Two articles

[elisi]

On the Blackness of the Panther
‘In my wildest dreams, there is no king. I killed the king. The king is dead. All power to the people.’
(Vague references to the movie, no spoilers, the subject is blackness.)

The Heart of Whiteness: Ijeoma Oluo Interviews Rachel Dolezal, the White Woman Who Identifies as Black

Comments

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

Re: Rachel Dolezal: I grew up as my parents' only birth child and only white child, with my siblings transracially adopted. It affected my self and my identity in ways I rarely feel emotionally safe talking about. There were times when I desperately wished I was Latina, times when I went into cringe-worthy denial about the severity of modern racism. But never ever did I think I was anything other than white. Never was I not aware that my sister had different experiences due to her identity. I identified more strongly as white because of having siblings of different backgrounds, not less.

[elisi]

Sorry that it's been difficult for you, and I hope the link didn't upset you... I come from such a completely different background - basically a tiny tiny place, and so white that other nationalities/races were generally (although sadly not always) seen as interesting rather than having prejudices applied.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, the link didn't upset me, and I agree with the author. These things should be talked about. It's just whenever I hear aboud Dolezal, I have an emotional response of empathizing/identifying, while also being totalls apalled (she thinks she came to understand what it means to be black from reading magazines written by white people...?).

In terms of where you are (somewhere in the UK, right?), keep in mind that you may not be aware of all the racism going on. Most white people aren't going to admit to having done something racist. Victims of racism aren't necessarily going to tell people, especially white people, due to feeling ashamed and/or not trusting white people to react well.

[elisi]

It's just whenever I hear aboud Dolezal, I have an emotional response of empathizing/identifying, while also being totalls apalled (she thinks she came to understand what it means to be black from reading magazines written by white people...?).
I hear ya. It's a long time I read about her background, but I think it was pretty messed up. Her very very strange response to that is a symptom of some deep damage.

In terms of where you are (somewhere in the UK, right?)
Ooooh no. The Faroe Islands. (Tiny tiny islands in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. 50,000 people approx. So LITERALLY almost no foreigners. As I am Catholic, a lot of the foreign people that DID live there came to our church. However like you say, I probably wouldn't have seen the prejudice, being privileged enough not to have to worry about it.

Interestingly over the past... 10+ years there has been a surplus of men, so a lot of them have married Philipino women, meaning that the racial make-up of the country is altering drastically in a very short amount of time. And how those women are finding it, I couldn't say. It's a HUGE cultural difference.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

Yep, that sounds different from my world! I've live in the Twin Cities my whole life, and we have lots of immigrants. We're home to the largest urban concentration of Hmong in the US, and when Donald Trump came by he pissed people off by feeling sorry for the white people who had to live side-by-side with Somalis (the white people in question were among the most pissed off). But I've never lived in a small or isolated community.