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There is a generative, love-filled rage moving within me right now…a deep having-to-say-something need to call in the so-called “fragility” pattern of behavior – or the tendency of people positioned in privileged and systemically advantaged ways to disassociate from others pain (and our shame) to a point of avoiding, and outright rejecting, conversations and movements toward the establishment of human rights for every person.
As one who is seen by society and the state as white, as male bodied, it can be hard to stand up to the ideas and institutions that give me false power over other humans and more-than-human beings, and challenge all the so-called privileges I receive - many of which shouldn’t be privileges at all, but basic human rights.
It’s hard to bite the hand that feeds us, but when it is the same hand that has taken us all from Common lands and lifeways that have truly fed us for thousands of years, its in our mutual interest to bite until the hand can no longer hold the spiritually depleted “food” it pushes on us and finally removes its grip from our siblings necks. My life, as a person made "white" over centuries of colonization and conquest, depends on this - on racial justice, on Indigenous Sovereignty, on Black Liberation – for the system that targets Black and Indigenous and poor and trans gender bodies, is the same system cutting down old growth forests, genetically engineering seeds, poising water, our children and grandchildren. Anti-white supremacy does not mean anti-white people. Just as saying that Patriarchy, and the objectification of women, queer and trans gender people is wrong, does not mean it is wrong to be a man. This is about a system – not about the people trapped in it. Challenging the ideas and institutions of supremacy is an opportunity, and an offering, for us all to get free.
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