Conditioning, mainly insidious, is ubiquitous. In the main, it is also unfortunate. Its worst feature is not so much the false portrayals, ideologies and stereotypes that it creates - as unfortunate or even destructive as they may be, but that the majority don't realise that is has affected them. It is so powerful that they will deny inconsistency, refute reality and defend hypocrisy.
This article has great value in its highlighting of this fact. Unfortunately, too many will dismiss, not understand or ignore it.
Until all of humanity - or at least the majority of it - understands that we are of one race, regardless of our differences, and that our similarities, the universalities that connect us, and the ubiquity of feelings - whether positive or negative, are felt by us all and more important than constructed agendas and difference as deficit or worse, life will be degraded for most of us and insanity promoted by demagogues will continue.
Thank your for raising this issue. It is highly important, in my view.
I've noticed this trend as well. There's also a trend in Muslim social media to idealize white converts, especially young, pretty white women, while mostly ignoring the many converts who are Black, Asian, male, etc. White pro-Palestine activists seem to be given more prominence also. Racism is deeply ingrained, even on the side I've chosen to ally with.
A sad result of psychological conditioning indeed. And the reason why white-looking perpetrators of violence, including Zionists, get away with so much more. While a brown person doing something evokes immediate racism and demonization.
Yes, exactly this the Palestinian movement in the West is overtaken by white people. In the history of liberation, never has someone not from the oppressed group led the movement, and to success. Others can be allies but that's not what we are seeing. It has been taken over and arguably, it's why though they've had lots of successes in protest and BDS, the movement is quite stagnant and doesn't do much else (e.g. public education, media training, legal training etc).
We are also seeing a huge amount of praise put upon white people when they do the bear minimum in standing up against genocide - something non-white people have been shouting up against for decades. In a way however, it could be inverted and read as a subliminal acceptance that Western culture permits and perpetuates violence and it is shocking when someone from it speaks up against it? That they must be heaped with praise lest they turn back again? It sometimes feels like that is what is happening.
This is exactly true and it has been so distressing to see this: that people also instinctively know that in order to gain sympathy of those in the West, they must show the blue-eyed and blonde victims of genocide. Truly, all lives are not equal in the eyes of the states we are in, so much rests on melanin.
The lack of ability to grasp the implications of subtle attacks such as this form of whitewashing shows how deeply colonized our minds really are. This kind of violence, in the weaponized Gultang's triangle, is called cultural violence. Paired well with structural violence, it maintains and grows the narrative for the Western White-European/Settler Ruling Classes. Both this and structural violence are considered invisible. They impose, twist truth, hinder access to equity, diminish a people into inexistence. The people either lay down and silently submit and quietly become erased, or they resist. When they resist the Force Monopoly sees justification in far greater use of direct violence to quash the people oppressed. This is what we see in Gaza, West Bank... This still plays out in the Americas (Inuit of Quebec are submitting to death by marginalization, for example, now unable to organize; a totally broken people) decimated by the weapons of the Pure Laine Fascist French.
I know people lebanon and palestine who deliberately post photos of white Arab children victims and they do it because they know its the only way they will get any sympathy for their people even if they don’t look that way themselves. They have an it is what it is attitude. If that’s what gets europeans upset then better that than seeing them as just more suffering brown people.
Never gave it one thought, when trembling with rage and anger triggered by pictures and footage of Palestinian innocents killed by Israeli bombs, guns and fire. A child is a child is a child. Don’t underestimate the engagement and intelligence of more or less white supporters of the Palestinians. Don’t try to undermine the importance and power of internationalism and solidarity, even knowing how indoctrinated and cowardly silent many people in the west are reacting, also due to feelings of extreme powerlessness. The Palestinian struggle has universal implications and we know it and are less illusioned and more aware of the unbridled brutality with which our rulers are prepared to meet righteous popular revolt. Thanks to the Palestinians heroic and armed resistance!!!
A (probably) white person telling me I should ignore this, because 'more important matters'. No. Victims of a darker shade deserve their humanization, that includes during disasters.
Yes of cause and how in the bloody …. Is it possible to read my comment as an attempt to ignore what is obvious among white ignorants, but certainly not among white progressives as a whole. You could have an ugly suspicion that someone is trying to make breaches in a dawning global antiimperialist awakening, while our masters laugh at our pity grievances. Are your goal to maintain an idea of a religious original sin? Deeming white deep felt contributions to solidarity with Palestine including armed resistance as irrelevant or shameful. Choose the real enemies. We need many more millions in the streets, not academic speculations about absolute unbiased pureness as a qualification for participation in antiimperialist struggle. What are yourself displaying - writing “ probably white person” as a 👎. With friends like that, you don’t need any enemies!
You can lecture about what people are allowed to care about all you want on your own Substack. Over here, on my own platform, I write what I want. Don't like it? No one forces you to be here.
You are not for real! or Who are you and on whose payroll? And it is absolutely true what you are writing: No one forces me to stay. Have fun in your congregation!
Don't you think it's done because people tend to relate to others who look like them, and appeal is being made to predominantly white Western Society in the campaigns you seem to be referring to. Because if you follow Arab channels or those based in the region on the ground, this really isn't the case.
Not saying that colorism, internalized racism and racism exist. Just saying that when you are campaigning it's less about virtue signaling as reaching target groups?
I was recently just borrowing some equipment and I had to give my identity card, the person who received my card was of African descent, when I returned he genuinely couldn't tell the difference between me and another white person who looked obviously different. It was just because all white people look the same to him. It's not a bias, it's phenomena. The appeal is see they are just like you, your child, your partner, your family.
I understand your point about reaching target audiences, but I think there's something deeply troubling about this approach. When we deliberately choose to show only lighter-skinned victims because we think it will generate more Western sympathy, we're not just making a marketing decision - we're actively participating in the dehumanization of a people.
The example you gave about cross-race recognition bias (where someone had trouble distinguishing between white faces) is actually quite different from what's happening here. That's a natural perceptual phenomenon that occurs across all groups. What we're talking about is the conscious choice to erase darker-skinned Arab victims from media representation because we've internalized the idea that their lives somehow matter less or won't generate as much sympathy.
This isn't about "virtue signaling" - it's about recognizing that when we only show victims who look more European, we're implicitly accepting and reinforcing the racist idea that Arab lives only matter when they can be made relatable to white audiences. We're saying that our darker-skinned brothers and sisters are less worthy of being mourned, less worthy of being seen, less worthy of having their stories told.
The argument that "this is just what works" is essentially surrendering to and perpetuating the very racism that enables violence against a people in the first place. Rather than challenging these harmful biases, we're accommodating them. Rather than asserting the inherent dignity and humanity of all Arab lives, we're accepting their devaluation.
And more insidiously, it is accepting that racism is natural and normal. I am a psychologist, and I can tell you it is not. It is culturally conditioned.
Isn't there something profoundly wrong with having to make our victims look more white to be considered human? Shouldn't we be fighting against this mindset rather than catering to it?
I see your point. What you are saying is correct and it's very important to be aware of it in giving a balanced and inclusive representation of the range of humanity that has been suffering genocide in Gaza. I think it can be particularly painful when you are constantly seeing images of only light skinned children when your family is there and you have lost family, and that family has a darker skin color. Particularly if you are yourself in the West, and daily face discrimination. It reinforces truly cruel values.
Palestinians are diverse however and it is the Levant so "origins" are very mixed, it's cross over culture from all the people's who can reach the Mediterranean as well as indigenous semetic people. It's not like that's just 19th and early 20th century expansionism either, the diversity is centuries old. So it's not just dark or light skinned people who are being targeted, it's all of Palestine.
Personally I don't follow feeds in Instagram, meta or Twitter/X. I find outside those spaces the representation is a lot more inclusive by nature, because the demographics using them are not predominantly Western. I also follow a lot of Islamic/ Arab media. There I don't find under representation of dark skinned Arabs to be an issue either. I don't think people on the ground are thinking about that when they watch a child or man or woman die or suffer.
If we have a truly healthy mind we see the human being regardless of other differences. We see clearly with any ethnic group that's been exposed to conization or Western media when someone white and of higher standard of living is depicted suffering, compared to another ethnic group, in every nearly study the emotional response for the rich white person is much stronger.
This is not a healthy mind.
All of us who have been raised under Western Rule are victims of this. We are also often the weapons against our will. I suffer from a colonized mind. I had spent half my life serving Inuit in the Canadian Arctic, feeling like I was helping the people. All of my children are Inuit. I know exactly the day when I realized I had "Savior Complex". It was Aboriginal Day, 2021. I painted an orange square on the hood of my truck to show my solidarity in a local parade in Kuujjuaq Nunavik. It was to honor the children that were lost to their families through the residential school system. The mass graves had just become apparent. Ok that day I met with some local people and they explained how they don't want my support, they don't want me working there taking up a job that a local could eventually train into, that they want me to stop using the NGO I was directing to forward their cause...
Why? Because this belonged to them and they didn't ask me to help. I "helped" all on my own. I planted myself in their lands trying to move ahead an agenda that I thought was best for the people. The problem was, they didn't ask for it, didn't want it, and the people couldn't understand why I was in their land. I was colonizing them. It dawned on me all at once. It was never my place to do any of this. Why was I there? I was there because I was programmed from birth to be there, and do what I was doing. I didn't ask for it, but I didn't recognize it or stop it either.
Since then I've left their lands. I go back to visit my family but I have no right to be there. When I'm a welcomed guest I visit. When I'm asked to leave I leave. I eat the same food, speak their language, have family ties now... But not because I'm an Inuk but because I'm a colony, the weapon of the colonialist.
The day I realized what I was was a really difficult day for me. I had to face a life of lies and harm that were warped good intentions.
Inuit don't react much to Inuit suffering. They react strongly to white people suffering. It's madness once you see how twisted our societies really are. The building if truths out of interdependent lies until enough people believe them that they become defacto truths. This is Colonization, this is Capitalism. This is grave injustice.
We must see ourselves and how we have been weaponized, and the areas of specific harm we cause, to begin to decolonize our minds.
I will save you the gambit of emotions I went through full realizing what I really was. I still am to a lesser degree. Now I lend myself, largely as an example of what not to be. I am a soldier for a cause not a leader, never a leader. I take my orders from the people who ask me to join them in their struggles, and I perform specific tasks to build strength and unity, to carry messages, to use my white appearance as a pretendist counter weapon to infiltrate and expose those who benefit from inequity. Today I devote my life to being a weapon against Colonization, Americanization, and against Capitalism. I own nothing but a phone and a laptop. I live poor but I'm a soldier and need nothing more. Breaking free means knowing what you are. Use it against what made you, you. That's where we begin to make real change. Needless to say, my mother's family disowned me. My father was Mohican. Lineage of the Chief Etow Oh Koam. But I'm as white as white can be and got to go to university at age 13, earned 280k a year rising to the top of my field in ATC... All of this would have been prohibitive if I had my father's skin and visible identity. Truth.
I feel, more than understand, what you are saying, the tornness and the horror when you realize you have been taking something that wasn't yours despite all the best of efforts and the most intimate of ties. I am sorry you are without your people, despite all the privilege or more likely profound talent you possess - nothing can ever mend this loss. I am sorry you are forced to walk between worlds as an outsider.
I don't think we have a right to impose anything on survivors, to correct them or to tell them how to identify or feel correctly, nor how to struggle. I agree with you that our job if we truly wish to serve, is to follow their lead. Or not.
Truly being of service is difficult when in our culture, we take all the time. As if we were pits that can never be filled.
If we don't have words to speak or a space for speaking or even sitting with the suffering we use echoes of the things people can already see as signs, in an effort to communicate. It feels real, but it's not the real story. In a colonized world it will be the Masters voice who speaks through us, forms our views. If we can't see, if we truly can't see the suffering, the immense wrong, we try and find ways to make this visible and this too is a warped mirror. Seeing but not seeing.
I know we pretend horror all the time. But when we are asked to really look, I know most of us turn away and we turn away from victims, from victimhood. We seek safety. I think we would rather identify with the powerful and the secure. Powerlessness is unbearable.
I suffered 6 years in an organized child sex trafficking network. I rarely speak with people about this part of my identity/ early life experience, I would rather not associate myself with it. I was terrified for a long time and just glad to be alive. Speaking about it here, isn't intended to make this about what happened. It is more to illustrate how saviourism tends to work.
It is only recently that I manage to talk about it at all. One thing I thought that would happen when I did, is that I would be seen and that there would be care available. It was strange how I became more invisible by speaking. How little to nearly no support there are for child victims or adult survivors, how many friends stopped reaching out. How telling this story dehumanized me and isolated me. The only real support is largely coming from survivors themselves, and those who follow their/ our lead.
Yet there is this public circus around organized sexual violence against children. It's so loud and indignant. It roars and gathers large crowds In protest and indignation. There are all kinds of actions. But very few of these activities serve survivors, protect children or spread awareness about the reality of these networks and how they operate.
I have completely lost interest in listening to the messenger, to anyone on the outside. Whatever they think is best or not. Nor how brilliant and well qualified.
I sometimes think I can understand that for most survivors of this genocide they would likely wish to be anywhere else and anyone but themselves. I know we need others, people to give us "permission" to be seen and heard, who don't turn away and don't ask us to be something for them.
Especially while living through that horror it's nearly impossible to be present. To hold onto a sense of self.
This is profound and so much to suffer. Maybe suffering is something that unites; Knowing deep suffering and desire to prevent others from having to go through it. I've lost everything. I understand what you are saying about trying to hold onto one's self. I lost me somewhere also. But I'm also not sure I want all of me back.
I know that my suffering diminishes when I think of collective human being and not about me. When I care about All of us, with that unjudgemental love, and I act to play whatever role I'm fit for to improve prosperity or reduce suffering of us as a whole, whatever little part, then I don't feel my pain. Maybe this means something important.
You deserve to be seen and heard too. I hope you have many around you who care for you.
I love how you put caring about all of us, the collective human being, the beauty, power and healing in transcendence. I certainly relate, imperfect and blind to many failings and truths as I am.
Right now I am working with my white tiger though. The resentment attached to oppression. It's a hard one to disentangle. And I apologize if this little personal war spills out anywhere else.
I am so glad you are in the world and the way you teach. Very grateful for your words.
I didn't see the last part of your note. I'm really humbled thank you so much. I start out gently and patiently. But surrounding existential risks, Genocide of a peoole...we are past gentle and patient and kind now. It is cold hard raw naked.
Resentment of Oppression... Well utter rage afflicts me here too ;) So that is the part of us that need to be brought into line or cut out as a cancer. I will not accept any group of people elevated above another. I can't. I will give my life or freedom if I must to fight for sustainable global human equity. It might be a losing fight but the stakes are existential, the way I see it.
I've stated before I don't want peace until there are conditions globally for deep peace. For this to happen, we must be stripped of class stratification and have equity. Shares sustainable prosperity; work and reward. Our leaders,.for instance, must earn and live by the mean to prove their dedication to the people, not individual self or gains. This is requisite. Capitalism cannot exist... It requires inequity to thrive. Etc ...
I submit the angles of these pictures tilts perception: from under on left to emphasise the nose and lips/mouth; left, head tilted to de-emphasise both of these features. Doesn’t convince. Moreover, the crinkly hair is predominantly Hebraic, in my observation.
Conditioning, mainly insidious, is ubiquitous. In the main, it is also unfortunate. Its worst feature is not so much the false portrayals, ideologies and stereotypes that it creates - as unfortunate or even destructive as they may be, but that the majority don't realise that is has affected them. It is so powerful that they will deny inconsistency, refute reality and defend hypocrisy.
This article has great value in its highlighting of this fact. Unfortunately, too many will dismiss, not understand or ignore it.
Until all of humanity - or at least the majority of it - understands that we are of one race, regardless of our differences, and that our similarities, the universalities that connect us, and the ubiquity of feelings - whether positive or negative, are felt by us all and more important than constructed agendas and difference as deficit or worse, life will be degraded for most of us and insanity promoted by demagogues will continue.
Thank your for raising this issue. It is highly important, in my view.
Take care. Stay safe. ☮️
As a psychologist, I fully agree with this comment. Well said.
The colonial rot runs deep😔 I'm seeing it everywhere. Alas, it's a worldwide issue.
I've noticed this trend as well. There's also a trend in Muslim social media to idealize white converts, especially young, pretty white women, while mostly ignoring the many converts who are Black, Asian, male, etc. White pro-Palestine activists seem to be given more prominence also. Racism is deeply ingrained, even on the side I've chosen to ally with.
A sad result of psychological conditioning indeed. And the reason why white-looking perpetrators of violence, including Zionists, get away with so much more. While a brown person doing something evokes immediate racism and demonization.
Yes, that's why the IDF print paste photo of 'cutsie' female IDF soldiers on their social media pages
Yes, exactly this the Palestinian movement in the West is overtaken by white people. In the history of liberation, never has someone not from the oppressed group led the movement, and to success. Others can be allies but that's not what we are seeing. It has been taken over and arguably, it's why though they've had lots of successes in protest and BDS, the movement is quite stagnant and doesn't do much else (e.g. public education, media training, legal training etc).
We are also seeing a huge amount of praise put upon white people when they do the bear minimum in standing up against genocide - something non-white people have been shouting up against for decades. In a way however, it could be inverted and read as a subliminal acceptance that Western culture permits and perpetuates violence and it is shocking when someone from it speaks up against it? That they must be heaped with praise lest they turn back again? It sometimes feels like that is what is happening.
Definitely. I have been discussing and writing about these things for quite a long time.
Check our interview on our BettBeat Media youtube channel called "Whose Voices claim the Palestine Dialogue? - with Laith Marouf"
This is exactly true and it has been so distressing to see this: that people also instinctively know that in order to gain sympathy of those in the West, they must show the blue-eyed and blonde victims of genocide. Truly, all lives are not equal in the eyes of the states we are in, so much rests on melanin.
The lack of ability to grasp the implications of subtle attacks such as this form of whitewashing shows how deeply colonized our minds really are. This kind of violence, in the weaponized Gultang's triangle, is called cultural violence. Paired well with structural violence, it maintains and grows the narrative for the Western White-European/Settler Ruling Classes. Both this and structural violence are considered invisible. They impose, twist truth, hinder access to equity, diminish a people into inexistence. The people either lay down and silently submit and quietly become erased, or they resist. When they resist the Force Monopoly sees justification in far greater use of direct violence to quash the people oppressed. This is what we see in Gaza, West Bank... This still plays out in the Americas (Inuit of Quebec are submitting to death by marginalization, for example, now unable to organize; a totally broken people) decimated by the weapons of the Pure Laine Fascist French.
I know people lebanon and palestine who deliberately post photos of white Arab children victims and they do it because they know its the only way they will get any sympathy for their people even if they don’t look that way themselves. They have an it is what it is attitude. If that’s what gets europeans upset then better that than seeing them as just more suffering brown people.
Never gave it one thought, when trembling with rage and anger triggered by pictures and footage of Palestinian innocents killed by Israeli bombs, guns and fire. A child is a child is a child. Don’t underestimate the engagement and intelligence of more or less white supporters of the Palestinians. Don’t try to undermine the importance and power of internationalism and solidarity, even knowing how indoctrinated and cowardly silent many people in the west are reacting, also due to feelings of extreme powerlessness. The Palestinian struggle has universal implications and we know it and are less illusioned and more aware of the unbridled brutality with which our rulers are prepared to meet righteous popular revolt. Thanks to the Palestinians heroic and armed resistance!!!
A (probably) white person telling me I should ignore this, because 'more important matters'. No. Victims of a darker shade deserve their humanization, that includes during disasters.
Yes of cause and how in the bloody …. Is it possible to read my comment as an attempt to ignore what is obvious among white ignorants, but certainly not among white progressives as a whole. You could have an ugly suspicion that someone is trying to make breaches in a dawning global antiimperialist awakening, while our masters laugh at our pity grievances. Are your goal to maintain an idea of a religious original sin? Deeming white deep felt contributions to solidarity with Palestine including armed resistance as irrelevant or shameful. Choose the real enemies. We need many more millions in the streets, not academic speculations about absolute unbiased pureness as a qualification for participation in antiimperialist struggle. What are yourself displaying - writing “ probably white person” as a 👎. With friends like that, you don’t need any enemies!
You can lecture about what people are allowed to care about all you want on your own Substack. Over here, on my own platform, I write what I want. Don't like it? No one forces you to be here.
You are not for real! or Who are you and on whose payroll? And it is absolutely true what you are writing: No one forces me to stay. Have fun in your congregation!
Bye.
Don't you think it's done because people tend to relate to others who look like them, and appeal is being made to predominantly white Western Society in the campaigns you seem to be referring to. Because if you follow Arab channels or those based in the region on the ground, this really isn't the case.
Not saying that colorism, internalized racism and racism exist. Just saying that when you are campaigning it's less about virtue signaling as reaching target groups?
I was recently just borrowing some equipment and I had to give my identity card, the person who received my card was of African descent, when I returned he genuinely couldn't tell the difference between me and another white person who looked obviously different. It was just because all white people look the same to him. It's not a bias, it's phenomena. The appeal is see they are just like you, your child, your partner, your family.
I understand your point about reaching target audiences, but I think there's something deeply troubling about this approach. When we deliberately choose to show only lighter-skinned victims because we think it will generate more Western sympathy, we're not just making a marketing decision - we're actively participating in the dehumanization of a people.
The example you gave about cross-race recognition bias (where someone had trouble distinguishing between white faces) is actually quite different from what's happening here. That's a natural perceptual phenomenon that occurs across all groups. What we're talking about is the conscious choice to erase darker-skinned Arab victims from media representation because we've internalized the idea that their lives somehow matter less or won't generate as much sympathy.
This isn't about "virtue signaling" - it's about recognizing that when we only show victims who look more European, we're implicitly accepting and reinforcing the racist idea that Arab lives only matter when they can be made relatable to white audiences. We're saying that our darker-skinned brothers and sisters are less worthy of being mourned, less worthy of being seen, less worthy of having their stories told.
The argument that "this is just what works" is essentially surrendering to and perpetuating the very racism that enables violence against a people in the first place. Rather than challenging these harmful biases, we're accommodating them. Rather than asserting the inherent dignity and humanity of all Arab lives, we're accepting their devaluation.
And more insidiously, it is accepting that racism is natural and normal. I am a psychologist, and I can tell you it is not. It is culturally conditioned.
Isn't there something profoundly wrong with having to make our victims look more white to be considered human? Shouldn't we be fighting against this mindset rather than catering to it?
I see your point. What you are saying is correct and it's very important to be aware of it in giving a balanced and inclusive representation of the range of humanity that has been suffering genocide in Gaza. I think it can be particularly painful when you are constantly seeing images of only light skinned children when your family is there and you have lost family, and that family has a darker skin color. Particularly if you are yourself in the West, and daily face discrimination. It reinforces truly cruel values.
Palestinians are diverse however and it is the Levant so "origins" are very mixed, it's cross over culture from all the people's who can reach the Mediterranean as well as indigenous semetic people. It's not like that's just 19th and early 20th century expansionism either, the diversity is centuries old. So it's not just dark or light skinned people who are being targeted, it's all of Palestine.
Personally I don't follow feeds in Instagram, meta or Twitter/X. I find outside those spaces the representation is a lot more inclusive by nature, because the demographics using them are not predominantly Western. I also follow a lot of Islamic/ Arab media. There I don't find under representation of dark skinned Arabs to be an issue either. I don't think people on the ground are thinking about that when they watch a child or man or woman die or suffer.
If we have a truly healthy mind we see the human being regardless of other differences. We see clearly with any ethnic group that's been exposed to conization or Western media when someone white and of higher standard of living is depicted suffering, compared to another ethnic group, in every nearly study the emotional response for the rich white person is much stronger.
This is not a healthy mind.
All of us who have been raised under Western Rule are victims of this. We are also often the weapons against our will. I suffer from a colonized mind. I had spent half my life serving Inuit in the Canadian Arctic, feeling like I was helping the people. All of my children are Inuit. I know exactly the day when I realized I had "Savior Complex". It was Aboriginal Day, 2021. I painted an orange square on the hood of my truck to show my solidarity in a local parade in Kuujjuaq Nunavik. It was to honor the children that were lost to their families through the residential school system. The mass graves had just become apparent. Ok that day I met with some local people and they explained how they don't want my support, they don't want me working there taking up a job that a local could eventually train into, that they want me to stop using the NGO I was directing to forward their cause...
Why? Because this belonged to them and they didn't ask me to help. I "helped" all on my own. I planted myself in their lands trying to move ahead an agenda that I thought was best for the people. The problem was, they didn't ask for it, didn't want it, and the people couldn't understand why I was in their land. I was colonizing them. It dawned on me all at once. It was never my place to do any of this. Why was I there? I was there because I was programmed from birth to be there, and do what I was doing. I didn't ask for it, but I didn't recognize it or stop it either.
Since then I've left their lands. I go back to visit my family but I have no right to be there. When I'm a welcomed guest I visit. When I'm asked to leave I leave. I eat the same food, speak their language, have family ties now... But not because I'm an Inuk but because I'm a colony, the weapon of the colonialist.
The day I realized what I was was a really difficult day for me. I had to face a life of lies and harm that were warped good intentions.
Inuit don't react much to Inuit suffering. They react strongly to white people suffering. It's madness once you see how twisted our societies really are. The building if truths out of interdependent lies until enough people believe them that they become defacto truths. This is Colonization, this is Capitalism. This is grave injustice.
We must see ourselves and how we have been weaponized, and the areas of specific harm we cause, to begin to decolonize our minds.
I will save you the gambit of emotions I went through full realizing what I really was. I still am to a lesser degree. Now I lend myself, largely as an example of what not to be. I am a soldier for a cause not a leader, never a leader. I take my orders from the people who ask me to join them in their struggles, and I perform specific tasks to build strength and unity, to carry messages, to use my white appearance as a pretendist counter weapon to infiltrate and expose those who benefit from inequity. Today I devote my life to being a weapon against Colonization, Americanization, and against Capitalism. I own nothing but a phone and a laptop. I live poor but I'm a soldier and need nothing more. Breaking free means knowing what you are. Use it against what made you, you. That's where we begin to make real change. Needless to say, my mother's family disowned me. My father was Mohican. Lineage of the Chief Etow Oh Koam. But I'm as white as white can be and got to go to university at age 13, earned 280k a year rising to the top of my field in ATC... All of this would have been prohibitive if I had my father's skin and visible identity. Truth.
Well said brother.
In a minute I will release another article that will touch on some of the exact points you made here.
I'm really glad to see this being confronted. I look forward to reading more. It's important stuff.
Thank you.
I feel, more than understand, what you are saying, the tornness and the horror when you realize you have been taking something that wasn't yours despite all the best of efforts and the most intimate of ties. I am sorry you are without your people, despite all the privilege or more likely profound talent you possess - nothing can ever mend this loss. I am sorry you are forced to walk between worlds as an outsider.
I don't think we have a right to impose anything on survivors, to correct them or to tell them how to identify or feel correctly, nor how to struggle. I agree with you that our job if we truly wish to serve, is to follow their lead. Or not.
Truly being of service is difficult when in our culture, we take all the time. As if we were pits that can never be filled.
If we don't have words to speak or a space for speaking or even sitting with the suffering we use echoes of the things people can already see as signs, in an effort to communicate. It feels real, but it's not the real story. In a colonized world it will be the Masters voice who speaks through us, forms our views. If we can't see, if we truly can't see the suffering, the immense wrong, we try and find ways to make this visible and this too is a warped mirror. Seeing but not seeing.
I know we pretend horror all the time. But when we are asked to really look, I know most of us turn away and we turn away from victims, from victimhood. We seek safety. I think we would rather identify with the powerful and the secure. Powerlessness is unbearable.
I suffered 6 years in an organized child sex trafficking network. I rarely speak with people about this part of my identity/ early life experience, I would rather not associate myself with it. I was terrified for a long time and just glad to be alive. Speaking about it here, isn't intended to make this about what happened. It is more to illustrate how saviourism tends to work.
It is only recently that I manage to talk about it at all. One thing I thought that would happen when I did, is that I would be seen and that there would be care available. It was strange how I became more invisible by speaking. How little to nearly no support there are for child victims or adult survivors, how many friends stopped reaching out. How telling this story dehumanized me and isolated me. The only real support is largely coming from survivors themselves, and those who follow their/ our lead.
Yet there is this public circus around organized sexual violence against children. It's so loud and indignant. It roars and gathers large crowds In protest and indignation. There are all kinds of actions. But very few of these activities serve survivors, protect children or spread awareness about the reality of these networks and how they operate.
I have completely lost interest in listening to the messenger, to anyone on the outside. Whatever they think is best or not. Nor how brilliant and well qualified.
I sometimes think I can understand that for most survivors of this genocide they would likely wish to be anywhere else and anyone but themselves. I know we need others, people to give us "permission" to be seen and heard, who don't turn away and don't ask us to be something for them.
Especially while living through that horror it's nearly impossible to be present. To hold onto a sense of self.
This is profound and so much to suffer. Maybe suffering is something that unites; Knowing deep suffering and desire to prevent others from having to go through it. I've lost everything. I understand what you are saying about trying to hold onto one's self. I lost me somewhere also. But I'm also not sure I want all of me back.
I know that my suffering diminishes when I think of collective human being and not about me. When I care about All of us, with that unjudgemental love, and I act to play whatever role I'm fit for to improve prosperity or reduce suffering of us as a whole, whatever little part, then I don't feel my pain. Maybe this means something important.
Your candidness is beautiful.
You deserve to be seen and heard too. I hope you have many around you who care for you.
I love how you put caring about all of us, the collective human being, the beauty, power and healing in transcendence. I certainly relate, imperfect and blind to many failings and truths as I am.
Right now I am working with my white tiger though. The resentment attached to oppression. It's a hard one to disentangle. And I apologize if this little personal war spills out anywhere else.
I am so glad you are in the world and the way you teach. Very grateful for your words.
I didn't see the last part of your note. I'm really humbled thank you so much. I start out gently and patiently. But surrounding existential risks, Genocide of a peoole...we are past gentle and patient and kind now. It is cold hard raw naked.
Resentment of Oppression... Well utter rage afflicts me here too ;) So that is the part of us that need to be brought into line or cut out as a cancer. I will not accept any group of people elevated above another. I can't. I will give my life or freedom if I must to fight for sustainable global human equity. It might be a losing fight but the stakes are existential, the way I see it.
I've stated before I don't want peace until there are conditions globally for deep peace. For this to happen, we must be stripped of class stratification and have equity. Shares sustainable prosperity; work and reward. Our leaders,.for instance, must earn and live by the mean to prove their dedication to the people, not individual self or gains. This is requisite. Capitalism cannot exist... It requires inequity to thrive. Etc ...
I agree with you, but your unnecessary content warning and then self-whitewashing serves the enemy.
I submit the angles of these pictures tilts perception: from under on left to emphasise the nose and lips/mouth; left, head tilted to de-emphasise both of these features. Doesn’t convince. Moreover, the crinkly hair is predominantly Hebraic, in my observation.