Social theory and pain in the ass made simple, from
'Tessa Makes Love'
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| Tessa Lena |
"Since I feel very passionate about human ability to see beyond our
differences, here is what occupies my mind. I have a very distinct
feeling that somebody is hard at work directing the public conversation
about racism and historical injustices toward a place that is both
painful and not productive. People get to yell at each other and maybe
vent and maybe hurt each other a little more but nothing gets fixed
fundamentally. Who wins? Assholes."
Fact: America has a long history of treating non-whites horrendously and
building wealth on the backs of “the other.” To be fair, the practice
was not started in America. It was started, as far as geography and
known history go, in different places in Eurasia. A lot earlier, and
with a lot less focus on skin color. By humans. There are many wonderful
ways to dehumanize and consume “the other,” race is just one recent
invention. Of humans.
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| Tessa Lena |
"I believe, also very passionately, that the decisive factor is not skin
color or even culture (even though culture weighs a lot more in this
case) but what’s in the head. If there is a bug in the head, one can
lynch a slave, burn a witch, kill a Muslim, and go to bed with a smile.
The “other” can be worth hating or disregarding for many reasons:
gender, religion, and yes, skin color. As long as the eyes looking at
you belong to a person with a dull soul, you are annoying, and you don’t
count. And if you dare open your mouth... God."
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Europeans (and Asians) were probably the first groups of people to
enthusiastically embrace human alienation from nature and abandon
“local” in favor of building massive empires. Europeans certainly
popularized the idea and exported it world-wide, and it not surprising
that “white people” are known for the brand. However, it is a trap.
I have a theory that as a species, we are simply not capable of
maintaining balanced, non-abusive empires. It is beyond our mental
ability, even if our minds want to own everything. Empires are too big
and too abstract, it is impossible to love a hundred million people,
while it is also impossible to treat people fairly without love.
Theoretical morals don’t work, ever. They can’t work. I think that a
couple thousand years will pass and this grand empire-building
experiment will be over, but we are here now, obviously, and we can’t
just console ourselves with theory, we still need to solve problems
effectively.
So yes, there is a problem of institutional racism in the U.S. and it’s
ridiculous. I am convinced that fundamentally, it is rooted in centuries
of misinterpreting the indigenous organization of life–but even though
it is probably true, we can’t expect everybody to dig that deep, digging
deep takes time and effort, and people are known for not trying to
understand shit unless it hurts.
Here’s where assholes come in, in a new role though. The phrase “white
privilege” is, in my mind, a new weapon of an evil genius. By giving
people this catch phrase, you don’t solve ANYTHING but direct the very
real anger and hurt against a very broad category of people including
people who are just minding their business without being particularly
evil. That’s divide and conquer at its best. The evil ones, the ones who
carry the most responsibility for today’s injustices, won’t care about
the rhetoric and TED presentaions, and the non-evil ones will get hurt
and snap back, as humans do. While people yell at each other on
Facebook and perpetuate hurt feelings, assholes keep doing their thing.
>>>>>" That’s my feeling about it, anyway. I don’t think there is any other way
besides
Love. And solving concrete problems with minimal hate."
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Me, Pete Carma "how lucky I am to have a shared trust with the most talented creative women on the music scene, who also are out spoken about the issues of the day".
Have you seen Tessa's
#Pianowomen Video, "Baby Robots"
In case you missed the previous Op/Ed pages they
Are HERE:
