Canadian Woman Studies / les cahiers de la femme (E-Journal, York University)

Stuckey, Johanna H.

This Spot of Ground: Spiritual Baptists in Toronto

White, Susan

VOLUME 29,  NUMBER 3 187
WHITE FEMININITY: 
RACE, GENDER & 
POWER
Katerina Deliovsky
Halifax & Winnipeg: Fernwood 
Publishing, 2010
reviewed by susan white
“Ma, I saw the most beautiful boy 
in art class today. He has skin like 
chocolate butter,“ eleven-year-old 
Katerina Deliovsky excitedly told her 
mother. This innocent comment led 
to the dire warning from her father 
that if that she ever brought “one of 
those people” home she would be, 
without hesitation, tossed out of her 
home and disowned. The frightened 
child “was left with a very unsettled 
feeling that I spent much of my life 
trying to understand.”
Thus the author sets the scene 
for her eventual realization of the 
meaning of “white femininity.” Her 
family’s outraged rejection of her 
when she later fell in love and had 
children with a Black man precipi-
tated her “realization of whiteness.”
Agreeing with feminists of colour 
that “white feminism” has only 
scratched the surface of understand-
ing of how women become white, 
Deliovsky aims to dig deeper, “to re-
map some of the territories of ‘white’ 
femininity.” Through analyzing 
discussions with 24 white Canadian 
women about their experience and 
understanding of their whiteness, 
she posits three “disciplinary regimes” 
as key.
The first is compulsory white 
heterosexuality. “Western notions 
of heterosexuality are culturally/
politically organized to compel 
women’s attraction to the opposite 
sex. [O]f equal importance is that 
this compulsion is toward the same 
“race.” “ White women are expected 
to demonstrate loyalty to white-
ness—most particularly through 
their choice of sexual partners—and 
any failure to do so is met with co-
ercion and the threatened loss of the 
privilege that comes with whiteness. 
If she disobeys, the “good (white) girl” 
becomes the “white slut.”
The second regime consists of 
rituals of unity and exclusion—ev-
eryday ways of performing whiteness 
in codes of speech, modes of thought 
and action which solidify white 
group membership and maintain 
relations of domination with the 
racialized ‘Other’. Deliovsky offers 
explanations and examples of passive 
participation in these rituals that 
must provoke serious reflection in a 
white reader as to their own history 
and actions.
Finally, Deliovsky focuses on 
“normative ‘white’ femininity”—“the 
‘white’ capitalist patriarchal compul-
sion to adopt styles and attitudes 
consistent with an imposed ‘white’ 
feminine aesthetic.” Women strive 
to look, and act, like the feminine 
ideal, an ideal which is defined by 
whiteness, thus putting the white 
middle/upper class woman at the top 
of a beauty hierarchy and women of 
colour at the bottom.
Almost half of this 136-page book 
is devoted to a useful review of the 
history and major conclusions of 
critical race theory and the feminist 
“whiteness” literature. The literature 
review (though it could have been 
updated slightly for publication) 
and her use of this theoretical base 
to examine ‘whiteness’ in Canadian 
circumstances and history is an 
important contribution of the book. 
Influenced by theory largely rooted 
in U.S. experience, Deliovsky argues 
that a “black and white binary” 
dominates Canadian society, just as 
it does in the U.S. She maintains that 
there is a hyper visibility to African 
Canadians in contemporary Canada 
that is not accorded to other commu-
nities of colour (thus explaining for 
Deliovsky why her parents warned 
her against Black men but not Asian 
or Aboriginal men).
She does recognize that in Canada’s 
particular history, with its historically 
small black population and the ab-
sence of a plantation slave economy, 
“white” womanhood depended his-
torically more on a juxtaposition to 
Aboriginal womanhood, especially in 
the Prairies, and to Chinese woman-
hood in B.C. However, this regional 
variation in dominant racial antago-
nisms is not explored further, either 
historically or for contemporary Can-
ada where the now much larger Black 
population is heavily concentrated in 
southern Ontario, where Deliovsky’s 
research was carried out. If one lives 
in Winnipeg, one could argue that 
the primary perceived threat to ‘white 
womanhood’ there is seen in Aborig-
inal, not Black, men. Elsewhere in 
Canada, huge communities of East 
and South Asian origin face a similar 
racial dynamic. 
Deliovsky rightly calls for more 
research on these variations, and 
whether there is a dominant Black-
white binary or a more complex 
picture, it does not invalidate her 
detailed investigations of the mech-
anisms which create and maintain 
“white womanhood.”
White Femininity is theoretically 
rich and will be useful to the academic 
specialist and advanced students. The 
personal testimonies do provide clear 
examples of the meaning of “white-
ness” in easy to understand language. 
However, the dense theoretical lan-
guage of much of the book limits its 
usefulness for the general reader and 
for most undergraduates. 
Susan White teaches in Religious 
Studies and Women’s Studies at the 
University of Winnipeg and has been 
an antiracism community educator 
for over 30 years. She is the Executive 
Director of the Canadian Women’s 
Health Network.


White Femininity: Race, Gender & Power

Rosser, Emily

The Gender of Reparations: Unsettling Hierarchies While Redressing Human Rights Violations

Graf, Adele

wor(l)ds about we(e) women

Eginton, Kay R.

VOLUME 29, NUMBER 3 159
années de luttes, de rires et de 
combats. ” Les Sorcières 3 (2003): 
16. Print.
Milstein, Cindy. Anarchism and Its 
Aspirations. Oakland: ak Press, 
2010. Print.
Nathalie and Tasha’s Fantastical Anti-
Oppression Workshop. Montreal: 
qpirg Concordia, nd.
Prashad, Vijay. Keeping up with the 
dow joneses: debt, prison, workfare. 
Cambridge, ma: South End Press, 
2003. Print.
Pucciarelli, Mimmo. L’imaginaire 
des libertaires aujourd’hui. Lyon: 
Atelier de creation libertaire, 1999. 
Print.
Rosanvallon, Pierre. L’Âge de 
l’autogestion. Paris: Seuil, 1976. 
Print. 
Whit t i e r,  Nancy.  “Pol i t i ca l 
Generations, Micro-Cohorts 
and the Transformation of Social 
Movements.” American Sociological 
Review 62.5 (1997): 760–778. 
Print.
KAY R. EGINTON
Early Morning, and the Sun
Another time, another place
The window bleary
Like early morning here
Sunlight struggling for recognition
As we do now, we’ve aged.
It’s three years down the road
We’ve traveled on the old dirt road
Found a home here
But not the end of the beginning
We’ve just come to the end
and an old stop sign
Bent by an errant driver.
We’re no wiser than before
Only illuminated
By an aging sun.  
 
Kay R. Eginton’s poetry appears earlier in this volume.
Women in a Globalizing World 
Equality, Development, Peace and Diversity
edited by Angela Miles
Articles by formative researchers in key areas with 
historically-specific reflections and analyses of Canadian 
and other feminist activists as they first face, come to 
understand, and learn to address (with their sisters around 
the world) emerging neo-liberalism’s impacts on women. 
Uniquely situates current theory and activism in a rare 
historically-contextualized account of Canadian and global 
feminisms’ deepening engagement with these issues.
www.inanna.ca
inanna.publications@inanna.ca
Smart books for people who want to read and think 
about real women’s lives. 
fall 2012
inanna publications


Early Morning, and the Sun

Dorcé, Mylène F.

Les Dramaturges Antillaises: Cruauté, Créolité, Conscience Féminine

Wane, Njoki Nathani

Reclaiming Our Spirituality: A Pedagogical Tool for Feminism and Activism

Ackley, Deborah Prokipchuk

“Born from Silence”: Theory and Strategy for Resistance and Justice-Making from the Birth of Creative Power

Iseke, Judy

Desmoulins, Leisa

Spiritual Beginnings of Indigenous Women’s Activism: The Life and Work of the Honourable Thelma Chalifoux, White Standing Buffalo

Ricciutelli, Luciana

Marion Lynn and Shelagh Wilkinson: An Interview with the CWS/cf Founders

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