I’d like to practice something together. A little experiment. I’m going to ask a series of questions below so before you read ahead, I’ll invite you to really arrive here. Let’s start with a breath. Let the air out of your lungs, then take a slow, deep, belly breath in. Feel as oxygen sinks into your lungs, lifting your chest and abdomen. Notice if even a little bit of tension releases from your body with your exhale. Take another two or three breaths just like this. Slower. Deeper. Sink heavier into your seat.
Rachel, what a beautiful post. It is not easy to find words for what you are describing about the lines between white supremacy, whiteness, fair skin, etc. It seems like all of this can sometimes be downstream of a larger effort to consolidate power. Who is defined as white can and has adjusted over time (as it formerly did not include Italians, Germans, Jews, and more). These are complex inquiries, and I also find there is a lot of wisdom from people like Tyson Yunkaporta, the author of Sand Talk and a member of an Indigenous tribe from Australia:
“I find that ‘whiteness’ is no longer a useful term in my vocabulary. In my community, we use the words ‘black’ and ‘white’ every day as a convenient shorthand to describe relationships between occupiers and the occupied, but those terms are horribly inadequate for describing our reality today, particularly in multicultural and international contexts.
In a world where black African colonists are annexing the traditional lands of fair-skinned Nemadi hunters, where Celts struggle against English domination while Basques in Spain and Koryaks in Russia fight to retain their ancient lands and languages, where diasporic peoples of various skin tones have been making babies together for generations in every country, black and white is a limiting paradigm for understanding Indigenous experience.”
My ancestors and relatives in India have hard dark skin, but have and still do participate in the oppression of others who are "lower castes" and I continue to wrestle with my heritage as a "high-caste" Brahmin from India, even though such distinctions don't mean as much here in the United States except for in Indian / South Asian sub-cultures / communities here.
Wonderful and courageous writing. Thank you for sharing!
The work you are bringing into the world is so beautifully particular and absolutely needed. Thank you for this article and the depth of your language around what it means to reconnect and reclaim where we come from.
Beautiful
Rachel, what a beautiful post. It is not easy to find words for what you are describing about the lines between white supremacy, whiteness, fair skin, etc. It seems like all of this can sometimes be downstream of a larger effort to consolidate power. Who is defined as white can and has adjusted over time (as it formerly did not include Italians, Germans, Jews, and more). These are complex inquiries, and I also find there is a lot of wisdom from people like Tyson Yunkaporta, the author of Sand Talk and a member of an Indigenous tribe from Australia:
“I find that ‘whiteness’ is no longer a useful term in my vocabulary. In my community, we use the words ‘black’ and ‘white’ every day as a convenient shorthand to describe relationships between occupiers and the occupied, but those terms are horribly inadequate for describing our reality today, particularly in multicultural and international contexts.
In a world where black African colonists are annexing the traditional lands of fair-skinned Nemadi hunters, where Celts struggle against English domination while Basques in Spain and Koryaks in Russia fight to retain their ancient lands and languages, where diasporic peoples of various skin tones have been making babies together for generations in every country, black and white is a limiting paradigm for understanding Indigenous experience.”
My ancestors and relatives in India have hard dark skin, but have and still do participate in the oppression of others who are "lower castes" and I continue to wrestle with my heritage as a "high-caste" Brahmin from India, even though such distinctions don't mean as much here in the United States except for in Indian / South Asian sub-cultures / communities here.
Wonderful and courageous writing. Thank you for sharing!
The work you are bringing into the world is so beautifully particular and absolutely needed. Thank you for this article and the depth of your language around what it means to reconnect and reclaim where we come from.