White Women's Tears and Academia 006

We tackle one of the most frightening, predictable, calculating, and exhausting phenomena facing BIPOC in higher education: White Women’s Tears. White women’s tears as a weapon have been an accusation and/or debate in the media and arts for decades, and include fictional accounts, such as the novel and film, A Passage to India, and historical realities, such as the lynching of 14-year-old Emmit Till, who was falsely accused by a 21-year-old White woman of “flirting”. Although the historical power dynamics are no longer so overtly prejudicial, the criticism of White Women’s Tears still exists and now also analyzes the Liberal context along with its existence within White Feminism to dominate anti-racism discourse. Robin Diangelo was by no means the first academic to write about White Women’s Tears, but her analysis has become the most pervasive. In this episode we examine the accuracy of Diangelo’s description, if it accurately describes life in Higher Education, and most importantly, if White people in academia would argue the weaponization of White Women’s Tears to counter real anti-racism change.