‘The Rehabilitation of Whiteness’

Reposting some links in solidarity. While we might not have chosen to get born, white poets do choose whiteness (as a system of force), and we choose it daily (whether tacitly or not, more often not, more often under the guise of ‘community building’). Marianne Morris clarifies how uncomfortable it is to claim that pronoun, and what kind of an assault it is not to, or to say ‘we’ and mean ‘you all, but not me.’ Not a question of how do ‘we’ proceed differently, but a reminder that the work of building alternate models has always been being done (so not a question of intervening, but of actively paying attention to and supporting that work, and actively resisting participation in ‘the rehabilitation of whiteness’).

On my mind this morning:

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram has been working through whiteness as a system of force over at Harriet (here and here), with fucking searing clarity:

If it is “cruelty to insist that only people of color be responsible for the articulation or the embodiment of race….” it may be an even greater cruelty to acknowledge complicity and have responsibility in the service of rehabilitating whiteness. The rehabilitation of whiteness is a white supremacist project.

Trisha Low’s piece for Open Space might be the most challenging document out of and instigation to conceptual writing to date. I can’t possibly imagine the what it cost her to write this, but reading it cowed me. Critical thought on a par w/Mackey & DuPlessis for Low’s willingness to hold affiliation & critique aloft simultaneously.