About Whiteness

What would it mean to gain the world, yet lose your soul?

Creation of Whiteness

Whiteness was created specifically to enable slavery, and differentiate between African indentured servants and European indentured servants.

Oftentimes, Bacon’s Rebellion is pointed to as a turning point, where landowners decided to separate the giddy multitude by race, in order ward off further threats of rebellion.

Curiously enough, Bacon’s Rebellion was due to the government’s failure to push out the local indigenous tribes.

While it was the Irish who were first referred to as animals by the English.

Upon landing on Plymouth Rock, the association to savage animals was transferred to the indigenous people of Turtle Island; and it would eventually be transferred to the Africans brought over as well.

Becoming White

Which is to say that not all white people were always white people; though they all came from unique and historically significant cultures which have been blurred into an identity called white.

For a time in the early 1900’s Italians, Greeks, and others from the Mediterranean were legally forbidden from carrying long knives or other weapons.

They were viewed as savages as well; and it wasn’t until the later half of the century that they were embraced as “full-blooded” whites.

Which is to say some embrace the opportunity for inclusion, and others prefer to wear it like a jacket as a nice-to-have; serves a purpose – but isn’t an identity.

Which feeds into the power of white supremacy; a key benefit being the indispensable use of plausible deniability.

“Who me? Couldn’t be!”

Transcending Identity

There is the idea that one doesn’t need to see race, that they can seemingly transcend race; they just see energy – damn hippies!

The trick is to not only see identity labels, but balance our (1) awareness of how these labels can be perceived, and consequently affect others, with our (2) natural capacity for unawareness, and ignorance – so as to allow what actually is to make itself known.

And if one wants to pursue a path of transcendence, gratitude must be found first; because only from such a place can we begin to live in true abundance.

Gratitude is the foundation needed to release our desire to judge.

Once the ego’s compulsion to judge is gone, we are able to truly perceive the world around us.

The mistake is thinking that we are tantamount to gods in this capacity; when we’re really hopefully, just a bit better as humans. Nothing more, nothing less; and that’s good enough.