisme en Anti-racisme in Feministisch Perspectief. (100-118).
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Hunter, S. & Van der Westhuisen, C. (2022). Viral whiteness: Twenty-first century global colonialities. In S.Hunter & C.van der Westhuizen (Eds.) Routledge Handbook of Critical Studies in Whiteness (1-29). New York: Routledge
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Jonsson, T. (2016). The narrative reproduction of white feminist racism. Feminist Review, 113(1), 50-67.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Majavu, M. (2022). Colour-blind ideologies: The whiteness of liberalism and socialism. In Routledge Handbook of Critical Studies in Whiteness (113-125). Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Minear, A. (2011). ‘Unspeakable’ Offenses: Disability Studies at the Intersections of Multiple Differences. In N.Erewelles (Ed.) Disability and difference in global contexts: Enabling a transformative body politic (95–120). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Morrison, T. (1992). Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  35. Nzume, A. (2017). Hallo witte mensen. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  36. Obaidi, M., Kunst, J., Ozer, S., & Kimel, S.Y. (2022). The ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy: How the perceived ousting of Whites can evoke violent extremism and Islamophobia. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 25(7), 1675–1695.
    [Google Scholar]
  37. Shaker, R., & Ahmadi, D. (2022). Everyday embodied othering experiences of young Muslims in the Netherlands. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48(19), 4567–4585.
    [Google Scholar]
  38. Smith, B. (1982). Racism and women’s studies. Frontiers: A journal of women studies, 5(1), 48–49.
    [Google Scholar]
  39. Spradley, J.P. (2016). Participant observation: Long Grove: Waveland Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  40. Taylor, K.Y. (2017). How we get free: Black feminism and the Combahee River Collective. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  41. Van der Westhuisen, C. (2017). Sitting Pretty: White Afrikaans Women in Postapartheid South Africa. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu Natal Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  42. Walley-Jean, J.C. (2009). Debunking the myth of the ‘angry Black woman’: An exploration of anger in young African American women. Black Women, Gender & Families, 3(2), 68–86.
    [Google Scholar]
  43. Ware, V. (1992). Beyond the Pale, White Women, Racism and History. London: Verso.
    [Google Scholar]
  44. Wekker, G. (2016). White innocence: Paradoxes of colonialism and race: Durham: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.5117/TVGN2024.4.003.SPOE
Loading
/content/journals/10.5117/TVGN2024.4.003.SPOE
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error