Whiteness functions as a universal worldview that often goes unnoticed until it is consciously challenged, and I have internalised the tendency to centre white perspectives in my own creative work and daily interactions. But no more. Prepare for me to become even more unhinged as I near the completion of my 4th book: I don’t see colour.
Part one of my book focuses on whiteness not as a skin colour, but as a worldview. And this week, I was confronted with two brilliant examples of this.
First was when my daughters started watching The Summer I Turned Pretty. The youngest one has been reading the book and was shocked to discover that Belly is Asian. Because of course, she had imagined her as white.
And secondly was when I scrolled through Instagram, landing on that clip of Toni Morrison being interviewed by Jana Wendt on Australian 60 Minutes.
Both of these things highlight how white is the norm and how whiteness is at the centre of everything. White is considered baseline, with white perspectives treated as universal. I know this. I have thought about it (a lot); I have written 37 pages on it, and still, as I went through a round of editing on my book this morning, I was struck by how much I was STILL centring whiteness.
It was subtle - phrases like “I am critical of systems, not people. I believe that people only behave in ways that have been reinforced to them, as acceptable,” and pages dedicated to the description of Empire (ok maybe that one wasn’t so subtle).
But I realised that you, the woman of the global majority who has been in these rooms, who has lived within the systems of Empire her whole life, who has had micro-aggressions thrown at her, who has been downed in white tears, who has had to do so much apologising and managing of white feelings and justifying of her very exsistance, who has had to sit and listen to how tough other white women have had it (as if this is the suffering olymics and we’re being measured for our gold medals) and has done enough emotional labour to last several lifetimes, you do not need me to explain.
You deserve better. You deserve for me to be brave enough to say out loud exactly what you have swallowed your whole life.
Because you, like me, have lived it. You feel it. On a deep, energetic level. In your bones, in your body.
I am just giving you the language.
So today I edited my book. Hard.
Paragraphs. Gone. Apologising, softening. History.
The book is sharp.
It is the most uncompromising and unapologetic I have ever been.
And I thought, if I, someone who actively studies this and seeks it out, can still unconsciously centre whiteness, then it is going to be fucking hard for anyone to do this alone.
This is my gift. This is what I am good at.
I have done so much editing in my work and my own life; I understand all the ways whiteness weasels its way in. I know all the places it is hiding.
If you are white and reading this, understand that you are witnessing, not being addressed. Your comfort is not my concern here.
Women of the Global Majority, I am speaking to you. If you do not decentre whiteness, then you are doomed to reinforce it. Empire made the rules; the unseen architecture, a program that you unconsciously run.
Stop protecting it. Create new structure, new rules, new architecture.
I have two ways to help you.
Outside in - Build Your Temple
4 sessions to build an external representation of work.Inside first - Where Empire lives in your body
A foundational session - the first of 4 to identify the core subluxation/belief that is driving you right now.
This email is 100% Leandra, from my heart and my head. No AI. Although Substack does have a transcript feature that I used.
