Look. I’m gonna start flexing this biracial muscle. Wh!te people! I know you because I am you (see evidence at the end) 😛

Now that my credentials are out of the way, let me talk my shit.

Wh!teness as an identity needs to die. I don’t want solidarity from wh!te people or wh!te allyship. I don’t want wh!teness to exist.

NOW. BEFORE YOU REPORT ME. This doesn’t mean I don’t want wh!te people to exist. However, wh!teness as an identity needs to die. It is inherently a dehumanizing identity. It is an identity born in service of the oppression of others.

And in my experience at Yale and with my Italian family (yes Italian from the motherland, my mom is basically from the Alps)… most wh!te people don’t care about wh!teness. AND IN THE CASE THAT THEY DO… it’s because they care about wh!te supremacy (wh!teness was born to justify wh!te supremacy, they’re inextricably linked).

Most wh!te people that I know feel connected to the region or country where they are from. Wh!te Appalachians are a great example — the connection to place supersedes the connection to wh!teness in their understanding of self. Local identity is often at the core of people’s understanding of themselves.

The problem is that wh!te people don’t go far enough. They don’t look at wh!teness and go we need to reject this and build something else. Something that is rooted in our local history and something that calls out wh!te supremacy at every turn in our lineage. WHY DON’T THEY DO THAT?

BECAUSE THEY ARE EITHER SELLOUTS OR UNABLE TO PROCESS THEIR TRAUMA (or both).

You don’t want to reject wh!teness because deep down you like not “having to deal with race”! You don’t want to deal with the strife that your very identity has engendered in others. You don’t want to give up your conveniences because your consumerism is all you know. They took culture away from you, they took language away from you, they traded in your soul for your ability to buy shit and now we’re here.

OR (tbh and), you’re struggling! The state isn’t actually there for you (Asheville is still rebuilding! Kerr County in Texas is still rebuilding). The state isn’t actually there for you unless you’re the top 10%! And to grapple with that would mean the loss of the one identity you kind of have, national identity.

Wh!te people in the U.S… as a biracial child of immigrants with almost no family in this country, I give a fuck about you more than the federal government! The feds don’t give a flying fuck about you. Your claim to American citizenship will not save you.

So, reject whiteness, reject the nation-state. Learn about your ancestry. Give people money. Get organized where you are from. Make sure the babies are fed, the elders are taken care of, and the young people have healthy space to grow. Get to work goddamnit (and listen to the song)!