oh fuck! I’m hearing some faint voices… X(

this could be the beginning of the end…

My conclusion is basically that you are not fighting oppression by humiliating the (or one particular) oppressor. You call them out. You embarrass them. 

Where do you go from there? Aside from alleviating your temporary rage and resentment, nothing much is accomplished except further animosity. I don’t really believe in peace, in the stupid liberal utopian sense. I believe in conquering racism through education.

We should critically examine what anti-racist education look like. Beyond the usual sloganeering, and the run-of-the-mill anti-racism 101 crap. The work begins with critical reflection. For me, anyway, the answer is always theory, theory, and more theory. :D

But no, okay, to throw around another stupid cliche so people could understand where (the general direction) that I’m going: Work. Labour. Discipline. The road to truth, to revolution, to ANYTHING worthwhile at all is through work. Hard work. If everything simply falls on your lap, you’ll never learn anything.

I was at this space for at-risk youth. It became very evident who the service-providers were versus the service-users. The former mostly white, the latter mostly racialized.

ANYWAYZ… I went to a spoken word workshop. One of the people there was this really privileged white woman who was also very unaware of her privilege. Okay. So she pissed me off. Everything she said, I just responded in a very snarky way. LOL. It wasn’t accusatory, i.e. attacking her but it’s an indirect form of attack. I’m basically saying— fuck you! Look at your privilege! 

Upon further self-reflection, I’m beginning to understand why this isn’t the right approach to take towards anti-oppression. 

(1) She’s just another ignorant but privileged white person. The privilege itself is granted by the deeper systemic structures of white supremacy and not located in her as an individual. As an individual, she merely embodies the dominant oppressive structure. This form of “anti-oppression” is actually pretty shallow and doesn’t get at the root cause of the oppression. Why? Because you (meaning I) couldn’t possibly have time/energy to attack every single friggin’ white person who is too privileged to understand their own privilege. This is the form of resistance of a cynic— employing satire and irony but not doing any serious damage to the very *structure* of white supremacy.

(2) I think it’s important to get everyone to examine their own privilege(s) which begins with education. Now, it’s very true that it shouldn’t depend on the person of colour to constantly educate the white person on their privilege and racism, as the poc may not know EVERYTHING there is to know about racism or can answer all the questions, and also, it’s not their responsibility to educate the white person. There’s a bunch of weird problematic things going on, like once the “education” is complete, the poc merely becomes a vessel that allows the white person (the protagonist) to congratulate him/herself for being a good ally. The poc is a merely a means for the self-realization or self-actualization of the white protagonist. The Other, once their use-value is depleted (i.e. once they’re no longer useful), is thrown away, discarded like a piece of garbage. This is a very violent metaphor— one that stuck in my mind for many many years after feeling like this is the role I play in other people’s lives. (This is also a HUGE problem I see with all new age religions. OThers, all Others, are simply means for our own self-realization/self-actualization. It’s narcissism par excellence. Getting derailed.) 

Okay. I believe the cure to racism at least on the individual level is indeed education. But education takes many, many forms. There is the typical top-down model. A professor/teacher lectures to the student. There is a binary between educator and educatee. One holds the power whilst the Other merely receives the knowledge, without questioning the authority of the former. Anyway, that shouldn’t be how education works. I think good education looks something like this: the teacher/guide gives the learner just enough knowledge so that the learner can take that knowledge and continue exploring and learning on their own, coming to their own conclusions and answers. Authoritarian education is nothing but indoctrination.

—————

blah, blah, blah

Well, I guess the solution is simple. I just think about all the people I don’t want in my life and all the ones I’m grateful for having in my life. Then concentrate on the latter. And everything will be good, again. :)

Life is so frustrating. Communicating with normative people. Even if they are queer and disabled but without any understanding of queer or disability politics and how to deal with triggers. Everyone has their triggers. Trying to talk honestly to the other person about how we trigger each other is super difficult because the other person is just like— “you have issues!” basically because I told them about my labels (mental health blah). Seriously???? Ughghgh… people piss me off sometimes.

I met one person who seems to understand me, which makes me very happy. But what is understanding anyway? Obviously, they haven’t had the same experiences as me in many ways, but they understand— something fundamental about myself, that others don’t. The importance of theory. How theory is NOT a futile and facetious academic exercise. Theory is more fluid and ironic and evocative of the playfulness as well as seriousness— of life, of lived experience, of theory itself. Theory is beautiful. Theory is what sets truth in motion (and yes, truth is always in motion!) 

It’s people’s misunderstandings of theory where they project their own preconceptions onto it that makes it unappealing. The usual one being that theory is totalizing, i.e. tries to explain everything, tries to appropriate experience, etc. etc.

No. Well, people will always misunderstand you if they don’t make any genuine attempts at understanding you. It’s really not your fault, dear theory.

Anyway, this person understands the importance of theory.

I’m grateful for this encounter.

Every word in the English language has a potential to be problematic. “Curiosity” is one of my therapist’s favourite words when it comes to facing experiences he is not familiar with. When facing the Other. (which in this concrete situation means me— I am Other to him.)

ANYHOO… connotation of curiosity: European colonialism— the curious gaze of the colonzier which appropriates the Other and erases their Otherness…

Weh… where am I going with this? I should just tell my therapist to stop using that word, but is that enough?? 

——————

Then again, there are words that my therapist wants me to stop using since *he* finds them problematic but I don’t. Words that in the modern world has a medicalized meaning/connotation. Except I’ve read (somewhere sometime ago) that a different meaning or use of this word, which is reclaimed from its original etymology, meaning something like “facing the Other”— which is totally different than the medical model use of this word. So yeah, words can be reclaimed. Uhh… whatevs…. I don’t know why i got into this.

There is something beautiful in every piece of suffering, every piece of human vulnerability, every supplication of the oppressed and defenseless. The seduction of that beauty leads to attachment. To personal emotional investment. We may call it compassion or any number of words for sharing/embracing our sufferings, facing the suffering of the Others in their Otherness.

We get pulled by this attraction. And we lose sight of the truth. Truth is always positional. There is no universal truth. As Salman Rushdie wrote, “the only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step out of the frame.”

Anyway, I don’t really feel like elaborating anymore. I get sick of coming up with these good original ideas on my own, only to have them appropriated and stolen, soiled by the curious gaze of the mistrustful. Fuck off!

“The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.”
-Nietzsche 

Well, I guess there is a reason I *chose* Christianity but the real reason is the politics. The potential for radical emancipatory politics therein. It’s an interpretation of Christianity— the political interpretation that I’m interested. Yet, it is not *just* an interpretation. I really do believe it. It is very different from the view that God loves everyone equally. Everyone is equally worthy before God; again the basis of liberalism and liberal ideology. 

Liberation theology, as far as I’m able to grasp, claims that God takes sides. God is political. God is on the side of the oppressed, the downtrodden, the abject. God fights for the poor. In short, if Jesus Christ was alive today, he would be a Marxist revolutionary.

:)

I have no idea why that view attracts me. It’s the real reason I’m into Christianity, but uh… no one else seems to understand.

“burn all the photographs” — I could’ve sworn that was a line from a song by Adele but I can’t find it anywhere… oh well…

I didn’t burn anything (except in my mind) but threw some things away. I had one last look before throwing them out. You smiled a few times but you looked extremely unhappy in every one. The seldom occasions where you did smile, it looked really forced. It’s a message to me— I’m making you unhappy. I don’t want that. Thus I threw them away. Throw away your unhappiness; I don’t wish to be the source of that.