Me and White Supremacy : Day 12 Journal Questions
I’m leading a group discussion circle on “Me and White Supremacy” by Layla F. Saad. I’m taking the journaling challenge daily throughout February even though I’m not white. If you happen to be white, why not take the challenge? If I can do it, you can do it too.
Day 12 Questions (from the text):
1. What are some of the national racial stereotypes in your country — spoken and unspoken, historic and modern — associated with Indigenous people and non-Black POC?
2. What are the racist stereotypes, beliefs, and thoughts you hold about the different racial groups of people? In what ways do you paint them all with one brush rather than seeing them as complex individuals?
3. How do you think about POC who are citizens in your country differently from those who are recent immigrants? How do you think about those who are more assimilated versus those who are less assimilated (e.g., if they practice your country’s social norms, if they have accents that sound like yours, etc.)?
4. How do you think about and treat Indigenous children and non-Black children of color differently from white children?
5. How do you think about and treat darker-skinned Indigenous people and POC differently from those who are lighter-skinned?
6. In what ways have you superhumanized parts of the identities of Indigenous people and POC while dehumanizing other parts?
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I’ll let you in on a secret. When I was younger I didn’t want to be Black.
This may not come as a surprise if you are following my journal entries thus far. But it’s true. I learned very early that there were different races, but of all those I knew of, Black was the one everyone seemed to think was beneath all the others.
Internalized racism is a hell of a drug. What I really wanted was to be white like my friends and neighbors and classmates. But barring that, I was wanting to be just about anything else, Latino, Asian, you name it. When I learned I had some Native ancestry, I clung to it so fiercely, I even asked my mom if I could be Native instead of Black.
I tried so hard not to be Black that I took great care to go against any of the things I thought white people typically associated with Blackness. I favored punk rock over rap. I intentionally avoided playing, watching, discussing, or even learning about basketball (or any team sports for that matter). I never spoke one syllable of AAVE. Until high school you would not catch me dancing. A small part of the reason for this may be that personality quirk I have against going where I’m expected to go or doing what I’m expected to do. But I’ll be honest, a LOT of it was to avoid the stereotypes associated with my race.
It didn’t work of course. And it took me a very long time to figure out that by intentionally stepping around stereotypes as if they were land mines, I was still allowing those definitions control my life. By actively going against them I was in fact validating that they should control my thoughts and behavior.
It’s all a trick. And here’s how it started:
In the 18th century Carl Linnaeus set out to classify as many living things as he could, including humans. Here is what he claimed were the four classifications, or “races” of human and their respective intrinsic traits:
Linnaeus based these varieties on physical characteristics such as skin color and hair color; geographic location; and perceived behaviors. For example, Homo americanus was defined as those with “straight, black, and thick hair; gaping nostrils … beardless chin” and “unyielding, cheerful, and free” behavior. Homo europaeus were those with “plenty of yellow hair; blue eyes” and were “light, wise, inventor[s].” Homo asiaticus had “blackish hair, dark eyes” and were “stern, haughty, greedy.” Homo africanus were those with “dark hair, with many twisting braids; silky skin; flat nose; swollen lips” and were “sly, sluggish, neglectful.”
He then placed these different groups in a hierarchy with his own group conveniently at the top, and thus stereotypes were born. He passed this off as science, and the existing capitalist systems that conquered the lands and bodies of these subordinate groups were more than happy to accept his message.
We know today definitively, and scientifically that race is fabricated. The completion of the Human Genome Project in 2000 definitively proved it by determining that the percentage of our genes that account for the differences we know as “race” is about 0.1% .
Of this 0.1% that varies, almost all of it (95.7% to be exact) is found between individuals within the same race. Despite what our eyes perceive, there is more genetic diversity within a race than between races.
So why do these stereotypes, and the very concept of “race” persist? Because The same thing is true today as it was when Linnaeus first justified dividing up humanity for conquest — the dominant group at the top of this false hierarchy reinforces itself and its position of power by keeping us believing we are divided. So many people make the claim that “we are one race — the human race”, but I’ll believe that when through policy, culture, and the social contract, we start to act like one.
This is why today I insist on and propagate the idea that you should define yourself — and if you happen to fall into a stereotype or against one, so be it. You should control your own narrative, because I’ve found if you don’t someone else will, and you won’t like it half as much.
This is also why I cringe whenever I hear one marginalized group stereotype another. Because really, we of all people should know better. We know it’s a ruse, so let’s not fall into that trap, my fellow BIPOCs. We only reenforce the false tenets of the hegemony when we judge one another in those ways.
