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

by Ruby Hamad

children. What did it matter that some children still had living parents when it was their future that was at stake—a future that could be spent as a productive member of white society rather than following in the footsteps of their primitive parents? He was doing it for their own sake, you see. Won’t somebody please think of the children? Well, somebody did. By the 1870s poverty was considered so shameful that poor families were voluntarily surrendering their newborn infants to the wicker cradles set up for this very purpose on the steps of charity organizations across the city. Many pinned heartbreaking notes to their baby’s clothing, promising to return and collect them when they could afford it. Brace’s vision had successfully convinced poor white parents that their poverty-stricken status meant they had forfeited their parental rights to their own children.