#I LOVE cultural melting pot for the name alone but man…….mixed feelings on it at best | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

knowlesian · 2 years

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i’ve sort of debated whether i wanted to hit post on this and despite the fact that i have clearly now done it: i am honestly still internally unsure!

i am painfully aware that the target audience for this message is more likely to roll their eyes about ‘woke fandom’, ignore my actual point, and get back to creating alternate histories surrounding why they’d prefer one of ed’s ancestors floating alone on a raft to wherever the fuck, instead, because for them: this isn’t emotional. this is fun.

but this was part of what i really wanted to say in that ask about “hey, stop saying māori. honestly if you just stop pointing out these things entirely and shut up about race unless you talk about it in ways that make me feel good that would work out great for me” the other week, and it will not leave me mentally alone until i do it.

(which, again: that was what the ask actually said. exact wording being the thing that defeats unintentional racism is a weird reverse uno card that gets played a lot in these situations, so to be clear that was not the verbatim word choice. however, asking people to stop referring to ed as māori leads to the question: what do you want me to call him? because we all seem to agree: ed is not a white man.

so what then? you want me to say ‘brown’ and leave it there? ‘i guess some sort of polynesian?’ or, given the strange insistence on race blindness here, is the goal to get everybody to pretend race doesn’t factor into social dynamics? because unfortunately, that’s a thing only white people get to do. not because the rest of us don’t want to— but because the world will not let us.)

i’m not māori and ed’s story is so culturally specific and influenced by that history that pretending i can do anything but see an echo of myself in him would be silly, at best: but i do have that echo.

i’m from the united states, where we also have a long and lovely history of genocide both literal and cultural towards our indigenous populations.

it’s the cultural part that gets me really fucked up on a personal level v a justice one, when i see the shadows of myself reflected in this adjacent lane. white people stealing indigenous kids and raising them to be nothing but white is not just a part of my ancestral history; it’s how i got adopted.

when my birthmother started the process the race math was done, and it came up with: ooooh yeah, sorry. this one’s a little bit too much Not White, send ‘em through the tribal system, it’s the law.

and then some legal fuckery happened. for reasons i both don’t want to and don’t feel comfortable explaining further, a box saying ‘nope! just white!’ was checked on some paperwork: i went home with a white couple.

i have known all my life two things, because i was told them over and over:

- that i am so not white, it took a crime to bring me home

- and that since they did that, all i am is white.

(i grew up when the us was OBSESSED with the idea of being a melting pot, and my mom used to like to tell a story about how when i was young, people would come up to her in public all the time and ask ‘what i was’. apparently i wore my soul a lot more clearly on my face those days and now, i pass so well white people like to say “no! but look at you! you’re just white!” when i clarify the particulars here.

so, so very many white people often wanna tell me i am also white in the same way they are, very very much. and from white people who i thought didn’t roll like that, too! they’ve got a great-grandma who is 1/4 cherokee they tell me— why always cherokee i want to ask, but never do? i’m not cherokee, do you not know any other tribe names orrrr???— and it never stops blowing my mind.

anyway, the punchline to my mom’s story about people asking her what mixed race baby shop she found me in was her saying: ‘they’re my CHILD, THE END THAT IS ALL THAT MATTERS’ because in this story, she was a hero. this was not a story about gross racists. this was a story about how evolved she was for knowing my heritage didn’t actually matter.

when i say this show helps me handle the tension i feel, trying to urge well-meaning white people to Get With It, i so often mean ‘i want to love my family and be honest at the same time, this is so fucking hard what do i do and where are my people???????? i feel like maybe they’re not here’.)

so i get it: for white fans, this is Just Intellectual. they’re focused on the dates and times, and as far as they’re concerned the ravages of empire are a thought experiment; for me and many others, this is what made us who we are.

seeing ed, a māori man with a mother who believed the lies the world told her and a white father who didn’t see the problem with any of this means a whole fucking lot to me. (and oh lord! don’t even get me started on why his dynamic with izzy is partially so fascinating to me because i can see myself in them both, depending on how i split my life experience between emotional realities and systemic advantages.) this show is the thing that’s gotten me to fucking ask myself “can i... even say i’m white passing? is that me lying, or is that me decolonizing my own fucking brain?”

(my therapist: also very thankful. she keeps joking about sending the creative staff fruit baskets.)

so yeah anyway. this is just an emotional attempt to explain why the ed thing sucks from my adjacent lane, no big conclusion except:

i honestly don’t even care if white fans think i’m right? i just wish they would consider the deeper implications of the refusal to accept ed could be māori, and what it does to those of us who see ourselves in this show not simply because it’s Gay Pirates, but because it’s Intersectional Pirates.

#SO YEAH.#still feel a little weird about being this open but hell #i have said bits of this in the comments might as well

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