#whiteness – @jeanwhy on Tumblr

What are my materials for this current crisis of identity? How did I come to be colonized? And how did I find out that I had been colonized? Have I found out? How did I come to equate family and origin as violent and threatening? How did whiteness become, I shudder even to write this, safety—a lack of feeling, a lack of allegiances. It made space, or at least I thought it did, for me. For a me that had no history.

Does Abstraction Belong to White People?

Miguel Gutierrez

#bomb magazine #miguel gutierrez #dance #whiteness

jeanwhy

I had to contend with the pain of wanting a beautiful white body, not out of some misguided vanity, but because I saw over and over how whiteness conferred an instant legitimacy... As a teenager, I blamed my parents for failing to secure me admission into whiteness, which I was certain was a prerequisite to being loved. I was mad at them, not at the cruelty of the American dream or the ways in which white supremacy had warped each of us. My privileged upbringing and education and linguistic fluency gave me such proximity to whiteness that it stung all the more to still find myself outside of it.

Jenny Zhang on Mitski, “Your Best American Girl”

NYT Magazine

#jenny zhang #mitski #nytmag #whiteness

jeanwhy

In this way, Heritage Gold not only predicts the post-fact, retouched reality we live in today, but excavates the always already phobic impulse of a fantasy of difference which centers whiteness a its condition of possibility, closely mirroring eugenicist Jose Vasconcelos’s concept of mestizaje: “the white race has brought the world to a state in which all human types and cultures will be able to fuse with each other,” organizing “the moral and material basis for the union of all men... the fruit of all the previous ones and amelioration of everything past.” The internet itself could stand in for this notion, exemplifying how whiteness attempts to erase its constitutive violence by positioning itself as a transcultural connective tissue.

“Think Different: Mongrel’s ‘Heritage Gold’ and the commodification of identity”

manuel arturo abreu @ Rhizome

#manuel arturo abreu #rhizome #mongrel #heritage gold #whiteness #the internet

jeanwhy

Shall we continue our headcount of reading venues and anthologies? Shall we politely speak up and beg for more representation, say a few more panels on forgotten subaltern poetry for the next wax museum conference? Shall we again rehearse these mechanical motions under the false diplomacy of inclusivity? A more generous slice please! A little more room! Just a few more faces I can recognize as my own!

“Delusions Of Whiteness In The Avant-Garde”

Cathy Park Hong. Lana Turner Journal

#cathy park hong #delusions of whiteness #whiteness #avant-garde #poetry #criticism #lana turner journal

jeanwhy

There’s a joke that goes — what color is this? Point to something white. Somebody says “white”. What color is that? Point to something white. Keep going until the person gets tired. Then ask them what cows drink. They’ll say milk. Cows drink water.

April Pierce, “White Out”

Wave Composition Issue no.10

#wave composition #poetry #april pierce #whiteness