what if poc meant people of culture?

yesterday, i was doing a walking meditation and i got to thinking about narrative strategy and racism (lol surprise surprise).

i’ve been thinking a lot about whiteness and the survival/solidarity that’s been created between non-white people. often i find myself thinking about (people of) color being in opposition to whiteness.

but in a very obvious way, that is staying fully in the frame defined by whiteness.

and a clear part of narrative strategy is that the person who frames the battle is almost sure to win it.

so, although i understand why we have banded to together under the banner of “color,” i can’t help but think that we have to create something that will integrate this reality, but also take us to a higher plane.

“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.” — audre lorde

_“you will never solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it.” _

as i was walking, i thought “what if poc stood for people of culture instead?”

in some ways, that could be seen as a backwards step. if you see culture as only something that comes from the past, it could indeed be a backwards movement.

but as i’m learning about culture and how to shape it, i’m wondering if being an active creator/shaper of culture could be a plane that we could all get on.

and in order to be a shaper of culture, you have to be clear and explicit about the culture you’re trying to shape. as the world becomes more aware of how oppression works, it could get clearer and clearer who is trying to create oppressive cultures and who isn’t (see the spectrum of transformation).

maybe people who aren’t people of culture would begin to feel ashamed of not having culture (since whiteness is mostly void and amnesia). and people who are culture makers would become the folks who are revered. and, of course, in order to make culture well, you must understand the past to know how to build on it. so that could take care of the amnesia thing.

anyways, just here tryna think of the reframe so that we can do more of what adrienne said

“how do we let go of i’m right/you’re wrong? how do we shift to we have survived, we are learning, we have agency…” — adrienne maree brown

photo quote of adrienne maree brown with the words quoted above written on it

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