tales | (from a folk devil)

one of the weirder leftist infights i’ve been in ::
• after all the calls to decolonize & stop culturally appropriating, white kids want to reconnect with their (our) ancestry & culture
• people start to claim irish, german, swiss, etc.
• other activists tell them to shut up & just be white.
folks in the countries of origin are split — some are welcoming, some are like “shut up, you’re american.”
• people yell about blood, assimilation, choice, white supremacy. there is rarely nuance.
• a generally accepted path is “learn your specific ancestors & history. don’t claim an essential blood tie. understand how america shaped you. go from there.”
• some kids say “fuck it” & go right-wing.

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this stuff (and a lot of the conversations around whiteness) initially really confused me. i finally figured out why, lol.

growing up in PA, my first identity was “you’re irish.”

my mom and her siblings are 2nd gen & grew up in an irish-catholic enclave in philly. there were MANY other irish immigrant families & they essentially tried to recreate home.

the town i grew up in was integrated & a lot of us were aware of our immigrant roots.
we identified first with *them* and then with americanness, etc.
(honestly, it wasn’t even really until post-9/11 that i was immersed in american “pride” at all, but that’s a whole other story.)

i of course knew i was white, but i didn’t really pay too much mind to it — though, of course, i learned a LOT about unconscious bias, history, privilege, etc. through the racial reckoning years.

i realized, very recently, how unique that is — to grow up in an ethnic enclave, with a strong culture & ethnic identity as a white person.

most white people don’t stay in the enclave — they land there & then migrate on, shedding their culture more and more with each stop.

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by the time i got to the west coast, i started meeting people who were skeptical of anyone who still held onto their ethnic identity.

i even met people who told me that was evidence of white supremacy, which confused me because i always thought assimilation was the white supremacy & holding onto your roots was resistance to that.

i guess there are communes of celtic white supremacists, like norse pagan neo-nazis, in the pnw??
weird / news to me.

all of this is to say,
i think the conversation of cultural reclamation, reckoning, ethnicity, everything…
is so much more person-to-person & personal history than the broad brush strokes make it out to be.

most peoples immigrated (or refugee’d!) in multiple waves & had different stories once they got here. those complexities are key for understanding YOUR history, YOUR culture, YOUR ancestors.

and part of resisting both white supremacy AND assimilation is resisting the notions of “blood.”

you do not have “irish blood.”
you have irish ancestors.

your blood entitles you to nothing.
but we all deserve to learn & reckon with where & who we came from.

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so, a few questions you ask if you’re someone who wants to learn more about themselves:

• who are your ancestors? what are their names? where / when were they born? where did they die? what did they do?
• if they immigrated, why?
• did they come to settle? to conquer? as refugees or fleeing violence?
• what did they do once they got here?
• what parts of the culture do you remember, were you taught or exposed to?
e.g., music, dance, food, language, holiday traditions, history, quirks?
• if you have been to your country of ancestry, how familiar is it to home?
not mystically / spiritually, but socially?
• how connected to the culture is your family?
• did they live in an enclave, or did they try to shed their culture, language, ways, asap?
• what relationship did they have to other groups? who were their friends? did they explicitly act better or oppress anyone?
• how does your personal story connect to what was happening in their country of origin? in yours?
• what privileges or disadvantages did they have?
• are these answers the same across your family?

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unhealthy politics collapses or reduces humanity into hot takes, sound bites, vectors of violence, & worse.

(imo) truth, complexity, rootedness & personal knowledge is a key antidote to that.

i hope this can get you thinking
& can help you avoid the next annoying infight, lol.

—- this post originally shared on ig.