White Tears Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Colour – Ruby Hamad

Mae dagrau merched gwyn yn meddu ar allu nad yw’n cael ei gydnabod yn aml, ond maen nhw wedi’u defnyddio fel arf peryglus yn erbyn pobl o liw, wedi’u harfogi er mwyn ennyn cydymdeimlad.

Gan ein cymryd ni o’r cyfnod caethweision, pan oedd merched gwyn yn ymladd yn y llys i gadw ‘perchnogaeth’ ar eu caethweision, trwy ganrifoedd o wladychiaeth i’r gweithle modern, lle mae dagrau’n amddiffyniad i gwrthgyhuddiadau o ragfarn a micro-ymosodedd, mae White Tears/Brown Scars yn adrodd stori am gyfranogiad gweithredol merched gwyn mewn ymgyrchoedd gormes. Mae’n cynnig dilysiad hir-ddisgwyliedig o brofiadau merched o liw a galwad brys ar yr angen am wir groestoriad.

Mae Hamad yn adeiladu dadl bwerus am etifeddiaeth y goruchafiaeth gwyn yr ydym yn cymdeithasu ynddi, realiti y mae’n rhaid i ni i gyd ei ddeall er mwyn ymladd.

White tears possess a potency that is rarely acknowledged or commented upon, but they have long been used as a dangerous and insidious tool against people of colour, weaponised in order to invoke sympathy and divert blame.

Taking us from the slave era, when white women fought in court to keep ‘ownership’ of their slaves, through centuries of colonialism, when women offered a soft face for brutal tactics, to the modern workplace, in which tears serve as a defense to counter accusations of bias and micro-aggressions, White Tears/Brown Scars tells a charged story of white women’s active participation in campaigns of oppression. It offers a long-overdue validation of the experiences of women of colour and an urgent call-to-arms in the need for true intersectionality.

With rigour and precision, Hamad builds a powerful argument about the legacy of white superiority that we are socialised within, a reality that we must all apprehend in order to fight.