while I am bound to an immense pride in my culture and ancestors, I have more fair-skinned privilege than anyone on my mother’s side who grew up poor and native in a racist white new england town. pocahontas is great but my tattoo ain’t her - it is a memorial to my late aunt who dedicated her life to visiting reservations and rescuing native children from abuse, where the remainders of my people were famously dumped by their colonizers and left to fend for themselves. . . the world doesn’t give a fuck what my choctaw blood quantum is when I look white, white, white, yet other white people LOVE to challenge my nativeness and skeptically inquire what percentage I am, probably because being “1/8th cherokee” is a fucking joke and a meme. . . I’ve drunkenly mouthed off to nypd officers who could have shot me in the throat and gotten away with it if I looked my heritage - cops who murder poc for far less. growing up, I was embarrassed of my whiteness, felt like a bit of an outcast in my family, wishing I looked more like my cousins. I learn more every day of the dangers in this world that aren’t even on my radar, and will never personally affect my well-being ~ let alone get me stopped, frisked, arrested, and/or killed ~ because of my paperback skin. . . I am not going to spout some literal white knight rhetoric and ask non-white communities what they need from me. it is not the burden of poc to educate the pale masses. I’m experiencing a lot of debate lately among white people who feel salty and excluded from things like you can’t say the “n” word? even if it’s your FAVORITE rap song??? get the fuck out of here. acknowledge your privilege, humble yourself to it, and listen to the communities around you when they speak instead of arguing with them. it’s the only place to start if you’re genuine about this whole “equality” thing. #brooklyn #nyc #nativelivesmatter #blacklivesmatter #minoritiesmatter