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

by Ruby Hamad

Focusing on the sixty years from 1880 to 1940, Jacobs uncovers a history of white women far removed from the usual image of steadfast pioneers who were ignorant of the reality of the colonial project. As in other colonial outposts of empire, white women in Australia quickly learned to navigate European colonialism to their advantage, leveraging their status as both a subordinate class and a privileged class to “simultaneously collaborate with and confound colonial aims.” When it came to the removal and institutionalization of Indigenous children, colonialism was “largely a feminine domain, defined primarily around mothering, particularly targeted at Indigenous women, and implemented largely by white women.” White women decided that the removal of Indigenous children was “women’s work for women.”