Ivanka Trump Used a Toni Morrison Quote to Compare Rich Working Women’s Schedules to Actual Slavery

By Isha Aran  |  May 4, 2017 | 1:42pm
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As we all know, 1997 Seventeen magazine cover girl and Donald Trump’s faux feminist Iago Ivanka Trump has a book out, in which she repeats already oft-repeated platitudes about female empowerment in the workplace. While I have not read the book myself, the internet tells me that she makes broad points about work-life balance, paid maternity leave, and “making a difference,” quoting people who almost certainly would not have wanted to be included like Jane Goodall, Junot Diaz, and Nietzsche.

And then there’s what she does with Toni Morrison.

As NPR pointed out, Trump quotes an excerpt from Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book Beloved in order to compare time management to dealing with the atrocious legacy and literal ghosts of slavery. (She also added a hashtag.)

While this is a horrendous repurposing of a deeply impactful piece of literature, it’s also a textbook example of clueless corporate white women appropriating and misusing the work of women of color just to hop on the pinkwashing bandwagon. I mean, her father clearly doesn’t think slavery is a big enough deal to dampen his undying love for Andrew Jackson, a racist piece of shit who carried out genocide against Native Americans and owned slaves, so why should she treat it with any more respect?

 
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