Five key steps to displacing your whiteness

1. Lean in. Sometimes Afrocentric knowledge hurts, and that's when you need to lean in and open up more, decentralizing whiteness is like debriding centuries old wound that is rotten to the core. You will have to work hard and quickly before sepsis sets in.

2. Old habits die hard.
Decentralizing your whiteness is not a gift to People of Color, Decentralizing your whiteness is NOT a gift to People of Color, therefore we do not owe you our labor or knowledge for free.

3. Stay the course. Do not feel berated or discouraged when those oppressed refuse to help for free. While you may not have directly participated in colonization and slavery you have been born into a world where you continually profit from its systemic inequalities. see step 2 above.

4. Double Down. Knowledge is power, so keep reading keep reflecting on how you have unwittingly contributed to the status quo, keep unlearning and then do the work QUIETLY (do not expect an ally ship cookie), donate, show up when needed and collect your friends when their privilege starts leaking (white tears are a valuable asset that signals they might want to start at step 1. above)  

5. Pass it on. If you learn something new you will be expected to clue in your other white friends and family members (this might be hard, so seek support from your community) never forget that while privilege isn't contagious it does leak and even with your new found knowledge you have not arrived at ally-ship mecca.

*ally-ship mecca is the mythical place where you end up after clocking a set amount of allyship hours, once you are there you are not only absolved of all privileges (while still benefiting from them) but you then become immune to ever being guilty of not being a super ally.

The present past of our forgotten Womyn

Sitting with today's events unable to unpack some that are so heavily steeped in white supremacy, anti-blackness and self hate. The mounting effects of colonialist genocide, patriarchy in all its violent hues, affecting generations of women birthed into slavery; the cycle of violence upon our bodies has been relentlessly consistent and audibly visible on our mother's bodies and her mother before her.

Today I met my 96 year old great grandmother: I saw my daughter in her and heard my mother's voice in her laughter, I felt my grandmothers compassion when she embraced me and for the first time I understood what it meant to be fierce. We sang together, we talked about food and joked about everything including our uncomfortable shared history, but mostly I watched her. I watched her breath with defiant ease, quietly, on purpose and on point, like every breath inhaled is act of war we must not only survive but win.

I have much to unpack, much to learn and share, for now I'll leave you with this: a song that all five generations of Black Xamaycan womyn sang in a small room in East New York one very hot day in August 2015.