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4 Reasons Why I Can No Longer Center My Life On Whiteness
I have to embrace my full self.
I recently wrote an article asking White people to resist the urge to center everything in the world around “Whiteness.” It offended quite a few people, I got a lot of flack and in the end, my work got censored. What I realized is that many people didn’t really understand what I meant by “not centering the world around whiteness.” It’s as if they felt it was some type of hate speech or animosity against White people. The fact is, if they were Black like me, they’d fully understand why I made this ask. If they walked in my shoes as a Black woman every single day, it would become their daily mantra too to not center their lives around whiteness. Here are four reasons why as a Black person, we cannot continue to center our lives around Whiteness if we want to preserve our dignity, self-respect, and mental health:
Preserving My Identity
I’m from Sierra Leone, West Africa. When I read history books written by white people who colonized my country, they often refer to us as savage and backward people. In these narratives, they make it clear that because we were so uncivilized, they had to come to occupy our land, steal our natural resources and evangelize us. When I read these accounts, as a black person that would center my life on…
