I really appreciate how you've approached this topic. It's nice to know that you and other people of European decent are rejecting whiteness and grappling with these questions in these ways. I have SO MANY thoughts on this topic. I've written about my own journey, as a person of African decent who is a descendant of enslaved Africans in the USA, towards rejecting whiteness and race as a whole in an essay I wrote titled "Why I Walked Away From White People" that I think you'd find really interesting.
To touch on a few of my thoughts I'll start by saying that I identify as me, Sundiata Soon-Jahta, first and foremost (I took agency over my identity by legally changing my name). When I decided to reject race and therefore no longer call myself a "black" person I didn't feel the need to replace that with another identifier. I'm a human, a homo sapien and I'm nature...just like every other person on this planet. I feel comfortable in this knowing and with these identifiers that are rooted in our commonalities. Beyond that, I feel like people should talk and get to know one another to discover details about their culture, ethnic traditions, lineage, values, beliefs, etc. I know that this isn't the way that society currently works but I take the stance that I do as my way of being/living the change that I want to see.
Next, I do believe that people of European descent should reject whiteness in every way possible starting with rejecting calling one another "white" however I don't think that people of African descent need to reject being "black" just because you do so for the reasons you wrote about regarding the origins and meaning of "blackness". The element of blackness that is resistance to whiteness will naturally go away when whiteness goes away.
Lastly, I'll add that the dominance hierarchy inherent within whiteness intersects with patriarchy, capitalism, religion, ownership, and every other social system within colonized societies. Therefore I do not believe that rejecting race and whiteness alone is a sustainable solution without also transitioning away from these other systems as well towards something new. And I believe that the work that people like you and I are doing and the content we're creating are aiding in said transition.
Thank you for writing this piece and for sharing your thoughts and fears so transparently.
thanks for sharing, Sundiata. powerful read. I'm curious to hear more about how this sentiment plays out life... it feels fundamental to the task ahead:
"I love, embody, and embrace Blackness as a culture…I reject it as a race."
For me it looks like not referring to myself or others as “black”. Sometimes people misunderstand my intentions I and receive a little backlash. Often times in conversations, when I say African or European American…person of African or European descent…the person I’m speaking too will also adapt that language.
I reassure people that I’m not judging or expecting others to do it just because I am. However I’m always happy if they choose too.
Thank you for these vulnerable and critical reflections! They have me thinking about many things.. including the ways that whiteness is embedded within the broader american project/ empire. And so to abolish whiteness is to abolish the prison industrial complex and all its tentacles, to abolish a profit-hungry racialized economy, to abolish empire. And then I think about Dylan Rodriguez's work around how it's impossible to be an individual abolitionist -- that abolition is inherently a collective principled struggle. So then my questions become: where are my people already struggling in principled, abolitionist praxis? How might my attention and presence shift to the places that are creating futures beyond whiteness (which definitely exist! I think of our white Jewish comrades organizing for a Free Palestine, white Christian comrades rematriating land to indigenous communities, and so many more examples)? How might I orient myself around a disciplined and rigorous practice of defying whiteness, no matter how the construct of identity shapes up (or breaks down) in the culture? etc.
Anyways (: grateful to read work that's in conversation with my thoughts!
mmm I love these reflections, alyssa. thank you for taking the time to read and respond. I do think of this work as co-creating culture, and finding new and more capacious conceptions of "We" that are still boundaried enough to have meaning and inclusive enough so that all who want to belong can. it feels to me like there's something important about how we show up: the felt sense of being, rather than the projected sense of what we "see". can that embodied integrity be felt and perceived? in my better moments I feel myself dropping into that place, but regrettably they are still few and far between. sigh. hard to be both open and vulnerable while protecting myself from the ravages of our current systems.
Thank you for this piece of textured nourishment. I am grateful and will spend time with your musings and fertile questions for further discerning. I'm finding it's connected to my own ruminations on "transcend and include" (to use Ken Wilber's terminology). How might we transcend the construct of Whiteness while including the wisdom from the wound? Kintsugi-style - not disavowing (which is myopic and perhaps impossible), yet also acknowledging the fracture. I believe this requires the steps outlined in the reparations cycle and, too, intentional attention to relational repair that coheres in a new sort of culture building. For me, I acknowledge there's a TON of work to be done with the body, the tissues, the domain of sensation, especially where it intersects emotion. Slowing down feels imperative, lest I simply act from habit (beneath armor).
@Sundiata Soon-Jahta ~ I am so appreciative of you revealing your developmental journey to understanding how race and its interlocking systems of oppression act to distort, dull nuance, blind us to understanding and AWARENESS of how systems shape us. everyday, all day . . . Seeing perhaps comes first, followed by noticing our own interaction with/participation in or rejection of the system. I, too, believe that the domain of intimate relationship is one of the keys to unlocking our beholden-ness to race and practices of domination as concerns gender, class, ability, language and culture, and so much more. For me, there's something about the trust built within intimacy that fundamentally problematizes the generalizations that enable us to remain complicit in the roles we have been given to play within our Western racialized patriarchal imperialist ableist systems. THANK YOU for sharing your analysis, the tour of some of your significant friendships, and your invitation to practice something compassionately disruptive and transformative.
I really appreciate how you've approached this topic. It's nice to know that you and other people of European decent are rejecting whiteness and grappling with these questions in these ways. I have SO MANY thoughts on this topic. I've written about my own journey, as a person of African decent who is a descendant of enslaved Africans in the USA, towards rejecting whiteness and race as a whole in an essay I wrote titled "Why I Walked Away From White People" that I think you'd find really interesting.
To touch on a few of my thoughts I'll start by saying that I identify as me, Sundiata Soon-Jahta, first and foremost (I took agency over my identity by legally changing my name). When I decided to reject race and therefore no longer call myself a "black" person I didn't feel the need to replace that with another identifier. I'm a human, a homo sapien and I'm nature...just like every other person on this planet. I feel comfortable in this knowing and with these identifiers that are rooted in our commonalities. Beyond that, I feel like people should talk and get to know one another to discover details about their culture, ethnic traditions, lineage, values, beliefs, etc. I know that this isn't the way that society currently works but I take the stance that I do as my way of being/living the change that I want to see.
Next, I do believe that people of European descent should reject whiteness in every way possible starting with rejecting calling one another "white" however I don't think that people of African descent need to reject being "black" just because you do so for the reasons you wrote about regarding the origins and meaning of "blackness". The element of blackness that is resistance to whiteness will naturally go away when whiteness goes away.
Lastly, I'll add that the dominance hierarchy inherent within whiteness intersects with patriarchy, capitalism, religion, ownership, and every other social system within colonized societies. Therefore I do not believe that rejecting race and whiteness alone is a sustainable solution without also transitioning away from these other systems as well towards something new. And I believe that the work that people like you and I are doing and the content we're creating are aiding in said transition.
Thank you for writing this piece and for sharing your thoughts and fears so transparently.
Why I Walked Away From White People https://open.substack.com/pub/sustainablesolutionsmedia/p/why-i-walked-away-from-white-people-fa63c9280ed4?r=3ehdaw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
thanks for sharing, Sundiata. powerful read. I'm curious to hear more about how this sentiment plays out life... it feels fundamental to the task ahead:
"I love, embody, and embrace Blackness as a culture…I reject it as a race."
For me it looks like not referring to myself or others as “black”. Sometimes people misunderstand my intentions I and receive a little backlash. Often times in conversations, when I say African or European American…person of African or European descent…the person I’m speaking too will also adapt that language.
I reassure people that I’m not judging or expecting others to do it just because I am. However I’m always happy if they choose too.
Wow. The power of reading these two articles together, what a gift 💖 So so grateful to you both for your words and care.
Thank you Laura!
Brian, have you heard of Garrett Bucks's memoir The Right Kind of White? I recommend you take a look.
Thank you for these vulnerable and critical reflections! They have me thinking about many things.. including the ways that whiteness is embedded within the broader american project/ empire. And so to abolish whiteness is to abolish the prison industrial complex and all its tentacles, to abolish a profit-hungry racialized economy, to abolish empire. And then I think about Dylan Rodriguez's work around how it's impossible to be an individual abolitionist -- that abolition is inherently a collective principled struggle. So then my questions become: where are my people already struggling in principled, abolitionist praxis? How might my attention and presence shift to the places that are creating futures beyond whiteness (which definitely exist! I think of our white Jewish comrades organizing for a Free Palestine, white Christian comrades rematriating land to indigenous communities, and so many more examples)? How might I orient myself around a disciplined and rigorous practice of defying whiteness, no matter how the construct of identity shapes up (or breaks down) in the culture? etc.
Anyways (: grateful to read work that's in conversation with my thoughts!
mmm I love these reflections, alyssa. thank you for taking the time to read and respond. I do think of this work as co-creating culture, and finding new and more capacious conceptions of "We" that are still boundaried enough to have meaning and inclusive enough so that all who want to belong can. it feels to me like there's something important about how we show up: the felt sense of being, rather than the projected sense of what we "see". can that embodied integrity be felt and perceived? in my better moments I feel myself dropping into that place, but regrettably they are still few and far between. sigh. hard to be both open and vulnerable while protecting myself from the ravages of our current systems.
Thank you for this piece of textured nourishment. I am grateful and will spend time with your musings and fertile questions for further discerning. I'm finding it's connected to my own ruminations on "transcend and include" (to use Ken Wilber's terminology). How might we transcend the construct of Whiteness while including the wisdom from the wound? Kintsugi-style - not disavowing (which is myopic and perhaps impossible), yet also acknowledging the fracture. I believe this requires the steps outlined in the reparations cycle and, too, intentional attention to relational repair that coheres in a new sort of culture building. For me, I acknowledge there's a TON of work to be done with the body, the tissues, the domain of sensation, especially where it intersects emotion. Slowing down feels imperative, lest I simply act from habit (beneath armor).
@Sundiata Soon-Jahta ~ I am so appreciative of you revealing your developmental journey to understanding how race and its interlocking systems of oppression act to distort, dull nuance, blind us to understanding and AWARENESS of how systems shape us. everyday, all day . . . Seeing perhaps comes first, followed by noticing our own interaction with/participation in or rejection of the system. I, too, believe that the domain of intimate relationship is one of the keys to unlocking our beholden-ness to race and practices of domination as concerns gender, class, ability, language and culture, and so much more. For me, there's something about the trust built within intimacy that fundamentally problematizes the generalizations that enable us to remain complicit in the roles we have been given to play within our Western racialized patriarchal imperialist ableist systems. THANK YOU for sharing your analysis, the tour of some of your significant friendships, and your invitation to practice something compassionately disruptive and transformative.