2nd year in grad school I promised myself I’d stop talking about “racism” & opt for terms like “white supremacy” “affective whiteness” in academic situations.

convos definitely pivoted, & the onus of responsibility & representing the “problem” of race fell on white folx.

I think back, as a very young scholar, very new to graduate school discourse, & how afraid I was to speak about white supremacy or the overwhelming whiteness around me.

How that structures. When I changed my grammar, so many encounters became uncomfortable.

uncomfortable in that I was choosing to leave the normalized language of diversity & the issue of racism, & instead getting to the source.

Most profs & fellow students were taken aback when I would say “white supremacy” or “affective whiteness.”
Many responsed not so well.

for many white folx—especially those who count themselves as educated, the specialists in their fields—to change the grammar on institutional racism, for whiteness to be articulated, for the responsibility of race & representing to be white peoples & not ours, is discomfiting.

the question became, how to depart from this normalized discourse on racism which demands my affective & intellectual labor, & little from my white peers?

The change of grammar was needed. Discovered this only after constantly feeling irritated by having to “represent”