Liberat.es
A catchall
There are a lot of things floating about. First, on Monday, I wrote a piece called Enough. A bit of behind the scenes here at good ol’ Liberat.es — I write everything into a text file that then gets saved into a dedicated Dropbox folder. Those text files get converted into what is posted on the interwebs by a service called Blot. It’s pretty cool. Whenever I post, get a little notification on my computer that tells me that I uploaded a file called such_and_such.txt. This time I got one that said Enough(2).txt. Can you guess what that means?
Yup. It means that I’ve already posted something called Enough. Not exactly a surprise, but kind of amusing. Especially given that the post I’d originally posted was using a different definition of the word. I re-read what I wrote then and liked the sentiment. The actual bit of writing? Well, it could be better. I may go back and revise it. We’ll see.
What else if floating about? Ah, I mentioned that I would write about the Chelsea Handler documentary of white privilege. I’d like to explore this more deeply, but I’m not sure when that might happen. Here’s what I will say: I’m glad she put this out there, as it may open some people’s eyes to the insidiousness that is white supremacy. There is good that can come of it. However, I was troubled by how much it centered her whiteness, and leaned on people of color for help and explanation. I worried that she tokenized her ex-boyfriend and his family. Her friends. I would love to have seen the conversations that led to them saying yes to do the documentary.
White people, here’s the deal. We have to figure this out. We can’t lean on BIPOC1 folks. We should be very careful about how we tokenize or, worse (? Maybe? Not sure) fetishize BIPOC folks. We don’t mean to (I believe). And we do it largely because we are flailing. We need help. But we need each other. This is why the folks at Holistic Resistance talk about the importance of reaching to other white people. There are plenty who are further down the path than you and I. Let’s get their support.
One other thing. I had this idea the other day. It was to link what I’m writing today to the piece I wrote one year ago. You know, as part of celebrating the ongoing nature of this thing. I’ll start it here2 — see below.
I suppose this isn’t much of a catchall really, but I stand by the title.
Last year on this day, I wrote What it takes. And to that I say: yup.