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Summary: Chapter 11: White Women’s Tears

A major roadblock to constructive conversation about racism happens when a white workshop participant who is unable to handle feedback about racism breaks down and cries. This is an emotional reaction, not easily controlled. But its immediate effect is to make other people in the room, white and Black, feel sympathetic and redirect the conversation toward comforting the distressed person, typically a woman. To Black people, these tears can also be seen as indulgent. The people who really should be crying are Black people, who are systematically discriminated against every day, sometimes to the point of death.

Tears may also be in response to a horrible event, such as the shooting of an unarmed Black man. Although this response may reflect solidarity with the Black people present, for many Black people, they are a painful reminder of how Black men have been endangered by white women’s tears. The best-known example is that of Emmett Till, a Black fourteen-year-old who was brutally killed in Mississippi in 1955, simply because a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, told her husband that Till had flirted with her.

It is important to encourage and support white people to do the hard work of making themselves uncomfortable when working through questions of racism. It is also equally important to be aware that exhibiting certain behavior or reactions might not only be racist, but further emotionally damaging to people of color. Feeling grief about the brutality of white supremacy and white people’s role in it should not be discounted, as it can help sustain white people to work through these uncomfortable conversations and take transformative action. This can help propel white people beyond defensive reactions and denials of racism, to proactively asking how racism can be identified and handled. 

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