Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

Lena Dunham, a White American actress and writer, appears twice in the book, once in Chapter 1, “Solidarity Is Still for White Women,” and again in Chapter 4, “Of #FastTailedGirls and Freedom.” In both instances, Dunham serves as an example of White feminism’s failure to produce good allies and accomplices for women of color.

Kendall notes that Dunham is a self-proclaimed feminist who wrote a show about young adults coming of age in Brooklyn, a diverse setting, but managed to do so without including any major characters who are not White. Dunham’s other offenses, including her targeting of Odell Beckham Jr. on social media, her initial refusal to back a Black peer who disclosed sexual harassment, and her self-centered apology, are included as symbols of White women’s failure to support Black victims and insistence on focusing on their emotional needs, even when doing so actively harms other women.

Kendall opens the collection with a history of her grandmother, a Black woman who lived out a feminist life but who would never have described herself as a feminist. Kendall’s grandmother is a symbol for the many women of color who have not found a home in feminism because of feminism’s White supremacist ideology.

Kendall’s grandmother also represents important aspects of Black culture that inspire ambivalence in Kendall. For example, Kendall’s grandmother was pro-family and pro-community, but she still bought into the myth of Black respectability as a means of protecting herself and her granddaughter from harm.

Williams and Knowles Carter serve as symbols of Black women who are unapologetically powerful and defend their choices as successful women thriving in fields traditionally dominated by men. Ideally, White feminism would embrace the success of both women, but Kendall points out how frequently both women have been subject to sexist and racist attacks, even from self-proclaimed feminists who tone police both women because they are uncomfortable with Williams’s and Carter’s violations of gendered norms that assume privileged White women have the right to set the norms. These reactions to Williams and Carter are part of Kendall’s evidence, drawn from pop culture, of the bankruptcy and hypocrisy of White feminism.