A Quote by Bocafloja
It isn't like we don't work with you because you are white, or not want anything to do with you. It is more like you have to check your privileges, the whites have the responsibility to put themselves at attention with the form they operate in with people of color and try to always lay out that pattern to connect with people and say, "I am conscious of my privileges and I am accounting for myself."
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I believe that white people need to check themselves, account for their privileges, and undergo whatever interaction with communities of color with that understanding. They have to add up all those processes and articulate those privileges to try to equalize the historical process.
This is really skin privilege, the ranking of color in terms of its closeness to white people or white-skinned people and its devaluation according to how dark one is and the impact that has on people who are dedicated to the privileges of certain levels of skin color.
I have privileges even in comparison to a Palestinian Israeli because Palestinian Israelis who live permanently in Ramallah risk their status, not as citizens but as residents. They might lose their social rights if they move to Ramallah. But I won't, so I live with privileges. That notion is very difficult for me as a child who was raised in a left-wing family, a family of people who suffered discrimination as Jews abroad. The notion that I am so privileged is disgusting. But this is what it means to live in a white society. You are white, so you are privileged.
People who enjoy the privileges of success must use these privileges to benefit those who do not have them. These privileges constitute a deep hole they need to climb out of if they are to prevent its being the case that the world would have been better off if they had never been born.
I have different privileges because I am a man, and I have to acknowledge that and realize that another person of color who is also a woman is having a different experience than I am.
I think that anything that has privileges have responsibility and all people that is clear about their responsibility has compromise.
You know how we say things like "I just have to be true to myself"? What does that mean? Great people always say, "There's something I was meant to do." That knowingness is what the soul understands. You have fundamental agreements that you simply feel. You can't put your finger on them because they reveal themselves to you within the context of your life through coincidence, synchronicity, and obligations you can't get out of. Together, these things form the whole of your sacred contract.
I stand behind what I say. If I don't want it to be out there then I won't say it. I am not out to hurt somebody. I am out to call attention to certain things but I am also out to make people laugh with my delivery and style of bluntness.
The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people's expense, whether whites know/like it or not. Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn't care if you are a white person who likes Black people; it's still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don't look like you.
Because You have called me here not to wear a label by which I can recognize myself and place myself in some kind of a category. You do not want me to be thinking about what I am, but about what You are. Or rather, You do not even want me to be thinking about anything much: for You would raise me above the level of thought. And if I am always trying to figure out what I am and where I am and why I am, how will that work be done?
I prefer the 1950s where people were like, "I'm a white supremacist, and that's who I am." Now people want to burn a cross on your lawn and call themselves not racists.
I am not going to say that only people of color can write people of color, because that means only white people can write white people, and that's not OK.
People act like art is a white thing - or not for people of colour - when, really, so much culture and art comes from people of colour. I want everyone to get into what I am doing. So sometimes I don't like to work just in an art context because it feels like a lot of people aren't going to see it. I like it to be a part of everyday life.
Like they used to say about Joe Montana, he threw soft because he couldn't throw hard. He was successful because he didn't try to do what he couldn't. I couldn't rock out harder than everybody, or overpower people with mastery like Jack White of the White Stripes, so why try? That's why I've always worked harder on words.
Many people say they are so happy to be doing what they do and they love it. But there's a difference between loving your job and living only for your job. And I think people always will say I am overworking and I am over-exposed and that's what I want is all the attention. That's not. What I love is the art of it all.
I am always producing work, but there is always a sort of deadline where you have to finish work. I don't do it for a show. In other words, I am not like a fashion designer where I have a, you know - I have to put out the full line or I have to put out the summer line like that.
