Vocabulary: White Ruin

Christina Springer
Jul 27, 2017 · 3 min read

Whypipo on their way to becoming White People (whose goal is to eventually become humyn) experience White Ruin. This is one of the most devastating side effects of becoming humyn. It is the number one reason that Whypipo stop evolving. They just throw their hands up in the air and whine, “Why can’t you just give me a list? I just want to do everything on the list you handed me, be awarded an A+, achieve my White people status and go back to living my life. This unlearning oppression stuff is hard.”

What very, nice progressive White people refuse to acknowledge is that the burden of becoming humyn hurts all day and all night. Your empathy and awareness muscles have been allowed to atrophy. Our binary capitalist society has declared that there are winners and losers, haves and have nots, black or white, male or female, gay or straight. It values product not process.

Nobody has ever truly demanded of you that you actually stay acting like a humyn until you become one. You have not been trained to submit to living in a state of continuous discomfort on top of whatever other diseases, conditions, or life experiences that jack up what the commercials say should be your most excellent life. In other words, living like Black folks do everyday.

You know you are becoming humyn when you’re not thinking about what actions must be performed in order to cast off your privilege (and/or interrupt oppression) because you just do it. (Like breathing. You don’t think about breathing, you breathe. Except when you are meditating or doing yoga and then you are thinking about breathing and that’s different.)

Evidence that you are experiencing White Ruin occurs when not five minutes can go by in a day where you can not find some Patriarchal White Supremacy to call out (or call in, as the case may be. )

Whypipo eschew humynity because humyns be in awareness every minute. Things get ruined for humyns on a regular. You can’t shit in a pot without realizing that according to your newsfeed the toilet paper you bought is owned by the Koch brothers and your clean ass just contributed to our ongoing oppression.

Whypipo and many earnest, hard working White People masquerade as humyn. You don a fancy “ally” cloak, boom box blast a mea culpa mashup, and go about your yoga latte day. At the end of the day, you look in the mirror of Patriarchal White Supremacy and award yourself gold stars and red X’s. You itemize the three oppressive things they did not do, the two things you did, and then take all that liberal progressive mess off, shower, watch a little television, go to bed and rest well.

The only way White People can know they are doing the good work of unlearning oppression is when things that used to be fun just aren’t anymore. When you experience a deep understanding that you can’t just relax. This is usually where folks feel dispirited and give up. That’s not the next step.

If you are experiencing White Ruin, the next step is to get creative. Begin to build around yourself new fun things. Seek out those who are building the new inclusive, better world you deserve to live in and join them. And/or turn inward to learn to be in love with your own company.

The glory in White Ruin is found on the level playing ground where the Phoenix goes to be reborn.

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