🕯️Nice White Ladies™ Ruined Everything (But We Still Think We Can Fix It, huh?)

“We must decolonize not just land but love, memory, and movement.”— Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera

“But I wrote a blog!”— Nice White Lady (me), circa 2020–present

I. Before You Clutch Your Crystals…

Let me say this first: I’m one of you.

White. Woman. Educated. “Well-meaning.” I believed I was one of the good ones because I cried during Coco and voted blue.

But here’s the truth: I was part of the problem. Not intentionally. But systemically. Because I benefited from white womanhood while pretending I wasn’t.

This isn’t about guilt. It’s about honesty. And for white women, honesty is often the first casualty of comfort.

II. Our Heritage of Harm: A Very Short List of White Feminist Betrayals

White feminism has a history of showing up late, then wanting to lead. And when it does, it tends to erase or exploit everyone else.

Let’s hit the receipts:

🗳️ Suffragette Whitewashing

Stanton and Anthony actively pushed Black women like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Sojourner Truth to the margins.⁽¹⁾

They were terrified that aligning with Black folks would alienate Southern support.

Result? 

Jim Crow got a head start, but white women got the vote.

💄 Chicana Feminists Were Always There—We Just Weren’t Looking

While white women were burning bras, Chicana activists like Anna NietoGomez and Dolores Huerta were organizing farm workers, resisting sterilization abuse, and calling out white middle-class feminism for its racism.Yet they were labeled “too angry,” “too radical,” or “too Mexican.”

“White feminists wanted to talk about breaking the glass ceiling. We were trying to survive the floor falling out.” — paraphrased from Ana Castillo⁽²⁾

👩‍⚖️ The Nonprofit Plantation

White women run the show in many social justice nonprofits—but the power structures are still colonial. If you’ve ever heard a Chicana organizer with 20 years of experience get “supervised” by a white girl with a master’s in social work and zero barrio ties… you know.

🛑 We Invented ‘Progressive Policing’

Let’s not forget: community policing and “diversity trainings” were often pushed by white-led orgs trying to reform systems that needed abolishing. And white women in those systems? Often become enforcers of civility over justice.

III. Why They’re Mad at Us Online (It’s Not Hate. It’s History.)

If you’re a white woman who feels “attacked” on Instagram lately, you’re not being canceled. You’re being confronted by the unpaid receipts of white feminism.

What looks like “hate” is actually:

• Black women asking us to stop crying and start acting.

• Indigenous femmes reminding us that land acknowledgments mean nothing without land return.

• Trans Latinas reminding us that gender liberation must include those pushed to the farthest margins.

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This isn’t rude. It’s real. And it’s a kindness to be told the truth.

IV. LA Is Screaming, But We’re Still Curating Our Feeds

Right now in Los Angeles, here’s what’s going down:

• ICE is detaining migrant families in the Inland Empire.

• Chicana and Central American organizers are running mutual aid while getting almost no press.

• Latinx youth are protesting gentrification in Boyle Heights and Highland Park.

• Proyecto Pastoral, Pueblo Unido, and UndocuBlack LA are doing the work.

  
  

And white women?

We’re posting pastel infographics about liberation… on curated feeds where everyone is white. We’re sharing quotes from Angela Davis in calligraphy fonts but won’t follow a single Black or Brown organizer with fewer than 10k followers.

We’re reposting mutual aid calls—but deleting them later to “keep the grid clean.”We’re making “activism” reels in our ethically-sourced linen jumpsuits, whispering affirmations while unhoused people are being swept off the streets five blocks away.

We’re branding justice like it’s a lifestyle trend.

And we’re still centering ourselves in every square.

Where were we when:

• Undocumented trans Latinas like Victoria Arellano died in detention?⁽³⁾

• The Madrigal v. Quilligan case exposed forced sterilizations of Latinas in LA hospitals in the 1970s?⁽⁴⁾

• Moratorium Day 1970, a Chicano-led anti-Vietnam protest, ended with police killing journalist Rubén Salazar?

  
  

Where are we now?

V. Our Addiction to Niceness Is an Act of Violence

Let me be blunt: White women’s desire to be liked is killing the movement.

Every time we:

• Avoid conflict in the name of unity.

• Defer justice to protect comfort.

• Police tone in spaces not ours to moderate…

  
  

We’re doing spiritual whiteface—performing allyship while upholding supremacy.

VI. Nice White Lady Syndrome: The Politics of Palatability

Let’s call it what it is:

We weren’t trying to “build bridges.”

We were trying not to make anyone mad—especially donors, board members, or Instagram followers.

We called it strategy.

We called it “being trauma-informed.”

But really?

We were upholding white supremacy—just in softer tones and neutral palettes.

Because while we were hosting workshops on “inclusive leadership” and writing grant proposals about community healing, Black and Brown organizers were out here building actual community—with no salaries, no branded logos, no startup funding.

They were:

• Running food pantries out of church basements.

• Organizing community defense patrols with nothing but walkie-talkies.

• Burying their dead with GoFundMes while white nonprofits held Zoom panels.

• Creating mutual aid networks that fed thousands while we were still debating bylaws.

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And then we had the nerve to ask them to be “nicer.” To make their work legible to foundations. To tone down their messaging for “broader appeal.” To collaborate on our terms—when they’ve already done the work.

We’ve been too busy trying to look right, while they’ve been out here doing right.

And we don’t get to call ourselves allies until we admit this:

We built white-run movements on the bones of everyone else’s unpaid labor.

The revolution doesn’t need more polished decks or trauma-informed HR reps.

It needs us to get out of the way.

VII. You Want to Help? Good. Shut Up and Show Up.

This isn’t about you becoming useless. It’s about you becoming useful without being in charge.

🧂 Step One: Learn from the Locals If you’re in LA? Read Cherríe Moraga, follow Inclusive Action for the City, attend a teach-in by Black Lives Matter LA, support TransLatina Coalition.

🌾 Step Two: Fund Without Strings Give money to bail funds, rent support, and funeral costs .Don’t ask for a tax receipt or logo placement.

🧹 Step Three: Clean the Damn House Not metaphorically. Actually offer child care. Wash dishes. Make flyers. Let your labor be humble and holy.

👂🏽 Step Four: Listen Without Interrupting That includes the internal voice trying to “explain yourself.” ((Super guilty of this myself))

📿 Step Five: Make Reparations Real Material, financial, spiritual. Start in your own community. Support Indigenous-led land return projects like Sogorea Te’ and Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy.

VIII. Hexbreaking Blessing for the Nice White Witch

May your empathy grow claws.

May your good intentions get off their knees and start moving.

May your guilt stop apologizing and start atoning.

May your feminism crack wide open—big enough to hold every stolen story, every silenced scream, every ancestor you chose not to see.

May your silence split like a rotten foundation, making way for the truth to rise—louder, bloodier, and finally, not yours.

We’ve been ornamental.

We’ve been obedient.

We’ve been the velvet glove on the iron hand of power.

No more.

Now let us be dangerous to the right things.

Let us be accountable, unpretty, untamed.

Let us be holy in our fury and useful in our undoing.

📚 SOURCES & LATINX VOICES TO STUDY (Not Just Quote)

• Anzaldúa, Gloria E. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.

• Moraga, Cherríe & Anzaldúa, Gloria E. (1981). This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color.

• Huerta, Dolores. (2019). Dolores: Activist and Organizer Documentary. PBS.

• Castillo, Ana. (1994). Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma.

• Avila, Eric. (2004). Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles.

• Silliman, Jael et al. (2006). Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice.

• Luna, Zakiya & Luker, Kristin. (2013). “Reproductive Justice,” Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 9, 327–352.

• Pardo, Mary. (1998). Mexican American Women Activists: Identity and Resistance in Two Los Angeles Communities.

• Villanueva, Nicholas. (2017). The Lynching of Mexicans in the Texas Borderlands.

• González, Juan. (2011). Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America.

• UndocuMedia, TransLatina Coalition, Mijente, Pueblo Unido, CIELO (Centro de Investigación del Espíritu de la Lucha Organizada)