The Messy Work of Decolonizing

My problem with the Zach Bush’s and Charles Eisentein’s and Mikky Willis’s of the world is not simply that these men are white men and espouse views about COVID that inadvertently embody white supremacy. It is their lack of structural analysis around history and power.

The amnesia around history and power is a white phenomenon. It’s how this nation could be founded on with “liberty and justice for all” together with slaves, murdered indigenous people and gagged women.

The Zach Bush’s and Charles Eisentein’s of the world have to remain amnestic to history and power, because if they were to really contend with it, they would recognize that now is the moment for them to be quiet, sit down and let the many other voices that have been silenced by white men fill the space.

That is precisely why they are writing right now. To ensure the spotlight doesn’t blur its boundaries and become a radiant light in all directions, illuminating those of us who were always here, who we have forgotten, who we are actively remembering and imagining right now.

This is the plurality that is decolonizing. The shifting of our gaze to the surroundings, the margins, the everything, the everyone. It is not to decry white men as the evil and everyone else as the good. It is to eliminate that binary mode of thought and slip into another mindset…