Now that I am home again, I want to elaborate on that last post.
I grew up in the middle of fucking nowhere.
I used to say that I could count on one hand — and have fingers left over — the number of overtly racist incidents I experienced up there, but it's also where I learned that there's a critical mass factor to racism.
One or two Black families, and you're not enough of "them" to be taking their jerbs. And they make a little exception in their pea brains, because fuck knows, it's not that they're wrong about what's connate to Black people, it's just that you're somehow "not really Black."
The difference is Canadians have a sense of self-preservation enough not to say that out loud, unlike Americans, so you just walk around thinking that these are some weirdly decent people.
Nope.
Then maybe 10, 20 years later, you look around at the ones that are left in your life from that era, and you go on a blocking spree with:
"Guess what! I am not your Black friend anymore!"
And you sweep them all into the bin and then you forget they exist.
And I suspect that Brenda wasn't even around for that, having been long since binned. I speak to all of 2 people from that era, and those, very infrequently.
Which is funny because I really loved that era of my life, and it deeply influenced my love of the woods and teaching young anarchists how to forage, do bushcraft, and be self-sufficient.
But that's the place, which to me is very distinct from the people.
#Blackness #GigiThoughts
