Time to Retire Whiteness

“Whiteness–the whole constellation of practices, beliefs, attitudes, emotions that are mixed up in being white–is the problem. Whiteness is degraded and depraved[…] To the degree that we accept any of the meaning that the dominant society gives to whiteness, we white people are degraded and depraved.” 
― Robert Jensen, The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege





Way, way past time. Whiteness is a ghost
invented by fake science and a priori supremacist
hubris. Famous skeptic David Hume should have been
skeptical about his racism. Wasn't.  Joseph
Blumenach invented "Caucasian" out of nothing.
It is nothing.  We're all one species, obviously.
No races, but (don't take the bait) that doesn't mean we stop
confronting racism or that we aspire to "color
blindness."  If you want to get down with your
ancestry.com ethnicities, cool.  Just set that
white shell aside, if you're wearing one.
Because it's probably  made you do and think
some crazy shit. Mainly it's about people
and cultures,  growing up, recovering from historical
madness, and doing the right things.




hans ostrom 2017

recommended: Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People (2010)

"Our Tune Is Changing"

We're among the first
who may choose to see
ourselves as living
mosaics generated
by variations encoded
on spiral ladders.

The tiles are selected
from the meeting of all
those who met: ancestry,
which ultimately is common.
We're all commoners.

Somehow now what we know
of social construction
and what the sciences
of genetics give to us
are so much grander
than mythology, dogma,
and bigotry: all the old
hoo-ha Each of us

is a compendium of chords,
first notes of which
were played in a place
we call East Africa;
then riffed on in
the slow compositions
of migration. The
genome's home.


hans ostrom 2015