Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria (Book #42)

Title: Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption

Author: Rafia Zakaria

Dates Read: Apr. 28 - May 5

Format: eBook (ARC)

Rating: ★★★★

Description: Elite white women have branded feminism, promising an apolitical individual empowerment along with sexual liberation and satisfaction, LGBTQ inclusion, and racial solidarity. As Rafia Zakaria expertly argues, those promises have been proven empty and white feminists have leant on their racial privilege and sense of cultural superiority. Drawing on her own experiences as an American Muslim woman, as well as an attorney working on behalf of immigrant women, Zakaria champions a reconstruction of feminism that forges true solidarity by bringing Black and brown voices and goals to the fore.

Ranging from the savior complex of British feminist imperialists to the condescension of the white feminist–led “development industrial complex” and the conflation of sexual liberation as the “sum total of empowerment,” Zakaria presents an eye-opening indictment of how whiteness has contributed to a feminist movement that solely serves the interests of upper middle-class white women.

Review: Rafia Zakaria’s (The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan) new book is based upon a simple premise: Western (White) feminism does not serve the needs of all women is not the ideal to which all other feminisms should aspire to. White feminism is based on power and relies on speaking on behalf of “powerless” women instead of valuing Black and Brown voices. White feminists focus on bringing feminism and enlightenment to marginalized peoples instead of examining the ways in which these marginalized people already live feminism within their own lives and experiences. In examining the pitfalls of White feminism, Zakaria explores related issues such as the cult of relatability, the dichotomy between expertise and experience, virtue signaling, sexual liberation as a core pillar of White feminism, and the Black Lives Matter movement. While Zakaria’s argument is not unique or groundbreaking as this is a conversation being had on the academic level for the past decade, her examination of current political and pop culture examples provides crucial evidence to the continued colonization of feminism by White women and brings this conversation into mainstream view. (Reviewed for Library Journal Magazine)