Shared Sisterhood

Preface

In March 2019, celebrated novelist Kim McLarin asked a poignant question in the Washington Post: “Can Black women and White women be true friends?” She writes: “This is what Black women know: When push comes to shove, White women choose race over gender: Every. Single. Time.”¹

This racial divide is not new, nor is it specific to friendship or constrained to relationships between Black and White women only. The continued growth in workforce racioethnic diversity globally makes connections across differences more important than ever before. But, as McLarin notes, if White women—or women from historically power-dominant groups—are more likely to build connections based not on shared gender but on shared racioethnicity, then it makes it ...