#NOTWHITE FAQ
NOTES FROM THE NON-HIERARCHICAL FOUNDER MEMBER
Why are you called #notwhite?
Every minute of the day, we see White Supremacy using media, image, text, sound to discriminate, denigrate and/or erase the contributions, agency and power of non-white peoples. We see White Supremacy using its full tools of laws, policies, and protocols to keep in place systems (education, housing, health, employment…) of inequity. We see White Supremacy using the tool of terror to maintain its delusion of superiority as it erases Black Lives, places immigrant children in cages, poisons the water on indigenous reservations; we see it building walls of hate instead of bridges of love.
We are here to build bridges of love, understanding, compassion so that all may be able to be and live as their full authentic self.
We research and investigate the etymology of words and phrases, we increase our visual literacy by finding the historical origin of racist and discriminatory imagery, and we don’t shirk from sounding our voices. We work to deconstruct, unpack and dismantle the things used against us to subjugate us, so that we may not unconscioulsy further that agenda of subjugation. Access to privilege is recognized, categorized and utilized to question and chip away at the system of oppression, until we reach freedom and gain self-liberation. Knowing that the bridges of sister and brotherhood were strategically destroyed vis a vis “divide and conquer” strategies and policies.
WE are here. We are not white. We do not align ourselves with an inhuman system of oppression against all non-white peoples and white allies.
How did the #notwhite collective form?
On Valentine’s Day, I sent an invitation to 14 fierce Women Artists that I either knew directly or indirectly, but valued and trusted their voice, their spirit. It was an invitation to converse on the effects of Whiteness (Imperialism, Colonialism and White Supremacy) on the global non-white world, what our context is within this inherited system and to eventually make Art investigating and expressing our discoveries.
This is a conversation that I, a multi-racial/cultural, Black/German, 1st Generation Woman, have not been able to have with White or Black Americans. My attempts at sharing my experiences were dismissed and disregarded as inauthentic and not as painful (as I’ve been told-by both) as
a real Minority. You are not Black enough to feel the pain of discrimination nor Black enough to speak of it as discrimination. But I am ME enough to speak my truth into any place or space I enter, without needing the permission to do so.
Why are there no men in the Collective?
Until men have the spiritual wherewithal to intentionally and unprompted, deal with toxic masculinity by implementing an emotional revolution, there will be no male members of the Collective.
What we know now is always changing, still evolving.
Oppression. It is old.
As old as Humans. 200,000 years old...As History shows us, it is a worldwide phenomena, etched in pottery, written on papyrus. No country is immune to it; not guilty of it. While The United States of America is one out of many countries perpetuating and keeping alive systemic systems of oppression, what truly sets it apart is its unique history of settler colonialism, genocide and enslavement of people’s indigenous to this land and not-white peoples; humans from Africa. What makes its oppression insidious is the creation of the White Race.
This is where we live and what we are navigating.
Seething underneath the promised “American Dream” are the howls of injustice, inequity and domestic terrorism. We see this play out as ones and zeros, the binary system with no space for the in-between, no place for our voices to be heard. The black and the white, created by the system of Whiteness, trying to further divide us. But there is no binary, there is only a spectrum of all shades of human.
Colorism happens globally in any country where there exists dark skinned and light skinned people, with the lighter skinned people being given agency, access and elevation. This is not to absolve the complexity of what is happening in America, but to put it in a global historical perspective. We recognize that it takes time to unlearn/learn to discern authentic opportunities from those steeped in tokenistic and preferential ideology.
We recognize that culture, systems, policies, laws and government of the United States are predicated on anti-non-whiteness, more specifically anti-blackness. We recognize that we have inherited an unjust system that serves only to maintain white power through assimilation and silent collusion.
By inherit, it is meant that it is everywhere and in everything, ubiquitous, seen and unseen, living inside our subconciousness. Before we say we aren’t, we need to see that we all are part of the virus, infected, and unknowingly spreading it…
We recognize that many people, who are called immigrants, seeking a new life in the United States of America, may knowingly and unknowingly adopt and assimilate into a system that works against them and against Black people, more specifically, dark skinned black people, for success and access to the American Dream---for anything better than what they left.
We recognize their is no final state of WOKEness, there is only a vigilant and constant awakening.
We ask when will the United States of America become a country that honors all citizens with justice and liberty, and sees each person for their character, heart and spirit, not a caricature, stereotype or a monolithic representative of a whole group of people.
Some of the Questions we ask ourselves:
Are we American? because we live here?
What is American? meaning not influenced by any “immigrant” pale or dark