A Transcript of an Interview with White Noise Collective on Feminist Magazine Radio Show, July 2, 2019.

1. How would you define White Womanhood – and what separates it from womanhood in general?  Why must we make this distinction?

We use “white womanhood” as a term to capture the set of cultural messages that are widely spread through media and institutions like churches and schools about how “white women” should look, act, behave, and participate in society.  These messages often result in learned behaviors that many people who identify as white women perform, or are expected to perform in order to be accepted. For example, these social messages tell us that white women are expected to be married, should be mothers, should keep a clean house, should be attractive yet modest, should never complain, should not be angry or aggressive, should be easy-going and passive, etc.  These messages also say that white women should be straight (not queer) and cis-gendered (not transgender), and that white women are pure, chaste and vulnerable, and require the protection of men and of the state to maintain that purity.

Of course, we know from our lived experiences that not everyone who is seen by the world as a white woman identifies with these messages, and in fact many people who are seen or expected to be white woman actually actively resist these messages, or work to subvert them.  For example, many people who identify as white women choose to be single, or choose not to have children, or are lesbian, bisexual, asexual, or queer. Many white people who are assigned female at birth identify as genderqueer, a-gender or transgender, and many people who identify as white women identify as white trans-women who were assigned male at birth.  The true experience of navigating both white skin privilege and gendered oppression is far more complex than the box that society wants to put white women in.

However, even though we understand that people’s real lives are not stereotypes, we believe it is important to understand the societal impacts of the social messages of “white womanhood”, because these messages and narratives about “white womanhood” have been used across time to maintain both racism and sexism in society, and ultimately maintain the concentration of power in white, wealthy, elite cis-gendered men.

2. When you look at U.S. history and even that of other nation’s something that you must note is that for centuries there has been much violence carried out in the name & even physically enacted by white women?   Just saying the name Emmitt Till underscores this

Yes, absolutely.  In the United States, there is a long history of horrific violence, specifically by the state or by state-supported vigilantes, that is enacted both by white women and in the name of white women against people of color and indigenous people.  This violence goes back to the very foundation of the so-called United States. From the 17th century until the middle of the 19th century so-called “captivity narratives”, or stories of white women being captured by Native American communities were very popular.  This genre featured tales of “Indian savagery”, the “bravery of white male settlers”, and the “vulnerability of white women in need of protection and rescue”, and were used to justify genocide and the erasure of Native peoples.  In the antebellum South there were famous white women such as Annie Poore and Ann Robertson who ran their own slave markets and sold enslaved people, even though women were technically considered property of their husbands and legally restricted from these kinds of economic activities.  There were women cohorts of the KKK, whose presence in the terrorist organization provided opportunities for the Klan to present itself as a “respectable community group.” Many people have heard of Carolyn Bryant, the white woman who Emmitt Till reportedly “flirted” with at the age of 14.  Till was brutally murdered by Bryant’s husband Roy and his half-brother. Unlike many vigilante murderers, these two men were charged and brought to trial for the murder of Emmett Till, however they were acquitted by an all white jury after only 67 minutes of deliberation. Carolyn Bryant has since recanted parts of her account of what happened that day in 1955.  

We see this narrative of white women as virtuous, pure, and in need of protection, specifically protection from black men, present across time.  Fewer people have heard of Sarah Page, who was in an elevator when Dick Rowland, a black man accidentally tripped and fell into her. Page called the police, who jailed Rowland, and white vigilante mobs attempted to lynch him, resulting in the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921, in which over 10,000 Black Americans lost their homes and over 600 successful Black businesses in the heart of Black Wall Street were destroyed.

This narrative hasn’t stopped today.  Olivia Bertalan, a white woman neighbor of George Zimmerman’s, testified in his trial to feeling unsafe and afraid in her neighborhood, thereby justifying his vigilante patrol.  Zimmerman was acquitted of the murder of Trayvon Martin in February of 2012, by a jury of 5 white women and 1 Hispanic woman.

And this is only a very partial and incomplete list. 

3. Do you believe that white women recognize or are even willing to admit to their role in white supremacy? In what ways do you see this violence perpetuated today?

Largely, no.  This is one of the prime reasons that White Noise Collective exists, to draw attention to the role of white women in maintaining white supremacy.

That being said, as part of this work, we also strive to reclaim our ancestral legacies of resistance.  There have always been white women who resisted their role in white supremacy and have fought for collective liberation, although of course this looked different in different time periods; however of course there are often even more white women who are complicit in their role within white supremacy, and actively benefit from white supremacy even at the expense of sexism.  We see this blaringly present today — 53% of white women voted for Trump, a self-declared racist, xenophobic sexual predator. We see white women on juries repeatedly acquitting police officers and vigilantes for the murder of Black men. And of course there are massive groups of white women who think they are “doing the right thing” but repeatedly choose to ally with white men to maintain white supremacy, rather than allying with women and people of color around the world to overturn this system.  We often refer to these groups of women as second-wave feminists, or non-intersectional feminists. These are white feminists who advocate for imperial invasions and military occupation in Muslim majority countries in the Middle East in order to “save” Muslim women, or white women who call the police on their neighbors of color during perceived disputes without acknowledge the life-threatening harm that police can present in communities of color. These are white feminists who fight for closing the pay gap between white women and white men, without naming or fighting to close the even larger pay gap between white women and Black women; or who fight for reproductive rights in a narrow sense, without fighting forced state sterilization of women of color, or collective rights to welfare for low-income and poor women.

However, we always try to call on our ancestors who did fight white supremacy in the best way they were able in their lifetimes.  Jessie Daniel Ames, a white southerner suffragist and civil rights advocate, actively organized other white women against lynching, forming the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, which obtained the signatures of 40,000 women to their Pledge Against Lynching.  We call on Casey Hayden, a white woman who grew up in rural Texas and eventually joined SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, doing civil rights work in the South. In 1963 Hayden was appointed to the new position of Northern Coordinator, developing Friends of SNCC groups on campuses throughout the North. Hayden continued to support SNCC in clerical and administrative ways largely in the Jackson office, foregoing field placements in rural Mississippi, noting the ways her presence compromised safety for black male organizers.  We call on Anne Braden, a tireless civil rights activist and organizer from Kentucky, who, during the 1970s wrote two open letters to southern white women, in which “she urges white women to build a women’s movement that is not at odds with the Black liberation struggle.” 

4. In what ways has the White Noise Collective highlighted and helped to educate others about the role of white womanhood within systems of violence?

We do this in a few ways — first, we try to raise awareness through dialogues, workshops, social media and resource compilations, very specifically about the damaging narratives of white womanhood and how they are used to manipulate white women into complicity with white supremacy.  All the historical and present-day examples I have shared in this interview come directly from our curriculum on this workshop, entitled white womanhood and systems of violence. We share this curriculum with anyone who is interested in using it, and are also developing a written resource that highlights all of these individual case studies, so that we can begin to know our own brutal history more clearly.  We also support local efforts to encourage white people generally, and white women specifically, not to call the police on their neighbors, or at all.