Library Journal (starred)
Beck’s use of examples to illustrate her points is highly effective, and every page of this well-rounded book offers fresh insight. This essential account offers a skilled analysis of the ways feminism in the United States has been coopted by white women in pursuit of wealth, and has failed to be inclusive and self-aware of women of color, economically disadvantaged women, and women in the LGBTQ community.
Barbara Smith
With insight and originality White Feminism documents how the contradictions of race and class have undermined U.S. feminism since the very beginning. Beck challenges and inspires us to go beyond narrow, individualized notions of liberation to build genuine movements for justice.
Patrisse Khan-Cullors
Intellectually smart and emotionally intelligent, Beck brilliantly articulates how feminism has failed women of color and non-binary people. She illuminates the broad landscapes of systemic oppression and demands that white feminism evolve lest it continue to be as oppressive as the patriarchy.
Booklist (starred)
[A] masterful outlining of the progress and flaws of the feminist movement . . . Beck’s clearly laid-out examination and interrogation of white feminism will change the way readers think on a daily level. This new history is a timely call to action, and earns its place as required reading for anyone who claims to care about the future of feminism.
Kirkus Reviews (starred)
A timely, compelling dissection of feminism’s reliance on consumerism and useful suggestions for paths forward.
Rebecca Traister
Koa Beck writes with passion and insight about the knotted history of racism within women's movements and feminist culture, past and present. Curious, rigorous, and ultimately generous, White Feminism is a pleasure and an education.
Publishers Weekly
A bracing rethink of what feminism can achieve.
Gloria Steinem
Don’t judge this book by its cover. Koa Beck knows that feminism includes all women and girls by definition, and is writing to overcome anti-feminist divisions that divide and defeat us.
Kimberly Drew
Koa Beck has a crystal clear understanding that there is no singular winner in the battle for gender equity. White Feminism is a must-read for anyone ready to challenge just about everything they thought they knew about contemporary feminist discourse.
Patrisse Khan Cullors
Intellectually smart and emotionally intelligent, Beck brilliantly articulates how feminism has failed women of color and non-binary people. She illuminates the broad landscapes of systemic oppression and demands that white feminism evolve lest it continue to be as oppressive as the patriarchy.
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2020-11-26
A clear analysis of the commodification of feminism from protest to brand.
As the former editor-in-chief of Jezebel and executive editor of Vogue, Beck is no stranger to the White feminism that permeates the modern cultural landscape. As influencers blithely attach Audre Lorde quotes to Instagram ads and White women are once again donning literal and metaphorical pink hats in “protest,” the author deftly retraces how we ended up here and highlights the many women this brand of feminism elides or ostracizes. Beck offers a lively history of the suffragettes and their ideological descendants, including the #GirlBoss and #MeToo movements. The author effectively brings out of the background many of the Black working women who enabled the success of the predominantly White and upper-class women at the center of these stories. “Instead of a protest vehicle,” she writes, “feminism became a brand….To ‘revolutionize’ your life through business once again merges the radicalism of feminism with the corporate, women-oppressing language of capitalism. If you threw a millennial-pink lens over this saying, you could put it on Pinterest.” Beck posits that the stark inequalities of so-called “women’s empowerment” are exacerbated even more unevenly in the Covid-19 era. The pandemic has engendered further demarcations along class and racial lines, between protected forms of labor and the economically vulnerable—e.g., nannies, housekeepers, and other caretakers. The author situates herself as a woman with considerable influence who chooses to amplify underappreciated workers in concrete ways rather than resting on the laurels of corporate “diversity.” With both vigor and rigor, Beck outlines a variety of fundamental problems with contemporary liberal feminism, which relies too much on brand endorsements and shallow empowerment. As she writes, “we can avoid becoming the next generation of white feminism by incorporating the points of view that this ideology does not account for.”
A timely, compelling dissection of feminism's reliance on consumerism and useful suggestions for paths forward.
