White people have to grieve the guilt that accompanies whiteness. You cannot and must not opt out of whiteness. You have to grapple with the messiness of the privilege. You have to come and collect your people. Settlers and their descendants have to grieve the lives of their ancestors, the culture that made their acts of domination and exploitation even imaginable, possible, and acceptable. What confused, numbed, dissociated hell it must have been for them, on a deep level, even if they enjoyed benefits on other levels. Hurting people hurt others (something else I learned growing up watching
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