I've devoted more of my time to you and your mere cogitations,
winifred , than I have done for a long time to any one spouting the kind of bullshit you've been throwing around here the last two days. You persist, despite links,
Rutita1 's unbelievable patience and the merits of the story itself to elevate the subject to something that race is not. You have fallen hook, line and sinker to the notion that nigga caps, tribal dancing, afros, twerking, soul food (whatever that's supposed to be outside of Alabama or Mississipi or the US) and a few more of these constitute "black culture".
That, my dear, is exactly what this woman has done. She's used bits of
what is seen as black culture and fashioned herself a persona. Even if she's managed to convince herself she's black it doesn't mean she is because blackness is the whole experience of
being seen as [something or other] not the experience of
seeing yourself as [whatever you think of yourself]. It's the whole experience of seeing yourself disappear in the eyes of your interlocutors to be replaced by whatever stereotypes they choose to hold about people
they look at as they look at you.
I don't know how to twerk, I don't wear an afro, I don't sing gospel hymns, or think John [is] Legend, I don't wear the beautiful fabrics of the land that saw me born. My favourite actor is not Denzel Washington, it's Gene Hackman but I held a crush the size of an elephant on Jeremy Irons when I first watched Dead Ringers and when it comes to actresses, it's a Brazilian old chappette called Fernanda Montenegro all the way. I listen to more Mahler than to Alicia Keys and more The Doors than Stevie Wonder and even if I'm enthralled by José Eduardo Agualusa, Saramago is a less quiet solace of mine when Kafka becomes too loud.
All of this to now ask... why is it should I relate to those men and women in America who have been tweeting their angry hearts at Dolezal? What do I have in common with them? Never been to America, haven't met that many Americans in the flesh. Never been to South Africa either but feck and arse, my heart goes fully out there, and when I look at the blatant but unofficial colour coding that goes on in Brazil it's enough to make me cry even as cultures change in all of those places and from each to the next. Learnt an awful lot with the Afro Caribbean community since I got here because in telling their story and making their voices heard I found my own because it's the experience of being black in a white country that i have in common with them. Not the yams or the fucking dub.
It's the experiences various and varied that mean the same for everyone of us in this world... "you're different", "you're lesser", "you're no one".
White privilege
winifred is what you guys don't have to do to feel you have a place in the world. White privilege is not having to explore, re-explore, analyse, learn and unlearn and re-learn the politics of race in order to find your place among humanity. White privilege is not having to find and then re-claim your own person from what is reflected to you.
It's not the hairstyles, the music, the lingo, the bling, the dancing or the shouting "Black and Proud". It's the experience of stepping outside and having to protect your own person. That, dear Rachel never had to actually do even if she believes she has. Even the boldness of her deed, [ironically] shows the confidence of someone who has no fucking idea.
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