What's Whiteness Got to Do With It?
Said I was done writing about white people. The lie detector test determined that was a lie.
“Break-ups are always difficult.
They are exceptionally difficult when everything good seems to be tied up in the relationship you are leaving.
It isn’t just your family but your childcare in a society where we won’t subsidize public child care.
It isn’t just your spouse but your affordable healthcare that is tied to them and their job and your legal claim to both.
It is a series of dinners and pool parties and wills and trousseaus that may not be enjoyable or wanted but are better than nothing. And nothing is what it may feel like what awaits you on the other side of the break-up . . . I believe there is not only a way to live after the break-up but that you do not start living until you break-up.
My own little altar to pragmatic hope has me believe that living in a death cult is lonely. It isn’t lonely because you are alone. The death cult of white supremacy never wants for members. It is lonely because your needs are not being met.
Your needs are not being met because you cannot have any needs in a death cult. Every emotion, every want, every desire has to serve the cult. That kind of deep loneliness can only be met and satisfied when you develop a you that isn’t built on the cult. That’s what I think comes after the break-up: a you with authentic desires that can be named and met by others who can now see you because you finally exist.”
— Tressie McMillan Cottom, Breaking Up With White Supremacy Was Always The End Game
Ok. I remember now! I was watching Tressie on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah discuss Thick, her book of essays exploring Black womanhood. In her words, these essays provide a slice of life and a foray into the thinking and philosophy of Black women not only as she sees it and experiences it as a Black woman, but as a Black woman who studies it and has thought about it at different levels. “We like wise Black women”, she says, “but it is intelligent Black women with whom we struggle.” She’s clear about her source of expertise, and says she don’t want to be nobody’s Oprah.
Same.
I’m so grateful for her and I feel challenged and reflected and considered in her thinking. When she talks about research and writing, I’m affirmed by her process. One thing we do not have enough of is space for Black women to talk about process and craft, so when it happens, I milk it and savor it. Tressie McMillan Cottom’s incredibly southern and sharp and human, and reading Thick and Lower Ed has slowed me down and made me urgent. She’s been an essential aide for me as I shape my own political thinking.
A big focus of mine as a person and a writer is establishing shared definitions, and I’ll repeat this often. Shared definitions. We need shared definitions. Before. In the middle. At the end. Shared definitions. One of many things I’m learning how to define while reading Tressie is whiteness. For too long, defining whiteness has made my brain hurt.
But now, we can attempt it together.