European-Amerikkkans are lonely. Many of you born with economic privilege, military parents or growing up in poverty have probably learned you must make your own future by yourself and although you were your parents property the day would come where you would be emancipated and perhaps forced out on your own. Some of you may have had to abandon your family or be exiled. Whatever the case many of you have had to rely on your peers for shelter if you even dare ask before things became untenable. Yours is a lonely people. It is common for even poor people of color or recently immigrated European families to at least have a network of people both biologically and socially connected to each other. Some of these networks can not abide a single member going hungry or even homeless. Accommodations will sometimes be made at the expense of the host.
The desire and need to become white upon coming to Turtle Island forced many of your ancestors or even grandparents to mask or abandon their stories and traditions and practices that preserved their kin for generations. Many Irish, Italian, Polish and other Slavic families crossed the atlantic and had to stay tight together. Networks of families were forced into their ghtos and for a time, they were able to have something that was theirs in a country that only wanted their labor but not them. Some Of these families invested in their youth so that they could establish themselves as “Americans”. There were hopes that these youth would be able to find success beyond the ghettos and carry the rest of the family forward. Instead, over generations, the progeny of these folk would have to forsake their roots and culture to preserve themselves and to escape ridicule.
Polish folk in the United Snakes of Amerikkka are part of the largest Slavic diaspora population on Turtle Island. They were part of labor that worked the mines, mills and meat packing plants. A people considered inferior by many Nordik and Saxon-Amerikkkan elites they were considered a threat to the makeup of the “Nordic-Amerikkkan stock”. The same Pseudoscience that supported this belief was used to justify the oppression of Afrikan, Indigenous and Slavs. These beliefs still linger in the Amerikkkan conscientious. We see it how European-Amerikkkans speak of themselves and their families. Only the conservative militant right white supremacist seem take any time to learn about their roots and families culture and mythology.
The intellectual white left liberal will spend time scrutinizing and dissecting the cultures of people of color without examining their own. They will be quick to refer to their own kin as rednecks or white trash. When white folk can not be openly racist they will be classist and treat poor European folk with contempt.
This disconnect and disdain white folks treat each other is only magnified when they encounter folks that are different from themselves. The Amerikkkan libertarian capitalist ideology has trained European folk to distrust and oppress each other and this same ideology has infected other people as well.
If you are a European that wants to combat white supremacy then take sometime to learn your history. Learn what your kin had to go through when they immigrated to Saxon/Nordic occupied Turtle Island. Learn how they were abused and exploited in industrial United Snakes. Explore the beautiful and rich culture and mythology. It is swell if have learned about the struggle and stories of people of color but you must also understand your own. Use that knowledge to appeal to your racist family. Understand the process that lead them to think they way they do about themselves and others and work with that. You can not expect them to surrender their entire worldview in just one argument. This system is generations old and some of you have kin that have only been here for three generations.
Some of you may have toxic relationships with your kin, you can still work on your neighbors or people like your kin and neighbors. You can be of limited help to people of color if you can not love and build with the people you know best. It is hard and unpleasant work but it is why you study and why you organize. This work can not be done for laurels and honor. This work is done because it needs doing and you love people. Do the work so that people of color can do theirs.
PALANTE, SIEMPRE PALANTE!
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