The following paragraphs were sparked by a prompt in our group in Desireé B Stephens and Kokayi Nosakhere’s class on dismantling white supremacy culture. That class will be offered again in September by the way, and I will post the contact info. In the meantime, I highly suggest you join the intersectional allies group on Facebook, and or the EAGER group on Facebook. Both are communities of European Americans fully committed to dismantling white supremacy. This is a task that must be done in community.
Kokayi started out his post by sharing a TikTok video which I will post the link to below. The video is six minutes and very well worth a listen. I will link it below.
This TikTok creator essentially is saying that because of the extreme actions of the Trump administration, the white race is done for. Nobody is going to want to mate with us.
My response:
OK now that I have watched the video, I can say I agree with what she is conveying. Thank you so much for sharing this video with us!
Now I am going to comment from my perspective as an environmental activist / permaculture designer.
I have been very pained at the destruction wrought by white supremacy culture — which I have come to realize is the underlying culprit of all the environmental destruction including the wars etc. I feel a bottomless sadness that it took me to so late in life — and late in my career — to realize this.
However, for the rest of my life I will be working to dismantle white supremacy culture regardless of whether there’s any hope for the future of the human race on this planet or not. (As in, White supremacy culture is so destructive that I feel it could imminently destroy ALL human life on this planet.)
I actually do think there is hope, because Gaia is very forgiving if we just get our rapacious nature out of the way.
I would like to think that humans will thrive and get to have beautiful lives beyond white supremacy culture. I would like to think we can dismantle it sooner than waiting for the physical bodies to just die off.
This is also important because white supremacy culture has been internalized in many people who are not white-bodied.
Once again I am so thankful to you for choosing to engage so deeply as to teach us EAs how to dismantle white supremacy culture. What a gift, what an opportunity.
Some years ago, I wrote a book that was meant to be a practical manual for fellow environmentalists To take steps in their daily lives that would reduce their footprint and our collective footprint.
My book, with my level of awareness at the time, I was referring to the toxic destructive culture as “mainstream USA American culture.” Or “mainstream USA consumer culture.”
A few years later I started thinking, well, it’s NOT Black or brown people who are driving this. So what do I call it, so then in my talks & writings I started calling it “AENA, Anglo Euro North American culture.”
No corner of the planet is safe as long as one single particle of this culture remains. We simply must dissolve and dismantle this toxic culture.
Cultures are made up by people. Built over time, most of them. Most of them organically evolved over time in response to their environment And what brought them joy and peace and satisfaction.
Only the Anglo euro North American, white supremacy culture, was synthetically created in a relatively short burst of time and toxic energy with The most deeply unsavory of all motives.
I am grateful as an environmentalist to now have a more appropriate focus for my work of getting people motivated to care for the planet: Restore the water cycle; support and restore biodiversity; be uncompromising about equity and social justice.
Regarding what she said in the video – I would even go further than just no one’s going to want to mate with us. No one’s gonna want to hang out with us, period! Already nobody does, mostly.
Nobody is going to want to form organizations with us. Nobody is going to want to even eat with us. Nobody’s going to want to go shopping or swimming or walking or to the pub/coffeehouse or anything with us.
Humans are fundamentally social creatures. The threat of such well-deserved shunning will, I hope, be the final straw that motivates us to wake up and do the major dismantling thing to completion!
Although I really would like the motivation to stem right this minute right now from the wish to simply avoid doing more harm than we have already.
Further Exploration:
• “Trump will end the white race” — video from Winnie Lisa Auguste on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT6dPuebN/
• Class: “Self-love meditations for white people” – Next class is in September and I cannot recommend it highly enough. This is a 4-week zoom series. Contact Desireé B Stephens or Kokayi Nosakhere. (Also highly recommend following both of their pages if you are not already.)
We are doing somatic work to metabolize the trauma from the destructive toxic culture we were born into without our consent.
We are digging deep into case studies and into unpacking our own experience and beliefs together.
The purpose is to dismantle this culture and stop the deep rooted harm it’s causing all over the planet.
For more information / registration, contact Desireé B Stephens https://desireebstephens.substack.com and-or Kokayi Nosakhere royalstar907@gmail.com. (And in the meantime also follow both of their Facebook pages, their content is absolutely gold.)
The next class is being offered in September. It’s a four week series by zoom and I cannot recommend it highly enough! Not only is it in class, it’s a whole community and a nurturing container of very authentic love and accountability.
And in the meantime I highly suggest everyome follow both their pages. This is so what’s on our plates right now (as European Americans dedicated to social / environmental justice and ecological restoration).
Added later – July 11 –
Regarding the very real feelings of despair that this video can bring up:
- Regarding the idea that people in the global majority would prefer we die out, it’s worthwhile to remember that a lot of these people who would (very rationally) wish us physically gone, aren’t familiar with the concept that we CAN deconstruct the white supremacy cultural programming. In other words, we can dismantle the software regardless of whether the physical white bodies die out. If (WHEN) we dismantle this horrific toxic culture, we won’t be brutalizing the rest of the planet anymore.
- Physical races take generations to be bred out. However, toxic cultural programming can be dismantled who knows how fast? It might be faster than we think, if we get enough of us working on it in community together!
AND
— Imagine bearing and raising a child who is born FREE of murderous toxic white supremacy programming. Because the child’s mother has done the work of metabolizing her generational harm and trauma. ❤
Further Exploration:
• EAGER Community — community on Facebook
• Intersectional Allies for Transformation — community on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1KnbgkhfPb/?mibextid=K35XfP