One afternoon, soon after I moved to Johannesburg, a school mom came by my house to pick up her daughters from a playdate with my kids. She remarked that, inasmuch as our children seemed to get on so well, she knew nothing about us, as we were obviously notSouth Africans.
She was white, of course. Only a white woman would say such a thing. If anyone had the right to ask for credentials, it would have been me; South Africa was still rife with violent crime, especially car hijackings and home invasions. While the foot soldiers were often black, their syndicate bosses, I learned, were almost always white.
“I don’t think you need to worry,” I replied, “we had to submit police clearances from every country we’ve lived in before getting our visa. So we have no criminal record.”
She hesitated at first, not quite sure what to make of my deadpan delivery, then burst out laughing. We—and our daughters—became close friends after that encounter.
I would discover later on that her father had been a gangster of note, involved in the casino business, and thrown in jail for fraud and bankruptcy more than once. “Oh,” I shrugged, “that’s nothing. My mother was on a hit list put out by Marcos’s henchmen during martial law.”
What can I say? Principles eclipse profiteering every time.
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Just white woman things
While my friend is an exception, most white women are insufferable, and social media has made them even more so. In the last few weeks alone, we have had to contend with a bumper crop of insufferable white women parading their own brand of arrogant entitlement and horrid obliviousness, while peddling their bullshit lifestyle and wellness quick fixes. Vagina-scented candles, anyone?
They work so hard at projecting authenticity, yet the only ones who fall for their shtick are other white women–and women who worship whiteness.
And yet, when circumstances demand that they take a stand on issues of searing morality, such as an ongoing genocide in Gaza, they rarely ever choose to stand on the right side of history—and humanity. They cannot seem to abide by the least bit of discomfort.
“I’ll just stay in my lane, thank you,” is the meaning beneath their vague words that pay lip service to “all lives matter” rather than express any real and sincere understanding of the power structures, systemic conditions, corporate greed—and institutional impunity, which are the underlying causes of war, genocide, economic inequality, famine, child abuse, and so much more that is wrong in the world.
The case of the modern-day conquistador
The irony is that many insufferable white women think they’re liberals. They swim in a pond of privilege, then cry foul when the water suddenly ripples.
Just like Ivanka Trump with her studied low-register cadence, fake blond hair, reconstructed nose, and silicone-enhanced breasts, cosplaying a Park Avenue princess turned Dora the Explorer, chancing upon a deserted island in the Mediterranean and swimming to its pristine shores, climbing barefoot on the sand all the way to its summit.
Marvelling at this serendipitous discovery, this shimmering gem in the deep blue sea, she and her husband think—like latter-day conquistadores—“Oh, let’s build a 10,000-room luxury eco-resort here!”
The island, as we now know, is hardly virgin territory. It is a protected marine environment that belongs to Albania. Not only is Sezan Island a biodiversity hotspot, but a warren of Cold War-era bunkers and tunnels lies beneath the surface, not to mention unexploded land mines. It also happens to be strategically situated at the entrance to the Adriatic Sea, hence its value as a military outpost. But plastic beauty Ivanka would have you believe otherwise.
The ramblings of an evil Zionist b*tch
Another case is Helen Mirren, who gushed that she had witnessed Arabs being thrown out of their homes in Jerusalem by Ashkenazi Jews of mostly Polish and Ukrainian origin. “But it was just the extraordinary magical energy of a country just beginning to put its roots in the ground.”
Yes, the ground that has always belonged to Palestinians. To put roots in such ground has always meant the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel. That “extraordinary magical energy” has always come from bombs, bulldozers, the crushing of bones, and the never-ending sea of Palestinian blood over the last 80 years.
And we’re supposed to feel sorry for this woman when someone sees her on the street and calls her an “evil Zionist b*tch?”
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As if to excuse herself—but not to atone, she recently conceded that “evil forces are rising everywhere, even in a place like Israel,” while musing, “How could you possibly repeat the actions of what was done to us people to other people?”
Because, “Dame” Helen Mirren, the intention of the Zionists was never to find a refuge from persecution and assimilate into the local population. It was to settle on land that was never theirs and establish their own highly militarized European colony at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians—Muslims, Christians, and Jews—who had lived there forever.
The empress of insufferable white women
And now here comes the empress of insufferable white women, Gwyneth Paltrow, shilling for a luxury residential development in a Tel Aviv suburb.
It really is peak white privilege to take the money and promote homes erected—not merely on stolen land, but on the asphalted mortal remains of murdered Palestinians in the village that was once known as Al-Haram. Apparently, the developers knew the price she commanded to not have a conscience.
She is, after all, speaking to an audience of potential buyers made up of insufferable white women just like her, along with the mediocre white men who are their partners and abettors.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, Oprah Winfrey is an insufferable white woman, too.
