Feminist organizers who work for the Women’s March launched a new project Sunday to dismantle and redistribute the “social and financial” power of white women.
The Confront White Womanhood project encourages white women to stop participating in the “oppression of people of color” by educating themselves about how they’ve been “accomplices” in white supremacy and “violence” against racial minorities.
“For centuries, violence has been done in the name of — and even physically enacted by — white women,” its mission statement says. “It is time to be accountable for the harm we cause, however unintentional it may be.”
They warn that white women are especially guilty of harming black people if they support meritocracy without making concession for the “lived realities” of black women. Or if they support “false narratives of equality.”
While the project is independent of the annual Women’s March, two of the program’s three coordinators are employed by the March. Rhiannon Childs is the executive director for the Women’s March Ohio Chapter, while Sophie Ellman-Golan is the deputy director of communications at the Women’s March.
Together, Ellman-Golan and Childs are working alongside “whiteness” scholar Heather Marie Scholl to organize events that will help white women learn how they hurt people of color. The trio’s first event will be held in Manhattan on March 4. Tickets are $20.
“At this session, we will be focusing on the white history of feminism and white female empowerment has harmed People of Color,” the event description notes, adding that attendees will “leave with ideas of how white women can take tangible steps to interrupt our own racial biases and confront the ways we cause harm.”
Tangible strategies to help include “behavioral change” and “reparations,” which the organizers note refers to “habit of sharing financial and labor based resources … with no expectations of outcome or credit.”
But reparations isn’t the only way. They also encourage women to educate themselves on the pitfalls of whiteness, saying that “white womanhood is a gilded cage — that it harms women in addition to harming People of Color.”
While the project targets white women, Confront White Womanhood notes that they “do not believe in creating white-only spaces.” Instead, women of all backgrounds are welcome to attend.
The project features a glowing endorsement from Tamika Mallory, the co-president of the Women’s March. She notes that the Women’s March can’t fight patriarchy and racism if white women aren’t willing to be accountable for how they harm people of color.
“The Confront White Womanhood platform does the necessary work of teaching white women to face how they uphold systems of patriarchal white supremacy,” says Mallory.
PJ Media reached out to Confront White Womanhood for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
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