I've read it several times since people I respect keep posting it, but I'm really not about this Eula Biss essay. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/magazine/white-debt.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all …
-
-
But it's not just that: Eula Biss, like so many white folks, manages to re-center whiteness when writing about white debt. Ugh. SO ugh.
-
The essay also highlights Biss's safe encounters with cops; reads like YAY! I'M WHITE AND THESE COPS CAN'T TOUCH ME SO SORRY BLACK PEOPLE.
-
Speaking of which, for Eula Biss, race is white and black. There are no people who look like me in her imagination. How did she miss that?
-
Oh, except for the small Playing Indian moment, which is probably the most disappointing in this essay.
-
Not *exactly* Playing Indian, but her son wanting to be Indian because Little House on the Prairie? Indians only exist in the past? Mmhhmm.
-
Which somehow leads her to Rachel Dolezal and this whole "Caucasians don't exist," so I guess it's ok that Dolezal did that shit? I dunno.
-
When Eula Biss writes that the term Caucasian "is 18th-century pseudoscience that helped invent a white race," I just shake my head.
-
Yeah, of course it's invented. But it doesn't mean it doesn't have real consequences. It often determines whether one lives of dies, dammit.
-
But let's go back to Nietzsche in every other paragraph, shall we? Umm. Ok, Eula Biss, I guess. Or not. No, not really. wtf.
-
Anyway, I could go on and on. I even thought about writing an essay myself, but can't bring myself to imagine going through drafts of this.
-
And that's part of this too: the good whites often exhaust us. I'm tired. Tired of seeing this essay. Tired of correcting it in my mind.
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.