I’m all kinds of cool with owning my Viking / Celtic heritage, yay bad ass warrior chicks and stuff. I wasn’t born a Viking but no biggie. Its still part of me, right?
I also have pre-Revolutionary War American heritage, a great great who came over from Britain to fight in the French & Indian War and got a bit of land in MA out of the deal. Yay for him, right? um… wow, that’s just loaded with issues. I wasn’t born then, so it doesn’t matter right?
Wrong.
It does matter because it puts me squarely in the US when we were creating the system of entrenched racism that we are trying to dismantle now. It hits back at the “But I didnt start this”, “I wasn’t a slave owner” lines we as white people tend to clutch at. But my friend wasn’t born then either. He wasn’t enslaved, but his great-great was. So why is this racism his problem and not mine? just because of the color of his skin?
No. It is my problem, but you know, without the guns in my face.
I didn’t create the system, my generation didnt create it… but if I have cool Viking/Celtic genetics that I am happy to own – then I am *also* responsible for owning my pre-Rev War roots as well and my place in the timeline and energy of all this shit.
Doesn’t change the past, but it might change the future.