The White Woman and I
An Essay About the White Women Who Would’ve Let Me Burn (hopefully not my girlies <3)
The figure of the white woman has long occupied a paradoxical pedestal in the American social order – cherished as an emblem of virtue, yet historically complicit in some of the nation’s darkest violence.
In a satirical but serious examination, The White Woman and I explores how white women have upheld patriarchy and white supremacy from the Jim Crow era to today. While draped in the language of “protection” or even “empowerment,” their actions have often buttressed the very systems of racial terror and misogyny they claim to oppose. This article traces that twisted legacy: from the white women whose cries of outrage justified lynchings, to contemporary conservative “girlbosses” who don the mantle of feminism even as they defend patriarchal power.
The contradictions are glaring and telling. We will ground this critique in history with figures like anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells, then connect the dots to modern politics and culture. The goal is not merely to indict, but to provoke a reckoning with an uncomfortable truth: the performance of white female empowerment often masks an enduring complicity in oppression. It’s time to ask – what happens when the pedestal becomes a prison, and when will the curtain finally fall on this age-old performance?
Southern Belles and Strange Fruit: White Women’s Racial “Protection” Racket
At the turn of the 20th century, the image of the delicate white Southern lady loomed large – too pure to lie, too fragile to fend for herself. White men eagerly cast themselves as gallant protectors, hanging, shooting, and burning alleged offenders in the name of defending white womanhood. This gruesome bargain – patriarchal violence repackaged as chivalry – was the backbone of an epidemic of lynchings.
Between 1882 and 1968, white mobs lynched at least 4,743 people in the U.S., the vast majority Black men. The typical excuse? A dubious allegation that a Black man had “violated” a white woman’s honor. In reality, as journalist Ida B. Wells boldly revealed, these accusations were frequently fabricated or consensual liaisons recast as rape to cover the “unmistakable parallel” of consensual interracial relationships. Lynchings, Wells concluded, were “an excuse to get rid of Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property” – a terror tactic to enforce white supremacy.
White women’s role in this racial carnage was both symbolic and literal. The “cult of white womanhood” painted them as virtuous maidens under siege, a notion exploited to justify barbarism. Southern white women were not mere bystanders to lynch law; many were active participants or enthusiastic onlookers. Entire families – women and children included – would attend lynchings as grotesque public carnivals, posing for souvenir photos beneath the swaying “strange fruit” of Black bodies.
White women, clutching their parasols and picnic baskets, could gaze upon charred corpses without batting an eyelash – secure in the knowledge that this violence was ostensibly for their sake. It was patriarchy’s ugliest deal: in exchange for pedestal placement as paragons of virtue, white women surrendered their agency to white male “protectors” and tacitly sanctioned racial terror.
Perhaps the most damning illustration of this bargain came from a white woman herself. In 1897, Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia, who would soon become the first female U.S. Senator, gave a shocking speech that flipped between feminist-sounding demands and overt racism. She lambasted white men for failing to safeguard farm women’s rights, but then concluded with a line that hit like a thunderclap:
“If it needs lynching to protect woman’s dearest possession from the ravening human beasts, then I say lynch, a thousand times a week if necessary.”
Felton’s words were widely publicized and eagerly embraced by lynch mobs as righteous justification. Here was “empowerment” turned on its head – a white woman advocating extreme patriarchal violence to uphold racial hierarchy, even as she campaigned for her own gender’s advancement. Felton’s paradoxical legacy (a suffragist and a white supremacist) underscores how white women could leverage their nascent power to reinforce racism rather than dismantle it.
Meanwhile, Black women like Ida B. Wells saw through this deadly charade. Wells’s investigative journalism in Southern Horrors and The Red Record laid bare the “unjust irony” that white men lynched Black men under pretext of protecting white women, while Black women had no recourse against sexual assault by powerful white men.
Enslaved and freed Black women were routinely abused by white masters and bosses, yet no lynch mobs formed to avenge their honor. The protection of “womanhood” clearly meant protection of white women only, and even that was selective – a convenient myth to cloak racial control. Wells acidly observed that no other “civilized” nation pretended it must execute men without trial to keep women safe. Her point was as pungent as her prose: the notion that American white womanhood needed lethal defense was a pernicious lie, one that allowed white women to wield enormous indirect power without accountability.
White women’s complicity in this racial “protection racket” faced scant consequences. Consider the case of Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman whose lie in 1955 led to the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till. Bryant claimed Till harassed her; her husband and his half-brother brutally murdered the boy in response. At the trial, Bryant’s fabricated testimony painted Till as a predator – an old script in a new act. An all-white jury acquitted the killers, and Bryant herself vanished into comfortable obscurity, living to age 88 without ever facing punishment.
In fact, back in 1955, the local sheriff refused to even arrest or bother her, because she was a young mother. The message was clear: a white woman’s life – even one stained with perjury and a child’s blood – was too delicate for accountability.
She lived a life devoid of one notable thing: punishment. Only in 2022 did a grand jury review the decades-old evidence against Carolyn Bryant Donham, and still it declined to indict her, claiming “insufficient evidence” to break this lifetime of impunity. Hundreds of years of anti-Black systems had done their job: ensuring that those who instigated racial violence under the banner of white womanhood remained untouchable.
Ida B. Wells and the Unheeded Call for Accountability
If white women were the unwitting (or perhaps witting) muses of lynch mobs, Black women like Ida B. Wells were the truth-tellers demanding that America wake up. With cutting insight, Wells wrote in 1892 that “the old thread-bare lie” of the Black rapist had been thoroughly discredited – lynching was never truly about avenging female virtue.
She painstakingly documented case after case where the supposed crime was a consensual interracial relationship or an absurd allegation conjured from “white imaginations”. Through two groundbreaking pamphlets, Southern Horrors and A Red Record, Wells “exploded the myth” of lynching as justice and exposed it as “that last relic of barbarism and slavery.”
Her courage in naming white women’s complicity was remarkable. Wells pointed out how readily white Southern women wielded false accusations as a lethal weapon, and she openly castigated even white feminists of her day for fanning the flames of racial violence.
Indeed, Wells had public battles with prominent white suffragists (such as Frances Willard) who were unwilling to denounce lynching or who traded in racist tropes themselves. She understood that racism and sexism were intertwined evils – and that some white women, in fighting for their own rights, were perfectly happy to trample the rights (and lives) of Black people.
Yet Wells’s calls for accountability fell largely on deaf ears in the halls of power. Despite her activism and that of the anti-lynching movement, no federal anti-lynching law was passed in her lifetime.
Southern white lawmakers – the fathers, brothers, and husbands of those ostensibly “helpless” white women – blocked every attempt to criminalize lynching for decades. It was not until 2022 that the Emmett Till Antilynching Act finally squeaked through Congress, over a century after Wells began her crusade. The delay speaks volumes about whose voices were valued. White women who incited violence were shielded; Black women sounding the alarm were shunned.
To add insult to injury, history books often muted Wells’s voice and painted the era in terms of white male savagery alone – glossing over the white female instigators and beneficiaries of that system.
There is a bitter satirical truth here: white women managed to uphold patriarchy by being its prized possessions and later claimed ignorance of the horrors carried out in their name. Accountability was always redirected elsewhere. When Wells demanded justice, the nation shrugged; when Black families begged for someone like Carolyn Bryant to be charged, authorities demurred that it was “unfortunate, but predictable” that no justice would come.
Over and over, calls for white women’s accountability were either silenced or twisted into renewed performances of their innocence. The cycle would simply repeat in new forms.
Black Art Spotlight: Heirlooms and Accessories by Kerry James Marshall
In his 2002 triptych Heirlooms and Accessories, renowned artist Kerry James Marshall confronts the legacy of racial violence and the role of white women within it. Drawing from Lawrence Beitler’s infamous 1930 photograph of the double lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana, Marshall reimagines the image to center the often-overlooked spectators: the white women in the crowd.
Marshall employs a technique known as "ghosting" to fade the gruesome details of the lynching into the background, bringing into sharp focus the faces of three white women who turned toward the camera. These women's images are encased within ornate lockets, adorned with rhinestones, and presented as cherished heirlooms.
By doing so, Marshall critiques how the passive acceptance—and at times, active participation—of white women in such acts of terror have been passed down through generations, much like treasured family jewelry. The artwork suggests that these women are not mere bystanders but accessories to the crime, both literally and metaphorically.
Currently housed in the Studio Museum in Harlem, Heirlooms and Accessories serves as a poignant reminder of how white femininity has been weaponized to uphold white supremacy. It challenges viewers to reconsider the narratives of innocence often ascribed to white women and to acknowledge their roles in the perpetuation of racial violence.
From Lynch Mobs to “Karens”: The Legacy of Weaponized Fragility
History’s shadow looms in today’s viral confrontations featuring white women – the so-called “Karens” caught on camera clutching their phones and pearls at the sight of Black people enjoying everyday life. While often played for dark comedy on the internet, these incidents are deadly serious in context.
Modern-day BBQ Beckys and Central Park Karens are following a playbook as old as Jim Crow: weaponize white womanhood to summon the forces of patriarchal authority against people of color. The common thread in these women’s behavior is how the weaponization of white womanhood in a racist manner, using a few key tactics:
Tears as Weapons: Damsel-in-distress theatrics to play the victim (knowing society is primed to rescue crying white ladies). For example, a panicked 911 call with just the right tremble in the voice can translate into armed officers racing to the scene.
Credibility by Default: Banking on the assumption that white women “will be believed over Black people.” This hearkens back to the era when a white woman’s word in court could condemn a Black man to death with scant evidence – a presumption sadly alive and well.
Racist Fear-Mongering: Exhibiting outsized fear of Black men or any people of color in ordinary situations. This taps into age-old stereotypes of the “ravening beast” that must be subdued.
Calling in the Cavalry: Dialing 911 or invoking authorities knowing full well that police intervention could lead to violence against the person of color. In effect, it’s the updated version of pointing and yelling “Help, a Black man is attacking me!” to a nearby mob – except now the mob arrives with badges and guns.
Recent incidents illustrate how little has changed beyond the surface. In 2020, Amy Cooper – a white woman walking her dog in Central Park – called police on a Black birdwatcher Christian Cooper with a false claim of being threatened. On video, her voice rose to a frantic pitch as she warned, “I’m going to tell them there’s an African-American man threatening my life!” The audacity was breathtaking: she consciously weaponized her white woman tears, knowing the mere invocation of a Black male threat could bring potentially lethal force down on an innocent man.
This was a direct echo of Carolyn Bryant or any number of antebellum damsels whose lies sparked lynch mobs – only Mr. Cooper (funny they have the same last name #slavery) thankfully survived to tell the tale. The pattern is so entrenched that scholars have dubbed it “the weaponization of white womanhood”, a cultural script that needs dismantling through both legal penalties (e.g. making racist 911 calls a hate crime) and, importantly, white women taking collective responsibility for their role.
It is grimly comedic – in a satirical sense – how these modern “Karens” often express shock when they are held to account at all. Some lose jobs or face public shaming when videos go viral, and their response is typically to cry that they are now victims – of “cancel culture” or even “misogyny” for being called Karen. (One might note the irony of appropriating feminist language to avoid responsibility for racist behavior.)
This is the old deflection at work: focus on white female suffering (even if self-inflicted) to erase the actual harm done to Black people. Labeling someone a “Karen” is not a sexist slur but a critique of a very specific power play.
Yet predictably, any attempt to highlight this behavior sees a chorus of voices fretting that white women are being vilified unfairly. It seems the call for accountability is still being redirected – now with thinkpieces claiming “Karen” is as bad as the N-word (it’s not, by any stretch). The tragic through-line remains: white womanhood, if left unchecked, continues to be wielded as a shield against criticism and a sword against the marginalized.
Partners in Patriarchy: Conservative Women and the Female Face of Backlash
While some white women weaponize fragility, others weaponize power, aligning with overtly patriarchal movements and leaders, and often thriving as enablers in return.
A striking contemporary pattern is the prominence of white women in conservative and far-right politics, where they often champion causes that roll back other women’s rights or uphold male dominance. It would be pure farce if it weren’t so damaging: these women wrap themselves in the cloak of respectability and even feminism while advocating for anti-feminist, racist agendas. They are the smiling public faces of the patriarchy, softening its image while reinforcing its foundations.
Consider the Trump administration, which relied on several such women. Donald Trump’s White House Press Secretaries – notably Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kayleigh McEnany – served as dutiful shock absorbers for his most egregious misogyny.
When Trump launched crude, sexist attacks (for instance, insulting a female TV host’s looks and calling her “bleeding” and “crazy”), Sanders dutifully defended him. She excused Trump’s behavior as that of a man who “fights fire with fire,” praising him as “tough, smart, and a fighter”. In one breath, she dismissed reporters’ concerns about Trump’s example in treating women, scolding them for “wanting to make this an attack on a woman.”
After all, Sanders argued that she was a woman and didn’t “cry foul” when attacked by critics. This Orwellian doublespeak – a woman asserting that complaints of sexism are just a “false narrative” – exemplifies how white conservative women often neutralize feminist critique. By leveraging their own gender, they deflect accusations of misogyny within the movements they serve: How can it be patriarchal abuse if a woman is the one telling you it’s fine?
White women have also been a reliable voting bloc for maintaining patriarchal, racist politics. Despite popular assumptions about a monolithic “sisterhood,” a majority of white women have consistently voted for Republican (often highly patriarchal) candidates in U.S. presidential elections since at least 2000.
In 2016, 52% of white female voters chose Trump – despite (or perhaps because of) his open contempt for women and minorities – and in 2020, that share actually ticked up to 55%.
This phenomenon confounds those who see feminism as an automatic stance for women. But it makes sense when one recognizes that many white women prioritize their racial and class interests (and the protection of the status quo) over gender solidarity.
Aligning with powerful white men – even a proudly sexist one – can seem a safer bet to those who benefit from the existing hierarchy. The satirical question practically asks itself: What’s a little locker room talk when there are tax cuts and Supreme Court seats at stake? The truth is that for some, the patriarchy is not so much an enemy as a family business.
The ultimate satire is perhaps the “Women for ___” spectacle – fill in the blank with your strongman of choice. “Women for Trump.” “Moms for Liberty.” These slogans plastered on T-shirts and rally signs feature smiling white women cheerleading policies that hurt marginalized groups and often women themselves.
We see gun-toting “mama bears” defending boys-will-be-boys rape culture in schools, affluent suburban “housewives” campaigning against affordable housing or racial integration, and yes, Press Secretarys smiling while the President jokes about assaulting women.
The participation of white women gives these movements a veneer of legitimacy (how sexist can it be if women support it?*), but it’s cosmetic. Scratch the surface and you find patriarchal bargaining at work: these women gain status, approval, or a slice of power by propping up the very systems that marginalize others (and ultimately themselves). As long as they remain the exception – the token woman on the stage or the loyal foot soldier – the rule of male dominance and white supremacy goes unthreatened.
Neoliberal Feminism and the “Girlboss” Façade
Not all complicity wears a red MAGA hat or clutches pearls on Fox News. In fact, some of the most insidious support for the status quo comes from those wearing the mantle of progressivism and feminism – the neoliberal “girlbosses” of the corporate and social media world.
This breed of white woman presents as the empowered modern female: she’s breaking glass ceilings, launching startups, shouting her lean-in feminism from the boardroom. But beneath the glossy #GirlBoss veneer, her ideology often amounts to old-fashioned capitalist individualism repackaged in pink. It’s a performance of empowerment that “doesn’t demand significant social change, and effectively undermines calls for collective action.” In other words, it asks nothing of the powers-that-be – and delivers nothing for women at large.
The term “girl boss,” born from tongue-in-cheek corporate feminism, has come to symbolize this ethos. It is the melding of professional self, identity, and capitalist aspiration.
The girlboss and her close cousin, the “choice feminist,” insist that any choice a woman makes – no matter how it upholds existing power structures – is inherently feminist if she feels empowered.
Work 90 hours a week, climbing the corporate ladder? #BossBabe! Become a billionaire CEO with dubious labor practices?Representation win!
This ideology, as the Harvard Political Review notes, “prioritizes individual success at the extreme detriment of other women,” preserving traditional roles and market logic under a superficial girl-power gloss.
It mutates feminism into a personal project rather than a collective fight. The result is that a few (mostly white, mostly privileged) women rise to the top, while structural inequalities remain untouched – or even exacerbated.
We see this dynamic in the tech and business worlds frequently. A perfect satire-in-real-life example arose recently with Phoebe Gates – the youngest daughter of billionaire Bill Gates – launching a much-hyped startup. Billed as an “AI-powered fashion app” aimed at sustainable shopping, Phoebe’s venture hit all the right PR notes: two female co-founders (Phoebe and climate activist Sophia Kiani), buzzwords about resale and reducing waste, and even a mentorship from celebrity momager Kris Jenner and Sheryl Sanberg.
The startup, Phia, is essentially an e-commerce tool for finding the best deals on designer clothes – hardly a revolution that will upend capitalist exploitation or save the planet. It has venture backing likely secured through elite networks, and its sustainability angle (encouraging secondhand shopping) conveniently aligns with a profit model of affiliate links and consumerism-lite. And does no one see the irony of Sophia Kianni using AI—the very technology fueling extractive capitalism and energy waste—to “solve” climate change?
It’s the environmental version of throwing water on a grease fire and calling it innovation.
You can also watch this TikTok to see how the luxury brand strategist
was asked to review and promote their app FOR FREE and how he proves (in real time) that it is useless for finding the best deals.In short, it’s “change” as a stylish diversion: an entrepreneurial venture that appears socially conscious but doesn’t threaten any existing structure of wealth or power. One can almost hear the chuckle of satire – the billionaire’s daughter asking us to believe that the key to empowerment and equality is a better bargain on a Gucci handbag.
Yet many white women in particular have found this lean-in logic attractive, as it requires little sacrifice and offers plenty of personal rewards. It allows them to appear progressive – sporting those “Girl Power” T-shirts, posting on social media about women’s empowerment – while not only supporting capitalist structures but actually thriving within them.
It’s feminism as a fashion statement and a career move, not a disruptive force. As scholar Catherine Rottenberg has noted, the “neoliberal feminist” is essentially told to empower herself through self-improvement and ambition, treating structural barriers as irrelevant.
This dovetails nicely with white privilege: if you’re already advantaged, it’s much easier to believe your success is just a matter of grit and #GirlBoss attitude. Meanwhile, the women of color, the poor women, the other women who can’t simply “choose” their way out of oppression, get left behind – often working for or being marketed to by these very girlbosses.
In pop culture, this phenomenon has reached self-parody. The term “girlbossing too close to the sun” made the rounds on social media to mock those who earnestly celebrate hollow achievements as feminist wins.
For instance, if a news headline reads, “Company X appoints first female executive to oversee layoffs of 5,000 workers,” you can bet someone will sarcastically cheer, “Yas queen, slay!” The satire writes itself because we recognize the disconnect: a woman in power isn’t progressing when she perpetuates the same old injustices.
The Pedestal and The Veil: Toward a Reckoning
From the lynching grounds of the 1890s to today’s corporate boardrooms, white women have performed a complex dance with power—pedestalized and protected, yet often complicit in systems of violence.
The final illusion we must shatter is the veil of innocence: the idea that white women are only ever victims or allies, never oppressors. Yes, white women have faced sexism. But many have also upheld the very patriarchies that crush others, especially through the racial caste system they benefit from.
Satire helps us see the contradiction: How can hands that cradle gavels and rifles still claim to be tied? How do we reconcile the white mother who lied Emmett Till to death with the one smiling at a Trump rally, unbothered by mockery of #MeToo?
These are performances—of purity, patriotism, and empowerment—that mask betrayal. When pressed, the script often shifts to silence, self-centering, or a strategic exit.
But performances can end. Curtains do fall. The same white women who’ve been complicit can choose a new role—one rooted in humility, discomfort, and real solidarity.
So to the white woman (and she lives in many of us): Will you cling to the myths that power feeds you? Or will you help dismantle the stage entirely?
The history is damning. But the future—if it’s honest—still has room for redemption. When the pedestal is seen for what it is, when the veil drops, when the performance ends—then, finally, the real work can begin.
Until next time,
Marley
This is fantastic. However painful, white women need to own this. We can’t have a Not All Women category like men do. To me, white women’s behavior is an extension of patriarchy in which they agree to be second class citizens for the perceived benefit of protection. We always have to ask, “protection from who?” It is not from people of other races. It is from the white men who have maintained control for centuries. It is a totally false narrative. It is gross.
Loved reading every bit of this - what a powerful read.