Title & author
Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria
Synopsis
In Rafia Zakaria’s Against White Feminism, Zakaria takes a critical look at western, foreign intervention made on the promise of “liberation.” Specifically, she hones in on the constructed “Middle East,” analyzing real-life interventions, pop culture references, social events, and more. In doing so, she demonstrates how what the U.S. has done and continues to do to “save” women abroad does not benefit anyone other than white supremacy—especially when under the false pretenses of feminism.
Who should read this book
Everyone
What we’re thinking about
The western trend to determine what issue, injustice, or tradition is and isn’t “convenient”
Trigger warning(s)
Physical violence, sexual violence, self-harm, slurs, sexism, mental health, racism, transphobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, ableism
Throughout history, white women have attempted to play the role of savior. With an overarching image of maternity that stems from racist roots, white women have taken it upon themselves to heal or solve the problems of others that they deem exactly that—the “other.” In Rafia Zakaria’s Against White Feminism (Norton, 2021), Zakaria takes a critical look at western, foreign intervention made on the promise of “liberation.” Specifically, she hones in on the constructed “Middle East,” analyzing real-life interventions, pop culture references, social events, and more. In doing so, she demonstrates how what the U.S. has done and continues to do to “save” women abroad does not benefit anyone other than white supremacy—especially when under the false pretenses of feminism.
“The terms of ‘international development,’ or aid disbursements to postcolonial nations, were predominately dictated by the global north to the global south—and included imposing the goals of white, Western feminists upon women who were neither white nor Western and did not necessarily share their concerns,” writes Zakaria in the chapter “The White Savior Industrial Complex” (Zakaria, 58). Throughout this chapter in particular, Zakaria details examples of white women harmfully inserting themselves into foreign matters without consulting the local women of color most impacted by whatever has been deemed an “issue.” For example, how women in rural India were to be “liberated” by changing the stoves they use for cooking. However, “no one asked the women who did the cooking whether they wanted the new stoves, or considered the reasons why, it turned out, they did not want them” (57). Or in Pakistan where white women have intervened to create a program against honor killings, but without “providing any capacity-building in education and political discussion in local contexts that would allow women to challenge and change the ideas of toxic masculinity that lay behind them” (61). While new laws and funding might at times be put into motion based on these outsiders’ actions, without transformation at a social and political level, Zakaria notes, change is impossible. Just how in the U.S. white women uphold capitalist values to reinforce white supremacy at home, they do so abroad; they install “white-led, top-down paradigms of development,” not unlike the so-called “trickle-down-economics” preached in our own country (59). And this is only reinforced and further upheld by global, western-led organizations such as NOW and the UN that further act on white supremacy’s behalf.
And this is where Zakaria’s core argument comes in: Why are white feminists so determined to “fix” issues abroad but not at home? “The practice of female genital cutting [FGC] fosters moral outrage in which the West stands on the right side and anyone trying to introduce the complexities of the issue into the debate is discredited as a secret supporter of the practice...Nor is the epidemic of privileged American girls cutting themselves generally seen as a symptom of barbaric culture in the same way” (156). While white women emphasize issues abroad, they do not look at the ones impacting their children at home. And if they do, they aren’t ever considered to be “the same.” Just as they “other” women abroad, the issues are othered as well—made foreign, barbaric, distant. Something that they argue and believe has no equivalent to any practices in the U.S. In the case of FGC, white women have completely overlooked the work done by indigenous women abroad to massively lower the procedure’s rate; rather, these western governments set up their own plan, one that relies on profiling and stereotyping (161). Zakaria calls on us to ask why this focus, but yet no care for issues in their own country, such as racist, ableist, and transphobic reproductive care? It’s all to uphold the image and power of white supremacy.
“This book tackles what ‘whiteness’ has done within the feminist movement; similar work can and needs to be done about how whiteness operates within lesbian, gay, trans, and queer movements” (x). This quote leads to another inkling of a thought that emerged while reading Zakaria’s work. Zakaria provides the disclaimer that this text does not dive into the impact of whiteness on the LGBTQIA+ community. This becomes clearer at the books conclusion: “This book has attempted to see clearly the different dimensions of the feminist movement as it exists today, how it has arrived at this point, and where it could go from here, such that every woman who calls herself a feminist, of any race, class, nationality, or religion, can see a path forward and a reason to stay,” she writes as the final sentence (210, emphasis our own). Zakaria does bring in discussions that pertain to the LGBTQIA+ community throughout, but consistently her language reflects that of the book’s final sentence, targeting individuals that identify as women. Of course, not every story has to be written for an all-expansive audience. However, to develop a truly intersectional feminist framework, readers must supplement the read with other texts that do dive further into LGBTQIA+ (and disability!) rights, further working to combat a limiting, binary view.
Some might argue that Zakaria’s book is timely given “current events” in Palestine, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Yet this book has always been timely; the only reason such events are considered “current” is because of the white gaze suddenly cast upon them. But what does this say about issues that are failing to meet white consciousness today? “It is most often easier to inhabit the systems that we find ourselves in,” she writes, “than to dismantle them because of their inequity” (175). Against White Feminism is an urgent call to not only open our feminist principles to an inclusive definition—one that actively combats white supremacy—but also for white women (and anyone else that acts or upholds white feminism) to pay attention. To combat the issues facing us now and here, instead of ignorantly avoiding them or pretending they don’t exist until it’s too late, or until it’s simply “convenient.”
“ And so the stories of women of color are often told but the perspective gained from living such stories never becomes part of the epistemology of feminism.”
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Were there any examples Zakaria provided that made you see any acts of Western intervention through a new lens?
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