This is the Heartbreak
If I wrote the piece I am scared to write it would go something like this:
I was adopted into a white family that claimed they had unconditional love. I was brought up in white communities and even lived in Oregon, founded to be a white utopia, for a brief spell. And even when I lived in Kenya, I lived on the school’s compound where most of the teachers were white and therefore were my neighbors. These spaces, families, and communities loved me. There is no denying that. But the love was conditional for many. Only when I did not expand past the space they allocated for me, I had their support. But as soon as I started evaluating whiteness, as soon as I started to unlearn the anti-blackness I was taught, I was then accused of being divisive.
The cute kid adopted from the orphanage grew up.
I. Grew. Up.
So here I am now, an ocean away from home in another home, clutching a loved US passport and making the best with what I have.
(Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for where I am. But my need for survival doesn’t cease just because I am grateful for the good. And I hate how I even have to say that I’m glad so the rest of my words will not be discredited under the tropes of the ungrateful adoptee, the disgruntled American citizen, or the angry Black woman.)
My family gatherings, work environments, doctor’s offices, former educational institutions (yes, even you, Rosslyn Academy — just because you’re in Kenya does not leave you exempt from how you perpetuate white supremacy and American Christianity), favourite stores, towns, and cities are full of traitors who would rather hitch themselves to white supremacy than to critically evaluate whiteness and then divest from it. And no, this is not just a naming to those that voted for Donald Trump. This is to everyone white who decided that losing their whiteness in order to be liberated was too big a price to pay so they would rather our capitol be breached and our ground poisoned than give up power.
And I want to walk away from this all but these are family matters. Quite literally, being adopted by white people, and family meaning humanity. The liberation of my people and the liberation of white people from whiteness, from white supremacy, are not as far apart as we may think — unfortunately…
