“When white women are confronted with the possibility they can be perpetrators, and not only victims, of oppressive actions and they burst out crying, antiracist work grinds to a halt. A white woman sobs, and the room falls to her feet. These tears seemingly perform a self-baptism. They cleanse the sufferer of any past wrongs and invest her with a martyred authority flowing from the realm of allegedly indisputable truth: her own hurt feelings. Some of the sanctifying innocence widely afforded to white women when they cry can be traced back to an original wellspring: the inkpot of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
“White women gained authority as civilizers by contrast with Native women, who were portrayed as backward creatures trapped in prehistory who dragged their children down with them. Breaking the tie between Native mothers and their youngsters thus seemed imperative to white reformers. Few reformers realized the truth [Alice] Fletcher had discovered: that many Indigenous cultures were free from patriarchy, and women enjoyed considerable agency, responsibility, and freedom in their tribes.”