I'm increasingly unsure to what degree whiteness can actually interface with the world outside it. I feel like part of its pathology is that it's a maze of mirrors; the outside isn't 'processed' so much as inverted and repurposed into reflective surfaces for the self

like even when whiteness attempts to be empathetic I feel like it often slides into an overemotionality that's not about humanizing the Other so much as superhumanizing itself for having feelings

for me, the paradox of whiteness comes back to the central political question of my life: how do we practice letting go of a pathological relation to power? what would such a practice look like, and is it possible to keep it from being used to reconstitute the power relation?

side note — @debeccle and @saintfatigue have both pointed me to saidiya hartman's 'scenes of subjection' (1997), which includes theorization about white people's projections onto black people and black suffering. this paragraph feels pertinent — bolding added for emphasis