Sunday, January 22, 2017

Rejection of the Race-Based Agenda in Favour of the Common Struggle

The roots of many (if not most) white people in North America involve the escape of murder by the state, genocide by the state, or mass deaths due to starvation, overwork, poor conditions, and lack created by the state.

The current race-based agenda in North America - constantly repeated and reinforced - generally paints white people of European background as privileged colonialists who came to North America with the intention of displacing native people for their own benefit and profit.

This is an incorrect representation of reality in many instances, as many white Europeans were forced to emigrate to North America due to the terrible conditions that had been created in their ancestral countries. Many white Europeans came to North America as refugees. As I've written about before in this Jupiter in Libra article ("Jupiter in Libra: Bringing it All to the Table"), many white European communities are dealing with the trauma and resulting dysfunction of these experiences without the benefit of having their histories fully acknowledged in the accepted history books. The root causes of this dysfunction (alcoholism, drug addiction, poverty, rootlessness, overwork, domestic violence, relationship breakdown, mental illness, emotional disturbance, etc.) remain invisible in most cases.

Just a few examples of genocidal practises against white Europeans by the state include: the Holodomor in Ukraine, the Great Purges and gulags of Russia and Poland, the Irish potato famine, the Highland Clearances of Scotland, and the English enclosures.

World Wars I and II can be viewed in a similar light as state-directed mass slaughter and displacement of mostly Caucasian people. 

Common people being murdered, pushed off land, or forced into starvation and deprived conditions by the state has been a widespread practise throughout history, creating common roots among people of many different races and backgrounds. It is these common roots - most often erased in the political discourse of the day - that provide the strongest foundation for resistance and necessary change today.



We're All in the Same Boat Now So We'd Better Get To Paddling

By Willow from Willow's Web Astrology



We were once indigenous people, too.
Dispossessed from our land, too.
Native language stolen from our tongues, too.

We were pushed off, burned out, forced into starvation or urban slavery - a slow death sentence handed down by those with means.
Forced into workhouses and gulags
Either murdered quickly or left to perish slowly 
From cold and damp and overwork and filth and bugs and vermin and hunger and lack
Forced to give up our ways, too, to be useful to them, to make profit for them, to bend our souls, our natures, to fit their machine(s)

For many, to come to this new land was not a choice.
"Emigrate or die" is no choice.
Sent on ships not seaworthy and many sank
Conditions so poor many did not live to see land again
No monetary value for us, less worth than livestock or commodified slaves,
So no one cared if we lived to see the other shore.
Deprivation and early death on this new land, too brutal to sustain us, too heartsick and homesick to resist it.

So don't call me a "white European colonialist."
Don't try to make me feel guilty for the crime of surviving.
Don't tell me I'm on land I have no right to exist on,
As if I somehow need your permission. 
I'm here. I'm sovereign. And my roots go just as deep as yours.

My heart aches for a place to belong and for the old ways, for freedom, just like yours.
The Sun, the Moon, the seasons as my timepiece,
The intuitive call as true authority.

They teach us your history (their version) while we are severed from our own.
Our history stays invisible, while you spit their words at us: "white European imperialist"
And teach the partial story being misrepresented as truth
Common roots covered over with convenient black-and-white agendas

The genocide has happened a thousand times before
To every colour of skin
The land has been taken, revoked, stolen, and with it our survival, our peace
Set adrift on a sea of anomie, searching for a place to belong
Addictions to numb the heartsick and soulsick,
The gnawing knowledge that we may never again feel at home.

So if you want to fight corrupt power alongside each other
With long, parallel roots acknowledged,
If you want to make a better world for all,
I will stand with you.

But if you want to overpower my voice, my history, my truth,
If you want to misrepresent who I am and where I come from,
If you want to take my right to a place on the land (just like they do),
You're on your own.

If you want to paint me as white imperialist scum, you are really no better than they.
Your rhetoric will crumble and your power will desert you,
Under the awesome, undeniable force of the real story,
Under the drive for full acknowledgement and justice, currently being denied.

So reconsider this whitewash of history, this convenient erasing of roots, this partial truth declared to be whole.
Understand the common experience, the common struggle that is fought to this day, to this minute, to this second.
Overturn the denial of common roots.
Overturn these cheap slurs against those whose only crime is surviving the systemic violence they bring down on all of us.
Overturn their easy answers and over-simplified histories
Or take your place as just one more overlord,
As just one more chapter in their false historical line,
As just one more boot in the face.

The full spectrum is cracking open,
And the time is now

8 comments:

libramoon said...

Africans won the race
A race is a contest of speed
Africans generally win more contests of speed
they are the winning race
Race War Over -- let's negotiate the Peace

Anonymous said...

Willow,
Thank you for the courage to say this. It is the truth.
Eliza

Anonymous said...

I see what you are getting at, Willow, and as a member of a racial minority group, I agree with you. Most white people are not my enemy in any way, shape or form. But the wealthy white elites (Kochs, Soros, etc.) are who have used race as the ugliest of wedges for centuries are the enemy of all of us, white, black, Asian, Latino, Native American, etc. The current narrative is very much focused on white privilege, which lumps in average white people with the elites, playing right back into the hand of the elites who continue to benefit from our division. As long as we continue to fight amongst ourselves, we can never unite, work together, and confront them. They are counting on this, and as long as we play into their hand, they have nothing to fear.

Willow said...

Yes, I believe the racial divisions are being intentionally created and reinforced to weaken us as a whole, as well.

There are actually more white people living in poverty than any other race in Canada and the U.S. People of colour are more likely to be poor per capita (and that is deplorable, no question), but one would never know about the large numbers of white poor by listening to the current "white privilege" discourse. This creates resentment in whites, and then you have them looking to the crazed maniac who has just been elected in the U.S. to restore justice for them. *shudder*

We have to stay focused on the common battle, and the global web of wealthy elites (of all races but definitely dominated by whites) is the primary thing there.

freeforall said...

Beuatiful, Willow.

Willow said...

Thanks, freeforall.

Just one example of what's going on...

I've been reading through an anarchist news site recently, and I came across an article out of Olympia, Washington. In Olympia, it seems there is an idea that only people of colour are legitimate to lead or organize protests and marches against police brutality. (!!!)

The writer cites the "fact" that black people experience "vastly more" police brutality and incarceration than white people.

This is untrue.

Again, just like with the poverty issue - people of colour (particularly African Americans in the U.S. and native people in Canada) are more likely per capita to be killed by police, and this is terrible. But there are still far more white people being killed by police every year.

This goes to the point I'm making that it's a common struggle. Police brutality, incarceration, and poverty are certainly things that affect white people en masse, as well, and to suggest that white people (or people of ANY race) don't have the right to lead or organize resistance to it is just ludicrous in my mind.

But this is how people are self-policing.

Greg F said...

Hi from Olympia, Willow. I agree that minorities tend to be seen in terms of colour, as if any one group owns that category. I think Bernie Sanders was trying to say the same thing and got shouted down for being insensitive. I am very sympathetic to those of different sexual orientation in their fight against discrimination, but it seems there is an ever finer separation that began as LGBT and now adds QIA to the list. This makes everyone a member of a subgroup, dividing them further rather than unifying against the plutocrats.

I wasn't able to participate in the demonstrations last weekend - Olympia had about 10,000 marchers - but I am ready to take to the streets, just like back in the 60's. Like so many other 'boomers' my age, I am thinking, "I already went through this shit 50 years ago!" Oh, well....

Anonymous said...

You are so real and so on key with what is happening. Thank you so much for validating my whole history as I am 65 years old, Euro trash, and dual citizen, and pray for the people, all people.