Understanding Whiteness Part 17: Starting to think about the beginning of the end, of racism
Happily ever after?
The simple truth is that whiteness is here to stay. Race is conceptually embedded into the construction of the modern world and destroying race concepts would require an unimaginable societal reboot. Far more realistic is for us, the human family, to accept whiteness as an ideological position, and for those racialised as white to understand what the character of their whiteness has been, and how it needs to evolve. It sounds face-palmingly obvious, but dominant whiteness needs to accept its past, acknowledge its mistakes and learn how to be better, because, to date, it has behaved terribly. Whiteness needs to evolve, and for that to happen, white people, the custodians of whiteness, unwilling or otherwise, need to learn.
This post is all about how the story might end, and what endings can look like in terms of the physics of storytelling. Understanding this will help establish a vision for what the end of racism (as huge as a statement as that is) might actually look like…
The end?
There’s a fine line between comedy and tragedy; the difference being everything ending happily and everything falling apart irrevocably. Comedy works by misunderstandings and confusions becoming unravelled and fixed, leading to a restoration of order that makes the audience breathe happily and smile. The humour we associate with comedy actually comes from the trip-ups and confusions along the way: people getting things wrong, situations getting muddled up, order being disrupted – all things that the human psyche finds funny. In fact, a comedy is essentially tragic until the last minute, when all the crossed wired are untangled, people are seen for their true selves, and the key protagonist learns lessons that they needed to learn. Comedy is also usually concluded by some kind of union between characters: a marriage or romantic coupling being the most common example. It’s the ultimate act of recognition, where two people (who were previously in some sort of conflict with each other) finally understand each other so completely that they call in love and commit to sharing a life, happily ever after.
Tragedy is different. Tragedy happens when order is not restored. Tragedy is when things fall apart and don’t get put back together again…
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