Indeed if nothing else is sure, times of change present us with a clear task: Figure out what to take with you, and what to leave behind. — Jessica Dore
Two weeks ago, I wrote about defining whiteness, the paradox of whiteness, a little bit on whiteness at work, and just a hair on breaking up with white supremacy meaning that white people will have to break up with actual white people as Tressie writes in her essay Breaking Up With White Supremacy Was Always The End Game.
But the break ups are always the difficult part… do we get that yet?
What makes any of us believe that we can create new norms, customs, and status quos yet emerge on the other side unscathed without having lost anything? No scars, no bruises, no wounds? Or without losing perhaps more than we’ve gained.
The first governments we encounter when we are born are our households. We are not conveniently or predictably or strictly in a war with big government, big business, big tech. We are at war with ourselves. Our mothers. Fathers. Grandparents. And extended loved ones. Accepting that relationships can dissolve when our thinking becomes inflexible and unmovable is a consequence of relating.
Break ups happen.
Bridges burn. Things end. Life remains ongoing.
“[to know your whites] ... is to be intimate with some white persons but to critically withhold faith in white people categorically”.
— Tressie McMillan Cottom
This is the paradoxical tension we do not want to hold.