Maintaining the Matriarchy: The Role of White Women in Upholding the White Hegemonic Alliance

• In Event: The Writing Was on the Wall: Dismantling the White Hegemonic Alliance in the Trump Era

Abstract

Allen (2008) calls for whites to dismantle what he named the White Hegemonic Alliance and so whites must work on finding cracks within this alliance in order to emancipate people of color from white supremacy and whites from their own whiteness. The white hegemonic alliance includes not only interracial problems, but also intraracial problems such as the construction of poor whites by middle and upper class whites (Allen, 2008). The objective of the paper is to discuss the specific role of white women in upholding white patriarchy and how it operates intraracially. As a critical educator, immersed in anti-racist work inside and outside of the classroom, my discussions with white women reveal the deep emotional commitment that white women have to whiteness and its patriarchal component. I argue that as white women occupy oppressor/oppressed space, their familial bonds and the formation of white femininity itself creates allegiance to oppression over liberation even though they themselves experience sexism to varying degrees. As the majority of teachers are white women whose role in maintaining white supremacy is well documented (Collins, 2000; Frankenburg, 1993; Leonardo, 2005; Tatum, 1997; hooks, 1984), this work will discuss strategies and obstacles for race treason for white women by examining their positionality and their compliance with whiteness in hopes of moving them toward resistance in institutions and more intimate spaces.

This is a critically reflective piece situated in Critical Race Feminism, Critical Race Theory, and Critical Whiteness Studies and uses critical hermeneutics to interpret experience and explain the social context of white femininity and how it is formed and operates under patriarchal whiteness. Using the work of Allen (2008), Boler (1999), Frankenburg (1993), and Leonardo (2005), I examine how white women deal with each other intraracially, forming a white matriarchy that has distinctive and powerful maintenance practices that uphold the social structure. In examining how the emotionality of whiteness works to surveil the domestic and public spheres (Boler, 1999) and situated in a critique of white feminism, the paper argues for a pedagogy of White Abolitionist Feminism that addresses the complex positionality of white women and the possibility of race abolition.

This work is significant to the field because it examines some of the pressing questions about white women’s allegiance to white patriarchy and the subsystem, white matriarchy. While discussing this re-centers whiteness as an object of study, whites need to engage in critical dialogue in order to move forward (Leonardo 2013). As Tatum (1997) states, whites who are not given a path out of whiteness are likely to go backwards. Situated in a critique of white femininity, this work attempts to help form a path for white women attempting to engage and challenge white supremacy with their families and institutions.

Author

• Amanda Parker, University of New Mexico