White Women

So many things I wish I could say to so many— not just white women. This book is for everybody!

The authors start with the premise that white people are a monolith and they are all racist and seek to perpetuate white supremacy in everything they do. Even accepting that premise as true, the reader is left without any strategies for the “how to do better” part the book promises. Instead, the authors offer a series of contradictory statements, like don’t express shock when someone tells you something shocking (they probably mean “don’t disbelieve people when someone tells you about racist things that happened to them,” but that’s not what they write), or you should stick up for POC when they need an ally but also you should shut up and let POC lead. The authors advance their arguments without any leeway for discussion or differing viewpoint, so any criticism (like this review) can easily be dismissed as racist, tone policing, etc. The authors also take experiences that aren’t inherently racist but cast them as racist interactions simply because they involved a white woman. For example, one of the authors shares about a time when she was hosting another child at her home for a play date with her son. Around the time the play date was scheduled to end, the other child’s mother called and asked if the author could drop her child off at soccer practice because she was hung up at work and wouldn’t be able to get away in time. The author agreed to do so. Apparently there was a mixup with the timing of the soccer practice, which led to some confusion and wasted time. The fact that the other mother (who had already indicated she was hung up at work) declined to call the author immediately and apologize for the timing mixup was cast by the author as evidence of racism, rather than just a harried working mother who maybe needed a little grace that day. Of course, the author could have said no when the other mother asked if she could drop the child at soccer practice, but she didn’t. The attempt to suggest that this interaction was an example of some bigger, universal racist “white woman” problem is emblematic of the logical and rhetorical failures of this book. Not every negative interaction between people who happen to have different skin colors is inherently racist, and without any clear strategy for how to “be better,” this book is nothing more than an extended rant by two people who appear very bitter that their attempt to capitalize off of racism didn’t pan out (there are many, many references in the book to the authors’ business, “Race2Dinner,” along with complaints about how white women don’t want to pay them $5,000 or $10,000 for a two-hour session during which the authors will berate them for being inherently racist).

Reading the experiences of two women of color so similar to myself, who don’t hold back about how they’ve been harmed, was refreshing and liberating. Folks who hate this read hate it because it forces them to examine how they treat Black and brown women, other white women, and even themselves. This read forces white women’s hand in doing something to unlearn their deeply ingrained racism–a task that is neither easy, nor short-term. Hoping more white women will accept the invitation that Regina and Saira offer here.