The pickle jar

With permission, I transcribed a video posted by Sonya Renee Taylor earlier today. They agreed and requested that I share. If you are etihw like me, or have etihw people close to you. Please read this and share with them. Tag them. Send to their inbox. Share.
(the video is on SonyaReneeTaylor's IG page)

“…she was sharing with me the narrative of the Bhagavad Gita. And in the story of the Bhagavad Gita, the protagonist is being guided by a source who is Divine, who is God sent in form as a guide. And the protagonist has to wage this enormous battle. But the protagonist recognizes and realizes that the people that he is called to fight are his family. And he recognizes that there is no actual way to win the fight because the people that he has to kill are his family.

And it made me think about this particular time that we are in, and the illusion of the “other”. The idea that there is some “other:” Like we have to fight “those other people.” And I want to clarify the nature of my work and the nature of the moment that I believe we are in right now. And some of the work that white people can do internally around a perspective shift that will make this work easier for all of us.

I am not fighting white people. I am not in a battle against the unmelanated masses that are the descendants of European ancestry. I am in a battle against the systems and structures of white supremacist delusion and whiteness. And I’m in a battle for the ways in which they manifest internally inside the lives of unmelanated people of European descent.

And what I would invite unmelanated people of European descent - those assigned “whiteness” at birth (and you can check my old videos if you want to know exactly what that means), but for those assigned “whiteness” at birth…I invite them to be in a battle as well.
Against the construct of whiteness. Against the construct of white supremacist delusion.

The less that you identify on a soul level with whiteness…and that doesn’t mean eschew it.
It means look for it and remove it from yourself. It is not “ugh that’s not me.”
It’s “Oh, I don’t want that to be me, so where is it, so I can remove it.”
It’s like having trash somewhere in your house you haven’t taken out, and there is a stench, something is rotting and you don’t know where it’s coming from. You’re like, “something is off in here.” And you don’t go “something is off in here but if I act like I don’t smell it it will magically disappear.” I mean, I’m sure that is somebody’s strategy but I don’t imagine it is particularly successful.

However, what one would do is say, “Something is rotting in here, let me get to investigating. So that I can remove that. Cause it’s stinking up my space."

And that is what whiteness is.
Whiteness is not you as a human being. There is no “other”.
So my battle is not about white people as the “other”. It is about whiteness the construct that is rotting the material and spiritual and economic and political realities of black and brown people around the world. While also at the same time rotting the spiritual, emotional and mental lives of those assigned whiteness at birth.

You are struggling in this system as well. It is killing you too. It’s killing you. It’s killing all of us. And so it is easier to be willing to look for a thing if you can stop experiencing it as some inherent thing about you. Right. I.E. “Whiteness” is not about YOU. Whiteness is the structure into which you were born.

If you want to mess with the folks who are like, “I eschew labels”…
Well. You are white in so much as the construct of whiteness exists. And if you really desire to live in a world without labels** then what you would do is work your ass off every single day to completely dismantle all the fixtures, all of the systems, all of the structures and designs that have made the label of whiteness real.

Because actually when you dismantle that system, that is what has to leave before labels can leave. Cause the label just identifies the thing. It’s not about the label. There are pickles in the jar whether you write “pickles” on the jar or not. The problem with not writing “pickles” on the jar is I go over and I think it’s something else that looks like pickles.

I don’t know, let’s say it’s applesauce or sauerkraut. The purpose of labeling the container is so you know what’s inside the container.
Not labeling the container doesn’t make the container go away. Only making the container go away makes the container go away.
And so, stop experiencing the conversation of whiteness and white supremacist delusion as who you are, and start experiencing as something that you were assigned that is not serving you. That you wish to remove elements of it from your life on a regular basis. That way you can get out of your guilt and shame.

You don’t have to be guilty and shamed because there’s stinky tomatoes in the back of your fridge. You just have to find the stinky tomatoes and throw them out. And every time a new stinky tomato shows up in the back of your fridge you have to find it and throw it out. And then you have to figure out why you keep letting tomatoes rot in the back of your fridge.
All of that is the work.

And that work is how you reconcile yourself to humanity.
That is how we stop a war, where I have to “kill my family”…"

**the people who want to say “I don’t see color” and “Race isn’t real so can we just stop talking about it?”

IT'S BACK! YERRRRRRSSSSSSSSSSS S!!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

Ronnie, I'm sorry but I gotta take your crown and give it to this absolute weapon!

Systems of oppression have existed in all cultures and across all races. Do you label the oppression of ethnic minorities at the hands of the CCP "chineseness"? Is the oppression of LGBT+ people at the hands of various middle-eastern countries "arabness?"

Labeling our particular broken system "whiteness" only serves to other 72% of the population. If using a particular label requires you to desperately explain to 72% of the population that its not an attack on them and then desperately try to explain what it actually means with multiple paragraphs of critical theory that most people interpret as complete nonsense, maybe the label just sucks and its time to call it what people actually understand: crony capitalism and/or oligarchy.

Systems of oppression have existed in all cultures and across all races. Do you label the oppression of ethnic minorities at the hands of the CCP "chineseness"? Is the oppression of LGBT+ people at the hands of various middle-eastern countries "arabness?"

Labeling our particular broken system "whiteness" only serves to other 72% of the population. If using a particular label requires you to desperately explain to 72% of the population that its not an attack on them and then desperately try to explain what it actually means with multiple paragraphs of critical theory that most people interpret as complete nonsense, maybe the label just sucks and its time to call it what people actually understand: crony capitalism and/or oligarchy.

But the cronies and oligarchs are white.

From what you copied and pasted are we really supposed to take this person seriously as a great thinker? Apart from most of it being gibberish, She seems to be much more of an expert on what it's like to be a fat, bald, black woman, judging from her youtube titles.  Are you putting her up against Sam Harris, Glenn Lourry or Douglas Murray?

Legal systems of oppression do not exist in predominantly white Western countries such as the UK or US, so you have to go by past incidents (Windrush scandal, Slavery) or the racism of the gaps (more blacks in prison, unemployed etc. . This is not accurate data as it doesn't take all the other variables into account.  Of course this doesn't matter to you because the important thing is, if a white person denies they are racist, you can also say that while they might not be racist on an individual level, they are implicit in the systemic racism of the country.  This way of guilt tripping white people is the way you gather people to your movement. Which, according to the BLM fundraising website is basically Marxist in intent. with its founders saying they are 'trained Marxists' and quotes like this

'We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.'

Yeah, the disruption of the nuclear family has served the black population of Chicago real well.

So give them all the money you want but it's going to 'trained Marxists' not the family of George Floyd who, let's face it, will already be set up for several lives.

From what you copied and pasted are we really supposed to take this person seriously as a great thinker? Apart from most of it being gibberish, She seems to be much more of an expert on what it's like to be a fat, bald, black woman, judging from her youtube titles.  Are you putting her up against Sam Harris, Glenn Lourry or Douglas Murray?

I don't think bb459 is offering her as an academic but rather as a person giving personal advice about racial issues, at least in this specific case. More of a "spiritual adviser".

Now I don't really agree with a lot of her message, but not every insight has to come from a "great thinker". No one listens to great thinkers anyways (at least in most cases), they just look for ones that justify their already existing world views.

'We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.'

Yeah, the disruption of the nuclear family has served the black population of Chicago real well.

I don't think what is in Chicago is her idea of an extended family and village either. Furthermore, extended families and villages were much of the support structure in early America for centuries.

I don't think bb459 is offering her as an academic but rather as a person giving personal advice about racial issues, at least in this specific case. More of a "spiritual adviser".
 

True, I've said before it's a modern religion.

But the cronies and oligarchs are white.

A large percentage of cronies and oligarchs in the U.S. are white because the U.S. is 72% white. Cronies and oligarchs in Africa are majority black; does that mean that we can label their corruption blackness?

Yeah we really need to diversify The continent of Africa, many middle eastern countries and communist China. Diversity is strength after all.

Yeah we really need to diversify The continent of Africa, many middle eastern countries and communist China. Diversity is strength after all.

Feel free to add the Koreas, Japan and most of ASEAN to that list too.

Robin DiAngelo has written a bestseller about racism being a trait of white people. She gets paid $6000 an hour to give speeches about the subject. Her book may soon become required reading in some public schools.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3XWZeTQVyo

So things are going to get a lot better once white people just accept that they are racist?

Only the true racist denies his racism.

What?! Well, what sort of chance does that give me? All right! I am a racist!

Man, i could go for a good jar of genuine dill pickles.

A large percentage of cronies and oligarchs in the U.S. are white because the U.S. is 72% white. Cronies and oligarchs in Africa are majority black; does that mean that we can label their corruption blackness?

Far too simplistic. What was the percentage of whites when they first began  the genocide of Native Americans?

Man, i could go for a good jar of genuine dill pickles.

Me too. Publix hasn't had a BOGO on pickles in quite a while.

Man, i could go for a good jar of genuine dill pickles.

Yes, baby yes!!!  Kosher sour dills in a cloudy brine!!!!!!!

Far too simplistic. What was the percentage of whites when they first began  the genocide of Native Americans?

Far too out of context....

Far too out of context....

The same beliefs that animated the genocide of Native Americans and led to the enslaving of blacks created a white-dominated society.

So what are you saying, people think the same way now as they did in the 17th century?

So what are you saying, people think the same way now as they did in the 17th century?

I have slaves here. I make them clean the WHITEboard when I'm done class.