repeating stuff i’ve posted before, but as a single-post longread, on racism… namely, my own
a reminder how, despite being Melungeon, i was born into whiteness & had bestowed upon me a conditional whiteness (irrespective how my surname was “imported” from Angola in 1619),
i’ve benefited substantially & substantively from being placed as white in most of the spaces i’ve navigated — even as there are other evident structural barriers i deal w/ as a neurodivergent queer trans woman w/o status in a settler-colonial nation where i live
it also makes me, in that original sin of the U.S., where i was born & raised, ipso facto a racist,
my own racism, inculcated upon me from an early age, is a thing i’ve been trying to demolish & also to thwart in my peers, pretty much every day for much of the last 30 or so years when i had the privilege (due to my whiteness) to choose to start thinking about & challenging those structures,
i’ll be working to dismantle this for the rest of my life, and i know i’ll never get there
anyway, that’s where i am, and this ought to be made clear from the outset where i am and the values i take seriously,
and if this is not ok with you, then you know how to let yourself out
