Dropping whiteness as an identity in favour of actual heritage

if you're feeling like there's no way to avoid being racist while being white then you're right, because whiteness is an inherently racist concept but that's okay because you don't have to keep identifying as white! you can be Scottish-Canadian, like me, or German-American

Jan 15, 2024

don't let people assign whiteness to you that's a racist thing to do (whether or not they also assign whiteness to themselves)

critter @BecomingCritter · Dec 23, 2023

An employee today told me that "I don't think you'd understand, because you're white" and without pause I replied "You think I'm white?" She started blushing and began apologizing profusely (I am white)

there's a reason that racism is an -ism and not a -phobia it was central to whole ways of organizing society! laws were explicitly designed with whiteness in mind, and whiteness was made for those laws

Emmett Shear @eshear · Jul 23, 2023

@Malcolm_Ocean Put another way, people built *worldviews* around ordering society based on race or sex, but not really so much around homosexuality. Probably has to do w how prevalent the two sides are…50/50 you need a worldview, 98/2 you can try to just ignore/suppress it.

the heritage of whiteness as a concept isn't anything to be proud of—it's made of racism, as much as having a specific culture—and that's why "white pride" is racist

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean · Jun 22, 2023

I'm not denying the concept still has a lot of power and is even probably still written into many laws but look at this absurd chart of rulings about who gets to be counted as "white" this is a textbook sign of a bad ontology source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitio…

but "white" people can be proud of their other heritage! I love my Canadian heritage (literally drinking maple syrup) and Scottish heritage (dancing at Robbie Burns suppers) and Scottish-Canadian vibes (wearing a kilt in cold weather)

if someone wants to know if you're white, or doubts that you can ditch the concept, tell them you'll answer a real question, like: 1) do you need sunscreen? (only rarely, for my tan skin) 2) do you want a hairbrush? (hell no, for my Celtic curls) 3) where are your ancestors from?