ibarw

[maygra]

I've been trying to formulate some kind of post for ibarw all weekend. The miscegenation row tipped something ugly in me and I've been trying to get a handle on it since then.

However.

Every post I try to write, that I put together, all come off as either, "This is why and how Maygra comes by her racism, conscious and unconscious," or as a justification of why, despite my best efforts, those often subtle tendencies and reactions still surface, or how, after a lifetime of actively trying to cultivate colorblindness I now resent (because it is my privilege as a white woman to do so) discovering that that effort may have been misguided and even hurtful in ways I never intended.

That probably says more about me than even I want to know.

Anything else I could say about it would be more self-justification, and while usually I'm all about that?

Not this week.

Comments

[stele3.livejournal.com]

There has never been nor will ever be anything that upsets me deeper or more consistently than knowing full well that I have racist thoughts. It's something I hate, something I don't know how to get rid of.

But I'll own it. I'll own it as my responsibility, and though I want to make excuses for it, I won't. It's the only way I know how to fight it.

[maygra.livejournal.com]

I do own it for the most part -- I'm kind of at a loss as to how to fix it most days, which of course, is how I view it, that it's like a wart I can have removed. Part of it, I think comes form living in a results driven culture -- that results have benchmarks, that success has measurable impact. And racism, or even overcoming racism?

Not so much.

[stele3.livejournal.com]

I feel exactly the same way (and I hope that my initial comment didn't come off as lecturing). I don't know how to be rid of it.

I know my thoughts have changed significantly as I am exposed to more people with more backgrounds and diversity - but it's still in there, bouncing around. I don't know what to do about it.