It's been really great.
It's hard to know exactly what White people have in mind. Even though they do a damn good job of explaining themselves in thorough, rational, graduate-level vocabulary, it's still difficult to understand what they really mean.
The main issue in understanding what they are saying is that although they are inexhaustible in their explanations, they assume so damn much. Essentially, everything that they don't say, they assume you already understand.
For instance, I saw a paper on, "The playing through of selfobject transferences of a nine-year-old boy." by Iris Hilke.... it's like, "Huh?"
They assume that they way they express themselves, is the way one should express themselves, which is to assume all of the cultural and social pre-suppositions, experiences and understandings that would allow one to even understand what a cultural and social pre-supposition was, in relation to white thought.
As a side note, that's probably why English is a popular language to learn. First off, more people speak english as a second language than any other language, also, english, isn't just a language, more than any other language, it's a code and the code of choice to explicate the multi-phase, multi-leveled, multi-disciplined psychological arena of white conception.
whew! just writing that really tosses me back into the deep pit from which I have slowly been extricating myself over the last 5 decades.
Writing, must be easier for white folks, seeing as they only have to learn to write, and all of the cultural, social, and psychological pre-suppositions do not exist... for they ARE what is pre-supposed. for the rest of us, we must conform to that.
I contend that the only way we (as people of color) can conform to the white english standard, is by focusing, and thereby tapping-down, our own indigenous thought patterns, as well as experiencial and cutural realities that form the basis for our own forms of written expression.
Let me take a moment to interate that written expression, does not arise in a vacuum. rather, it is a code, that allows us the ability to express thoughts, connections and experiences, etc, that are pre-verbal in origin.
To say that you went for a walk, is not the whole story. No one really knows what you did, but we can assume that walking may be the most succint and easily expressive way to describe what you did (in the written form). an error of assumption is made, whenever we assume that the written word, IS the experience.
Which brings me back to English. It's ability to become completely abstract.. and the idea that it was created to facilitate the expression of the wholly abstract, is a hallmark of it's trait.
And so, that brings me to the point.
Through writing this blog, I have found myself recently overcome with a feeling of forgiveness, with attendant feelings of healing, and understanding.
perhaps the ability to transport oneself psychically outside of oneself to contemplate oneself, is the greatest tool in becoming self-aware, and surely, indispensible in the process of self-critique and self-analysis.
By reading the wretched histories of the people of color of this world, as well as the white people of this world, I have arrived at an understanding that white people, do not need to be forgiven. If they need to be forgiven, then we all need to be forgiven, from the most high, to the lowly. from the mighty, to the weak. everyone, everywhere, for all times....
it is really no mistake in my mind, that Christianity has flourished. The idea of forgiveness, and the washing away of sin, and the suffering on the cross, for the sins of all, is so deeply resonant and so factually true in metaphor and in the view of history, that christianity, can surely find a home, within any peoples of the earth.
I have found forgiveness in my heart for white folks.
The irony that I myself am part white, perhaps a larger part white than anything else, is not something I have been allowed to fully appreciate or contemplate. To be black in america, is to be in any respect, recognizably black, to the exclusion of all else. such that an individual who is even 80% white, must contemplate blackness from a perspective of who they are, and whiteness as something foreign and unrelateable.
By looking at the history of the world, the history of conquest, the history of tribal, chiefdom, state and charsimatic leadership conquest has brought me to see the... .and this is strange to say, benevolence and fortuitousness of the black/white/people of color interchange.
while in Philadelphia recently, i had bad reception on my television. As i stared at this gigantic city block sized hole next to my hotel, the hotel television maintenance man appeared to take a look/see at the television. He was a native Jamaican. We talked about things. The war in Iraq came up. the ongoing challenges of urban warfare came up. and then, he and I found that we both had the same conclusion. Mine, from my understanding of world massacres and conquests as well as recent conflicts in Africa. I'm not sure where he gathered his perspective, but nonetheless, he had it and it was this. that in the conquering of another peoples. If you have, say, a neighborhood of 300 individuals, and you know that, say 22 of them are your sworn enemy, and they have been attempting to kill you, and they are sworn to attempt to kill, foil, foul-up, or otherwise disrupt your conquest, then the solution, (before there was media, accountability, and a lack of "full and total" investment) was simple. You killed all 300 individuals. You killed them all, because there were 22 sworn enemies. You killed them all, because there were 278 potential sworn enemies. You killed them all, because then, you didn't have to worry about them, or concern yourself with them, their earthly needs, the threat they posed, or the any form of future dealings with them.
You killed the children, because children grow up. You killed the women, because they loved the enemy and bore their children. You killed the young boys, because a few of them would one day wish to avenge the death of their people. You killed them all, so that no one would be left to tell the take. You killed them all because you didn't want to have to look over your shoulder or sleep disquietly. You killed them all, because keeping them alive was not the reason why you invaded...
I think you get the point.
but white folks did not kill all of us people of color.
We had value to them, as scouts, kapos, slaves, to satisfy their sexual urges, to serve as their army, to guide, interpret and inform. to study, understand and experiment upon...
they did not kill us.
and that's how the native american population, at his pre-conquest height of 54 million individuals is now equal to, or greater than that number across the america's.
anyway, we could have been completely wiped out.
but we weren't.
there's no way we could have ever conquered whites, unless it were by becoming joined with them, rising to power and overthrowing them... a process that would take multiple generations to achieve.
and so, now, if we can remember our history, our indigenous culture, values, society... we are in a position in this non-discriminatory world, to take over, to let our ideas be known, and to propogate, and to rule.
and so, i have forgiveness in my heart, because we are here, we have survived, and they have too, after having endured, in all cases (depending on how far back you want to look) have also survived and endured to spread their seed.
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