Yesterday I went to our anti racism meeting we were reflecting on a video of a psychoanalysis’s conference. I’d watched the video before, I returned to it again with not enough time and having lost the notes I’d made. They aren’t lost. They’re somewhere in my collection of notes and rambling thoughts. I felt irritated with myself because I couldn’t find the work I’d put in. Being disconnected from my work is a familiar experience. As I was kindly reminded that disconnection was forced and denied. Some might say deliberately homeless, some might say a ‘choice’ for self preservation.
There’s a similarity, the personal, political all to do with external violence. Meanwhile the deck chairs are quietly moved around. Ineffectual and not addressing the real issues.
This week has been all about grief, not mine, though mine, ours but not ours.
Bystanders and silence in the face of extreme anguish. Do we learn nothing from our past? Some of my silence has been not knowing, fear of getting it wrong, not knowing who to believe knowing that we only get to hear one side of the story.
I learnt that Marie Curie a name some of us may be familiar with actually signed her theses 1. Recherches sur les substances radio Actives.
2. Propositions donnees par la faculte
Mme Sklodowska Curie. Marie Sklodowksa Curie was born in Warsaw, in the Russian partition of Poland. Facts that have been washed in the laundry of white supremacy for our consumption here (UK). Anytime I hear Poland I think of a person I Nursed years ago fearful of having her identity known then later standing at the school gates chatting to Polish friends who sadly went back home because of Brexit upheaval of so much of what the children had known..
I think about the Royal family, Darwin, John Locke and Samuel Pepys how only now as I read more about colonialism are their crimes seen in the light. Just because I’m only now reading it doesn’t mean that this has not been there all the time! Just like the America’s we didn’t discover!
I think about the white women and their roles both as enslavers (owners and violence perpetrators). When I hear of the demerara up rising the name sparks a sense of knowing, wondering, not knowing. The Sugar in my cupboard states founded in 1858. With each new fact I wonder about what we have been taught and why, the gaps for a reason and it doesn’t make for comfortable reading.
White women’s violence equal if not more vicious then mens. Queen Elizabeth 1 the virgin, sweet toothed, illegitimate, polygot, red head, catholic, murder suspect, small pox survivor Queen sanctioned Britain’s establishment of a terror based society, not that that’s what we were taught back in the day.
Dr Velma McClymont has suggested that a way forward recognising the brutality and Oxfords historical links to Codrington College and the Royal family’s complicity in 1562 and the City of London’s importance to the West Indian Merchants the time has come as an act of contrition to offer scholarships for the displaced descendants of Britains’s West Indian “plantation” children. Such an act should be viewed as a first stage in dismantling systemic racism in education. The article was written in July 2020 Racial justice and Britain’s colonial past. The other stuff a collection of remembering’s of things that seem suddenly to come together from books I’ve read.
I’m late for a meeting. I’ll come back to this. Helping with knitting whilst also trying to think about this. The bunny runny loose.
I’m thinking of a phrase that Guilaine Kinouani uses in her book white minds. Taken straight back to a how the owner would behave knowing as they now know that they aren’t the owner of the previously enslaved.
So a tick box exercise that benefits the few and potentially assimilates into whiteness that is still not addressed by a solitary (in solidarity) act.
In our community group we were thinking about how apologies work. The power of an apology. I was taken to my own need for an apology for how I’ve been treated conveniently circumventing my own complicity in how white supremacy is upheld. It’s hard for each of us to look into the mirror but we are asked to.
I think of stories taken without consent. I’m sorry. I’m conscious of my role in being an overseeer.
I think of gatekeepers that keep resources in a few hands. My role in gate keeping, how that might be different.. Yours? A complicated story of intertwined internalised white supremacy. What would we want for ourselves? Our loved ones, if they or we were fleeing a disaster?
I’m interrupted by a ping, change UK asking us to support a petition to grant emergency visa’s for Ukraine, 2 weeks filled with worry and stress people slowly waking up to realise how our response to people fleeing conflict is woefully inhumane. Thinking how many are students. Remember when we asked if healthcare workers relatives could come to the UK? When we were fearing for lives lost talking using words like hero? Who? Those that can come? or Can’t?
Are we conveniently forgetting that boarder violence we’ve spoken of as traumatic even when there is nothing to fear? Imagining something different.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/we-need-to-talk-about-whiteness-podcast/id1491216080