White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color

by Ruby Hamad

The concept of whiteness and racism as a form of pathological narcissism that manifests in some individual white people has a long research history. In 1980, Carl Bell, a clinical psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry, outlined how the hallmark symptoms associated with narcissistic personality disorder, such as grandiosity, entitlement, and lack of empathy, apply to individual racists. More recently, in 2016, assistant professor of education Cheryl Matias described whiteness as narcissistic because its emotional nature insists on positioning itself as the center of the discourse, “especially when one is trying to push it to the margins.” What I am adding here is that in order to understand how we got here as a global society and why it is proving so difficult to get us out, we must shift focus from the behavior of individual white people for a moment and recognize that whiteness as a system of power is not based on the logic and rationality that white society claims to embody. Rather, it is scaffolded by delusions and denials that must be cherished and defended so that whiteness does not implode. And that elicit rage toward anyone who dares to point them out. In her book on Dutch “white innocence,” Gloria Wekker concludes that white society is incapable of admitting to its own atrocities so it consistently seeks to exonerate itself by projecting the blame onto its victims, and this often happens at the level of the subconscious.

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