Upper-middle-class white women have long been heralded as experts on feminism. They have
presided over multinational feminist organizations and written much of what we consider the
feminist canon espousing sexual liberation and satisfaction LGBTQ inclusion and racial
solidarity all while branding the language of the movement itself in whiteness and speaking
over Black and Brown women in an effort to uphold privilege and perceived cultural superiority.
An American Muslim woman attorney and political philosopher Rafia Zakaria champions a
reconstruction of feminism in Against White Feminism centering women of color in this
transformative overview and counter-manifesto to white feminism's global long-standing
affinity with colonial patriarchal and white supremacist ideals. Covering such ground as the
legacy of the British feminist imperialist savior complex and the colonial thesis that all
reform comes from the West to the condescension of the white feminist-led aid industrial
complex and the conflation of sexual liberation as the sum total of empowerment Zakaria
follows in the tradition of intersectional feminist forebears Kimberlé Crenshaw Adrienne Rich
and Audre Lorde. Zakaria ultimately refutes and reimagines the apolitical aspirations of white
feminist empowerment in this staggering radical critique with Black and Brown feminist
thought at the forefront.
