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

by Ruby Hamad

Today, we see white women joining white men, and in some cases overtaking them, in the halls of power. U.S. voters may have missed out on a female president in 2016 but since then four of the top five weapons manufacturing firms in the United States appointed white women CEOs. White women head the top three CIA directorates, including director Gina Haspel, who, under the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program during the George W. Bush administration, oversaw a secret prison in Thailand that used torture techniques such as waterboarding to interrogate suspects. White women have senior leadership roles in Homeland Security, National Intelligence, and the FBI. The head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, responsible for building and maintaining the country’s nuclear weapons is a white woman. The undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, who oversees billions in U.S. arms sales and negotiates and implements international weapons agreements, is a white woman. In