I have a clinical term I will present to the DSM this year to list amongst the thousands of others they have voted in over the last half a century.
‘SWAD’ – ‘Specific White Amnesic Disorder’.
Reserved only for white people who didn’t realise, or couldn’t imagine a scenario of white colonialist history when presented with the facts about oppressive and racist pasts.
Like a chunk of their brain magically went missing that recalls history that was never taught. It’s not an excuse you can use to say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that’.
-W.E.
Something has got to give. We can’t keep playing this reverse psychology, flipping the script, turning the truth and blatantly outright denying the facts, that white privilege affords a comfort that people of colour aren’t privy to.
There’s a convenience of playing dumb, or just outright being that uneducated when the general populace is presented with facts about the history of white colonialism, white oppression, white genocide of non whites, killing, murder, rape, pillage, theft, manipulation, power, control, stealing of natural resources, influence of war against, perpetuating international crimes against people of colour and natives of land. We cannot pretend to be shocked, and surprised, worse, lie about not knowing, pretend it doesn’t or didn’t exist.
Structural racism is so embedded in media influence, corporate influence, monetary influence, educational and government policy that even people of colour can be found denying history or detached from the reality that is attached at the hip to darwinistic-eugenicist-white supremacy. Since it’s disgusting theory was espoused, white men have hung on to such corrosive discourse with their dear lives, able to have shifted cultural and social paradigm until people are so numb and so lazy that they won’t even bother to get educated.
A wash of spume comes over them in the form of amnesia, even if they are educated in the destructive history and it becomes convenient to billboard at any given moment, to take to the stands of academe, to rise to the platforms of social media and hashtag alllivesmatter, as a supposed solution to #blacklivesmatter, not knowing that in reality, the simplicity of their intellect exposed, shows their inbuilt white privileged defence mode is entrenched with a weighty carving. Breaking such prejudice is near impossible without a blatant slap in the face, perhaps a kick in the groin to bring to reality their uttermost awareness and then have them focus on the subject at hand.
We don’t feel, we don’t realise, we can’t comprehend, we are utterly, cluelessly bereft of actual learning and understanding, and there has to be drastic measures to shake such disgusting and hidden racist vitriol out of a person, because the same way it is a learned trait, it can be unlearned, but the mirror has to be held up to these narcissists who are so threatened when faced with the reality of who they are and what they believe.
If you support a person of colour, race, sexuality, religion or gender against oppression, it doesn’t take an iota away from your colour, race, sexuality, religion or gender.
As straight as I am, happily married with children to boot, I don’t become gay if I take measures to defend a gay person.
As religious as I am, it in no way diminishes from my spirituality if I lose my voice standing up for the rights of anyone to practise their faith, or non-faith.
You don’t ever become lesser by standing up, you become more human than ever, more relatable to and respected by more people.
Unless of course your idea of humanity is segregation, separation, partitioning and isolation. Perhaps then, all you need to do is remove yourself from the social sphere, find a place where you can be on your own without infecting others, because make no mistake, you ARE the disease, you ARE the problem.
All lives can’t matter until the most oppressed lives are brought to the same privileged as the rest of the world. Until then, #blacklivesmatter matters more, otherwise your memory is dismally poor, I worry you actually might be brain damaged, not amnesic.
-W.E.
lonerloaner 