When Solidarity Becomes Strategy: How White Feminism Co-Opted Black Women’s Struggles—And The Complicity Within

“There Is No Such Thing As A Single-Issue Struggle Because We Do Not Live Single-Issue Lives.”

—Audre Lorde

The Unpaid Cost Of Visibility

In American Feminism, Black Women Are Often Visible—But Rarely Seen. From The Early Suffragette Movement To Modern “Inclusive” Feminism, White Women Have Repeatedly Leveraged The Pain And Labor Of Black Women To Push Forward Their Own Political Narratives. Under The Guise Of Solidarity, A Deeper Dynamic Of Extraction Exists—One That Cloaks Itself In Shared Struggle While Quietly Preserving Racial Hierarchy.

Visibility Has Long Been Mistaken For Progress. Black Women Are Placed At The Front Lines Of Political Movements, Their Imagery Used In Campaigns And Protest Footage, Their Slogans And Culture Borrowed For Impact. Yet This Visibility Often Serves As A Façade—A Symbolic Nod That Costs Nothing Materially. The Emotional Labor, Community Organizing, And Intellectual Production Of Black Women Are Hyper-Visible, But Rarely Rewarded With Actual Power, Funding, Or Institutional Control. Their Contributions Become Public Property, While The Benefits Accrue Elsewhere.

Even When Black Women Are Praised Or Centered, It’s Often Under Conditional Terms. Their Presence Is Acceptable As Long As They Do Not Challenge The Foundational Narratives Of White Feminism Or Speak Too Boldly About Anti-Blackness Within The Movement. When They Do, They’re Labeled Divisive, Angry, Or Ungrateful—Punished For Disrupting The Illusion Of Unity. This Is Not Representation. It Is Tokenism Wrapped In The Language Of Progress.

The Legacy Of Co-Optation

The Roots Of This Dynamic Stretch Back To The 19th Century, When White Suffragists Like Susan B. Anthony And Elizabeth Cady Stanton Actively Distanced Themselves From Black Liberation. They Often Prioritized The Enfranchisement Of White Women Over Unity With Black Activists—Pushing Ida B. Wells To The Margins And Turning Their Movement Into A Calculated Appeal To White Power Rather Than A Collective Feminist Front.

When Black Women Attempted To Assert Their Own Voices, They Were Either Excluded Or Expected To Be Silent Partners. The Decision To Elevate White Womanhood As The Public Face Of Feminism Wasn’t Incidental—It Was Strategic. White Suffragists Believed That Aligning Themselves With White Male Power, Even At The Expense Of Black Communities, Would Secure Them Rights More Quickly. This Political Triangulation Wasn’t Just Cowardly—It Was Racial Betrayal Repackaged As Tactical Pragmatism.

This Foundational Betrayal Set The Tone For Every Wave Of Feminism That Followed. The Default Feminist Subject—White, Middle-Class, Educated—Was Constructed By Design, Not Accident. As A Result, Issues Central To Black Women, Such As Forced Sterilization, Welfare Criminalization, And Systemic Maternal Mortality, Were Often Deemed “Too Political” Or “Too Specific.” The Movement’s Universality Was A Lie; It Simply Universalized White Womanhood While Treating Black Women’s Struggles As Niche Or Inconvenient.

Margaret Sanger: Feminism’s Eugenicist Icon

No Figure Encapsulates The Moral Rot At The Core Of White Feminist “Progress” Quite Like Margaret Sanger, Founder Of What Would Eventually Become Planned Parenthood. Hailed By Many Liberal Feminists As A Reproductive Rights Pioneer, Sanger Was Also An Open Eugenicist Who Believed In Controlling The Reproduction Of Those She Deemed “Unfit”—A Category That Often Included Black People, Immigrants, The Poor, And The Disabled.

Sanger’s Infamous Negro Project Of 1939, Which Targeted Black Communities For Birth Control Outreach, Was Less About Liberation And More About Containment. In A Letter To Eugenicist Clarence Gamble, Sanger Wrote:

“We Do Not Want Word To Go Out That We Want To Exterminate The Negro Population…”

—Margaret Sanger, 1939

Her Language And Tactics Mirror The Logic Of White Supremacy Cloaked In Humanitarianism. Her Vision For Reproductive Rights Wasn’t Rooted In Bodily Autonomy, But In Demographic Engineering. And Yet, She Remains An Icon In Many White Feminist Spaces. Her Name Is Still Celebrated. Her Legacy Sanitized. And Black Women, Once Again, Are Caught Between The Need For Reproductive Freedom And The Knowledge That The Institutions Offering It Were Built On Their Devaluation.

Selective Sisterhood: Transphobia And The Erasure Of Queer Labor

One Of The Most Persistent Hypocrisies Within The Feminist Movement Has Been Its Historical Exclusion Of Trans Women And Broader LGBTQ+ Communities, Despite Their Irreplaceable Contributions To Both Black Liberation And Feminist Progress. From The Outset, White Feminism Often Defined “Womanhood” Through Rigid, Cisnormative, And White Supremacist Frameworks. These Boundaries Excluded Not Only Trans Women, But Many Queer And Nonbinary People Whose Gender And Sexual Identities Threatened The Movement’s Fragile Respectability.

During The Second Wave, This Exclusion Became Doctrine. Influential Feminists Like Janice Raymond Helped Shape An Academic And Activist Culture That Viewed Trans Women As Threats To Womanhood, Rather Than Women Themselves. Their Ideas Weren’t Fringe—They Became Foundational To Many Feminist Spaces, Reinforcing A Violent Gatekeeping That Continues Today Under The Guise Of “Biological Reality.” This Was Not Merely Ignorance; It Was Ideological Transphobia Posing As Political Strategy.

Yet, While Being Excluded And Vilified, Queer And Trans People—Especially Black Trans Women—Have Always Done The Labor That Sustained Real Liberation Movements. From Marsha P. Johnson And Sylvia Rivera At Stonewall, To Bayard Rustin Organizing The 1963 March On Washington, To The Radical Theoretical Frameworks Of Audre Lorde And The Combahee River Collective, LGBTQ+ People Have Always Been At The Heart Of Progress. Their Work Unified The Fights Against Racism, Sexism, Capitalism, And Homophobia—Long Before Those Intersections Became Fashionable Hashtags.

Today’s Mainstream Feminism Continues To Profit From Queer Labor While Resisting True Queer Inclusion. Aesthetic Nods To “Pride” Are Welcomed Each June, But Trans Women Are Still Excluded From Leadership Roles, From Reproductive Rights Legislation, And From Safety In Public Spaces. This Is Not An Oversight—It Is A Continuation Of Selective Sisterhood. One That Uses Queerness For Clout But Rejects It As Kin.

Medical Apartheid And The Silence Of Feminism

While White Feminism Has Historically Rallied Around Reproductive Rights And Bodily Autonomy, It Has Largely Ignored The Medical Apartheid That Defines Black Women’s Relationship To The Healthcare System. From Slavery To The Present Day, Black Women’s Bodies Have Been Sites Of Experimentation, Exploitation, And Disposability. Yet These Truths Are Rarely Centered In Feminist Healthcare Advocacy—Exposing The Movement’s Selective Vision Of Whose Bodies Deserve Protection.

Consider J. Marion Sims, Long Revered As The “Father Of Modern Gynecology,” Who Developed His Surgical Techniques By Operating On Enslaved Black Women Without Anesthesia. Figures Like Anarcha, Lucy, And Betsey—The Women Whose Bodies Were Sacrificed For White Medical Advancement—Are Footnotes In History, If Mentioned At All. This Legacy Of Violence Evolved Into 20th-Century Forced Sterilizations, Like Those Inflicted On Fannie Lou Hamer And Thousands Of Black, Indigenous, And Latina Women Under State Eugenics Programs. And It Continues Today In The Form Of Staggeringly High Black Maternal Mortality Rates, Widespread Medical Neglect, And The Dismissal Of Black Women’s Pain.

Mainstream Feminist Organizing Has Often Positioned Abortion Access As The Defining Battleground For Bodily Autonomy, While Ignoring The Broader, More Brutal Medical Realities For Black Women. Reproductive Justice, A Framework Pioneered By Black Women, Calls For The Right To Have Children, Not Have Children, And To Raise Them In Safe Environments. Yet This Holistic Vision Remains Marginalized, Overshadowed By Narrow, Carceral-Friendly Narratives About “Choice.” When Abortion Becomes The Only Feminist Healthcare Issue, The Structural Violence Of Racist Medicine Remains Untouched.

True Feminist Solidarity Would Center Medical Apartheid—Not As A Historical Footnote But As An Ongoing Emergency. It Would Demand Justice For The Coerced Sterilizations Of Black Women, For The Exploitation Of Henrietta Lacks’ Cells, For The Disproportionate Pain Black Trans Women Face When Accessing Care, And For The Systemic Disbelief Of Black Mothers In Hospitals Across The Country. Anything Less Is Not Healthcare Advocacy—It Is Racial Erasure Repackaged As Progress.

Allyship Or Aesthetic?

Today, Allyship Often Arrives Pre-Packaged And Hashtag-Ready. With The Rise Of Social Media Feminism, Solidarity Has Been Reduced To Symbolism. Black Trauma Is Aestheticized, Commodified, And Deployed As A Moral Accessory By White Influencers, Politicians, And Corporations Alike.

Kanye West, In His Usual Chaotic Clarity, Touched On This During His 2018 Interview With Charlamagne Tha God, And Later Echoed It In His Ye Album Rollout. “Black Death Has Become Designer Now. We’re Just Content,” He Said. His Critique—Despite His Own Contradictions—Was Pointed: The Spectacle Of Black Suffering Is Now A Resource, Something White Feminists And Liberal Institutions Alike Can Exploit For Performative Empathy And Personal Branding.

The #MeToo Movement Is A Textbook Case. Though Founded By Tarana Burke, A Black Woman Whose Grassroots Work With Abuse Survivors Predates The Hashtag By Over A Decade, It Only Gained Mainstream Attention When Actresses Like Alyssa Milano Co-Signed It. The Rebranding Didn’t Uplift Burke—It Erased Her. Her Labor Became The Foundation For A Platform She Was Rarely Invited To Fully Own.

This Isn’t Solidarity. It’s Strategy.

The Bell Hooks Paradox: Critique As Collusion

Within Black Feminist Circles, Even Celebrated Voices Require Scrutiny. Bell Hooks—Lauded For Her Revolutionary Thinking On Love, Patriarchy, And Intersectionality—Is A Deeply Complex Figure Whose Work Contains Tensions That Often Go Unchallenged.

Her Critiques Of Black Masculinity, Particularly In Works Like We Real Cool, At Times Echo The Very White Supremacist Tropes She Claimed To Resist. Her Framing Of Black Men As Pathologically Violent, Emotionally Inept, And Spiritually Damaged—Though Wrapped In A Language Of Healing—Often Feels Indistinguishable From The Rhetoric Of Conservative White Pundits. Hooks Sought To Hold Black Men Accountable, But At Times She Did So Using A Framework That Felt More Punitive Than Restorative.

Hooks Also Spoke At Length About Heterosexual Romance, Family Structures, And Healing Love—But Never Married Or Had Children Herself. While This Doesn’t Invalidate Her Theories, It Raises Questions About The Lived Proximity Of Her Prescriptions. Her Refusal To Publicly Account For These Gaps Allowed Many White Academics To Adopt Her Work While Ignoring Its Cultural And Political Nuance. In The End, Her Legacy—Like The Feminism She Critiqued—Was Absorbed Into The Same Academic Machinery That Flattens Radical Thought Into Consumable Theory.

Toward A Feminism That Does Not Eat Its Own

Black Women, Queer Folks, And Trans People Have Never Asked For Inclusion Into White Feminism. They Have Always Been Building Something Else—Something Bigger. A Feminism That Sees Healing As Structural, Not Just Personal. That Understands Liberation As Relational, Collective, And Non-Extractive.

We Do Not Need To Be Centered In A Movement That Refuses To Decenter Itself. We Need Movements That Begin With Us. That Take Seriously The Legacies We Inherit And The Futures We Deserve.

Anything Less Is Not Feminism.