Reading Archives
This week in reading. . .
“Constructing Race, Creating White Privilege” ~ Buck
“Constructing Race Improbable as it now seems, since Americans live in a society where racial characterization and self-definition appear to be parts of nature, in the early days of colonization before slavery was solidified and clearly distinguished from other forms of forced labor, Europeans and Africans seem not to have seen their physical differences in that way. It took until the end of the 1700s for ideas about race to develop until they resembled those we live with today. Before Bacon's Rebellion, African and European indentured servants made love with each other, married each other, ran away with each other, lived as neighbors, liked or disliked each other according to individual personality. Sometimes they died or were punished together for resisting or revolting. And masters had to free both Europeans and Africans if they survived to the end of their indentures. Likewise, Europeans initially did not place all Native Americans in a single racial category. They saw cultural, not biological, differences among Native Americans as distinguishing one tribe from another and from themselves.” ~Pem Davidson Buck
https://www.sweetstudy.com/files/constructingracecreatingwhiteprivilege.pdf
“The Cost of Whiteness” ~ Thandeka
“Most white Americans believe they were born white. Yet their own stories of early racial experiences describe persons who were bred white. Which is it-nature or nurture? Neither. The social process that creates whites produces persons who must think of their whiteness as a biological fact. The process begins with a rebuke. A parent or authority figure reprimands the child because it's not yet white. The language used by the adult is racial, but the content of the message pertains to the child's own feelings and what the child must do with feelings the adult doesn't like. Stifle them. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum, in her book Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, tells how she learned to do this as a child being taught to be white.” ~ Thandeka
Wisdom. . .
Wow.
It seems like the world is in a special time of upheaval and turmoil. Every interaction with the newsfeeds, social media, or local media promises to offer some new sorrow to ignore, fear or empathize with. It can feel exhausting. It feels exhausting to me. But I was born with one of those systems that can’t shut out the sorrows. I wish I could, sometimes, but there we are.
We are who we are. And at times, it can feel like everything we are is under assault. Legislation criminalizing the very existence of Trans people, assaults on Roe V Wade which gets tossed about as simply an abortion bill, but which really represents so much more for so many more people than solely those who can become pregnant, gas prices (LAWD), housing prices, and let’s not forget COVID is STILL a thing (C’mon now).
It’s a lot, y’all. A lot.
What can be done? And WHO, pray tell, is gonna do the doing?!
You all know the answer to this. It’s us. AGAIN. We are the hope we have been waiting for. And YOU ARE NOT ALONE. I promise you that. While it may really feel like that sometimes — heck, even most times — there are people who care the same way you do. There are people who want to support you and all those you love. There are people, possibly closer than you can even imagine, who love you and yours, simply because you exist.
And we are all clear that love and support through the ether can’t always been enough. So there must be material support. There must be mutual aid. There must be support gatherings for mental health, physical health, economic health. And those things exist. They are real.
send tweet
Shame . . .
Shame.
Shame.
Shame.
Many of us have been on the receiving end of the taunt. We revel in the meme from Game of Thrones. We recoil from embarrassing situations, and do everything we can to “protect our reputations.”
We learn to mask, to strive for perfection, to be unassailable. As a defense. All of this maneuvering and machination to protect our soft underbellies, our traumatic wounds.
And it’s an important thing to protect — our self-worth, our sense of rightness. We don’t want the negative attention. We don’t want to be exposed as softer, less smart, less perfect, less capable, or more fallible than we try to pretend to be. <—- The key word there is “pretend.”
What if we were fallible, or dumber, or more imperfect, or less capable, or soft, or broken, or sad, or hurt, or angry, or human?
In the United States, we adhere to a lot of different systems that guide and govern our lives (no matter your race, creed, or orientation): Capitalism, Politics, and Whiteness.
The greatest of these is Whiteness. Believe it or not.
Whiteness governs our collective relationships to capitalism, and politics. Whiteness governs our relationships between each other, individuals and groups. And Whiteness is a reflexively destructive system. It will consume you, and me, and all of us. And it thrives on shame.
Shame prevents us from frank discussion of politics, capitalism, racism, sexism, misogyny, trans and homo antagonism, and self-hatred.
No one wants to be called racist. No one wants to be called weak. No one wants to be called wounded.
Whiteness, as a system, promises a mountaintop experience if you work hard enough, strive hard enough, ignore enough of your pain. It admonishes children for sometimes natural inclinations toward unity with other children and other people. It tells you what to buy and when. It tells you how you are falling short of the glory. It shows itself in parenting styles. It shows itself in bosses and administrations. It shows itself in the beliefs we hold about groups of people. . . and ourselves.
It shames us for needing support. It shames us for needing money. It shames us for our fears. It shames us for our coping mechanisms (even as it has encouraged us to go deeper and deeper into those exact coping mechanisms). It shames us out of getting the help we need, when we need it.
Because we should try harder (bootstraps), because we haven’t given a thing enough time, because what we want is too much, or because we are too much. Whiteness holds a strict allotment for most things, while at the same time promising you that you can have it all, if you work hard enough, are good enough, are beautiful enough.
Whiteness lies.
About lack. About shame. About everything.
It is both possible and good for you to need support. It is possible and good for you to ask for help. It is possible and good for you to lay your soft underbelly bare. Despite what governing systems have told you, OR what they have done to you.
Whiteness harms.
It creates system after system, goalpost after goalpost, and shame after shame to keep people stuck, scared, and shamed.
You have always deserved better. Despite what you have been told or shown. Simply because you exist. You can let go. You can unclench. You can breathe.
You are not alone. (Even when it feels like it, so emphatically.)