CONFESSIONS OF A FORMER WHITE PERSON, Part 2. Lessons in Naming: Please Be That Fucking Gorgeous Trash

CONFESSIONS OF A FORMER WHITE PERSON, Part 2:  Lessons in Naming

A Note About Naming: 

 Names are important. 

By finding names for things that were previously invisible to me, I'm learning to excavate my own values and create boundaries that keep me feeling calm. By pushing back, I am resistant to being run over by fearful, controlling, often very dangerous systems that have a hold in this world and won't seem to let go.

Below is the list of life lessons I was taught by White Supremacy. 

I have reverse engineered them, as a start, to fit my anti-racist life:  

Lessons in Naming:

1. Please be that Fucking Gorgeous Trash

2.  Rejection and Boundaries are Integral/ Try Saying No

3.  Know Your Worth

4.  Keep Fucking Going

5.  Assume You're Stupendous

6.  Question Everyone/ The Most Dangerous Type/ No Thanks from my Lips

7.  Colonialism in a Nutshell/  Oppressive Systems are Interrelated:  A Fill in the blank Absence of Truth Narrative about invisible control

8.  Question without Words

As a member of a white family, I was taught white lessons, and I believe that my salvation rests in unearthing the lessons that maintained my oppression as a young person, and that conversely, that same history will help me discover the words to share with you how to fight oppression.  

Unlike what you've heard in your Fox News feed, in naming these things, I am not aiming to be hateful.  I dare to challenge the concept of a normalized good society that kills black people without regard. As a protester, an activist, a facilitator and a maker for a better world, I push because I'm not ready to give up.  I push because I'm hopeful.  And sometimes my hope is angry. 

As always, my heart is filled with the hope to treat everyone involved, (including myself,) with respect.  

But I will read you up and down and tell you to go to hell if you are threatening my rights.  

Be forewarned.

-Tara

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LESSON #1

PLEASE BE THAT FUCKING GORGEOUS TRASH

What I was taught:  DON'T BE THAT TRASH

What I have learned:  PLEASE BE THAT FUCKING GORGEOUS TRASH

My inner monologue growing up:

"There is so much trash out there, (White Supremacy says,) so DON'T BE THAT TRASH.  

If I am worthwhile, I won't wonder about those people who fail at being "good," and "right," and "classic." 

If I am worthwhile, I won't wonder why other failed to attain being their "best" by showing up in the right power pantsuit.  

If I am worthwhile, I won't question why it is that it's someone else's best I am trying to be.  

I should just do what everyone else, everyone who is worthy, does. Right look, right house, right partner, right on!  Just keep your eyes on sitcoms, they can teach you the truth."

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You have to understand that I wanted to be COMPLETELY IN YOUR IMAGE, white supremacy.  I accepted the terms you offered about my value, like a child does, completely. And not only that, but I vowed to use that system of education I was given to inspire other little kids to be their best white self.

The word "classic" comes to mind each time I think on this particular phenomena.  Just say "classic." It immediately infers that it was that which has happened in the past. It's already been done and proven effective. And probably, it has all the same old problems of the older models.   

But who cares, it's recognizable and has already earned the branding as  being "good'.  Inherent value be damned, its the subjective value that has been tossed to the wind.  You're not going to buy my old car because I loved it. You're more likely to buy it because it has low miles and I'm not asking a lot for it.  

But if it's a "classic", well then, it's already more valuable.  Classic looks in clothing are those that were established as worthy by a notable model who wore them, those that evoke a past time that is now safe and explainable.  

These are all ways that we humans identify good and not good, and in our culture right now they are white ways that have defined goodness.

As a kid, I didn't know why good was good, why classic was classic.  I only knew that liking classic things meant "having good taste." It should have been referenced as, "Recognizing symbols of the patriarchy."  

*****

To hell with that.  

Please, be that gorgeous, glorious, completely unique trash that don't give a shit about respectability.  Respectability was named and ID'ed and it's pseudonym is White Supremacy. 

If you don't show up in your stripes meets paisley with an ascot glory, I can't show up next to you in my full body mechanic's jumpsuit and together we won't be dancing to WAP.  

When you are you, you let me be me.  When you are WS, you let me be LESS, unless I get the same tools. 

And then, I am also complicit in keeping some other poor soul from twerking her work.  

*****

Please, for the sake of everyone who knows the difference between living out of fear and living with purpose, let the judgments of our culture's WS oppression and hierarchy of what is "respectable" go.  They're full of all that racism and classism and justification for ugliness that literally kill.  

GO BE LEGENDARY without the imperial stamp of approval.

(Found you again, WS.)

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Confessions of a Former White Person: Part 2, Lessons in Naming

T a r a   I n   W h i t e r - l a n d