All this. Having Thomas Jefferson be an atrocious yet revered (not by me) colonizing ancestor of mine, I strive to be the kind of person that would make him turn in his own grave. Original post from Chamieka House-Osuya 👇🔽 "I don’t usually write on Sundays, but I’ve been sitting with something I can’t put down. It came out of a wonderful conversation I had recently, and I keep turning it over: what would it actually mean for white people to be good ancestors? When I first heard the phrase “good ancestor,” it didn’t feel simple or inspiring. It felt heavy. Not because it’s some new concept, but because it put words to something a lot of us have been going around for years without ever saying out loud. We keep having the same conversations about race and history. They keep falling apart in the same spots every single time. That exhaustion is real and it adds up. It does not level off the more you go through it. It gets heavier, especially when you are being honest and what you get back is defensiveness instead of any real reflection. A lot of white folks hear these conversations and immediately turn inward in entirely the wrong way. They are not reflective or curious, but merely protective, making it about defending themselves instead of facing what is being said. And then we end up completely stuck, because the focus shifts to their fragile feelings, and the actual harm never gets dealt with. It just sits there, unchallenged and unchanged, while everyone argues around it in circles. That is the pull in two directions at once: wanting to be honest about what is real, while knowing how quickly honesty gets shut down when it feels too close. Still, if anything is going to move, there has to be a way forward for the people who are actually willing to do something different. It cannot be a way that makes it easier, but just a way that keeps the responsibility exactly where it belongs. The idea of being a good ancestor does that in a way that feels incredibly grounded and real. Being a good ancestor means not looking away, but sitting with what came before you and being honest about what you’ve gained from it. It is a defining decision point where you either continue what was handed down, or you actively interrupt it.

Here’s a link to Beah Richards poem: http://www.drmomma.org/2015/02/beah-richards-black-woman-speaks-of.html?m=1

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