Welcome to the white, white world Pt2

Cnging the narrative so it tells the stories of those who haven't been heard before

Cosmetic companies are making 4 Billion Euros from selling skin-whitening creams, in India alone.

When you ask the people who are using them why they're doing it, they often say because dark is dirty and every pretty person from the commercial is white. And they're painfully right about the second one, I've not yet seen a single advertisement with a person of the skin color of the majority of Nepali people.

3/4 Of people use skin whitening creams in India and Nepal, the obsession to be something else than what you are is huge. Companies are telling you that you don't have to accept that this is who you are, because you can change it.

I've been told a lot that I'm pretty because I am white while other girls are told they are pretty even though they're black. I usually just say "Thank you, you are pretty too", then they say "That's not true", and then I don't know what to say. The elephant in the room in my situation is "White guilt privilege". I feel bad for being annoyed about the 10th time people are calling me pretty when actually I'm lucky to have an easy game accepting how I look. Everyone around me has a much harder time doing so because their society convinced them that they were born ugly.

Writing this feels like walking on ice, I thought I was relatively woke about how racism still lingers in our societies here and there.

But I've found out that I was really only getting the white-caucasian, highschool educated, luxembourgish upper-middle class, non-disabled, cisgender part of the story. I'll use my take on racism in America as an example here: when asked about good movies I often mentioned "The help", "Hidden Figures", "Freedom Writers" and "The Blind Side", because I thought the messages of these stories were relevant and empowering for black people whose stories have never properly appeared on the screen. Little did I know that these movies probably did more harm than good for the empowerment of black people in America, because, in each of them, black people are powerless victims until a white person comes and saves them. The main characters of these movies praised for anti-racism were all white (Hidden figures as an exception). It's so absurd that all these were all written and directed by white people too, and praised by white people.

No one really cared about what black people though of "their movies", for example when Katherine Johnson commented that the way her story was portrayed in "Hidden Figures" is not at all how it happened, no newspaper was ever keen to mention this. This video shows just how much these movies were made to only seemingly empower black people, but actually, they were made to reassure white people that racism is far enough away, so that they don't have to be really "woke" about it anymore.

Many people believe racism is quite a thing of the past, the freaking whitening creams are clearly showing they're wrong. Yet again, privileged people are living in their bubble with pink glasses on, some filled up to their necks with the belief they're nation is the best, and tell you that these people never knew anything but complaining this "apparent" discrimination instead of doing something about it really.

White supremacy protects the privileges we hold, maybe especially in America, but if you look just a little more closely than the rest, you'll find it in a lot of places, too many places.

Obviously, it's not entirely my place to talk here as an outsider, though when I hear some people coming from my corner of the world talking so all-knowingly about an Asia that they know nothing about, I feel very far away from them by now.

Don't feel offended now when I describe my worst version of these people: they come for a two-week holiday, they get a shinier picture of everything, which they know but don't mind, as they're really on there to be able to return home to say: " They're so poor but they're so happy!", and to be more "grateful" about the completely disproportionate wealth they have at home in comparison to the street vendors on Nepali streets that they won't stop complaining about. And maybe they'll say how spiritually enlighting and harmonious they're monastery retreats were. And probably they'll forget all about the poverty they saw after the first week back while driving to their yoga class in their range rovers.

yoyo, here's our privilege bubble:

I wanted and want to be as opposite to these people as possible, and I guess I did a big step away from their narrow-mindedness when I chose to say in more of a village, living and working with locals only. I wasn't oblivious to my privilege before I came, but you do do a great deal of thinking about it when you're confronted with it every day. I understand better now, how the lottery of birth is like a monopoly game, and I and almost everyone I know have been playing for three days when Nepali people and everyone they know are joining the game: all the good streets have been sold, and everyone knows that you'd have to scrape together all the other shitty streets to even come close to the wealth of the lucky bastard who owns Park lane.

Here's where I feel like walking on ice a little, because I'm risking to pity myself talking about "White guilt privilege", whining about how I'm so uncomfortable that I have been given so much so easily when the people I've met in Nepal would've deserved it just as much, but got nothing. Talking about how that makes me sad, would be centering whiteness, again... Just like the movies I just raged about.

But hey, I write here to tell you how it's like, and I can't make myself any less white. And even though stories from other points of view ought to be heard more, I can't change my place here. I don't know how Nepali people feel when they meet me, if they don't know about their relative poverty, or if they're ignoring it. If they loathe or look up to my being there, I just don't know.

I just know how I feel, so that's all I can say. I feel guilty sometimes, but I realize it's no use to anyone. I'm angry to be marked as belonging to an identity that I want nothing to with (e.g: White people that come to Nepal to take selfies with children and give them chocolate). It feels like I can do nothing against being seen as one of them, and can't blame people for asking me for chocolate and pictures, though I do get annoyed at anyone who created and upholds this image of "the white sensational savior".

White guilt privilege disempowers people but actually empowers no one in return, I'm of no use when I contemplate the unfairness of the world 24/7, and put the weight if the world on my shoulders when that makes doing something against the Inequality I see now, so much harder. This being said, I do believe that everyone who has relatively great power HAS to become aware of that and start to confront their responsibility to act also on behalf of the unprivileged when they decide how they use their power.

Really that just means that we all ought to do two things, one of them is easy the other one quite hard:

1. Realize that we are privileged

If you're not blind, you'll do this eventually. Inequality is becoming more visible, and you don't have to travel to countries like Nepal spending what one Nepali earns per year, alone on your flight ticket, to realize your mere luck. You can just go on the web and search up some sensible things for once, for example, "Human" the documentary by Yann-Arthus Bertrand. I'll even put the trailer here because I know y'all ain't too crazy about being confronted with your privilege.

2. Stop being arrogant

This is though, cause we a born into the ignorance og how hard is life for most people in this world today. We don't mean bad, but we're also comfortable in not having to care. That's what privilege is: comfortable. There comes a point where we are so engulfed in our own lives that we become unable to feel the hardships of people completely different to us, like our own, that is when I say: you should come to Nepal, fill up one some real-life struggles. And then laugh about how you almost lost your shit because Golden Bean no longer sells Matcha Latte.

And for all my Luxembourgish peeps, have some common sense and please don't consider yourself as being anything less than super rich in comparision with most people in this world.

In Nepal average salary per month is around 50€, 100 times less. They spent a euro with the same consoderation as we spent 100.

This is AVERAGE income in Luxembourg, whicheans that even with earners havinc to sustain families they still count among the 3% rochest people on the planet. Most of us are among 1% richest, you go ahead and take a moment for that yeah.

Now that you know this, you can watch this and realize how DISGUSTINGLY RICH we are, but yeah have a nice day.

https://youtu.be/uWSxzjyMNpU

White supremacy protects the privileges we hold. Let's take a step back say: our uncomfortable feelings are not the problems we ought to tend to. Racism is.

And because racism is serious and Inequality so big, and not being arrogant so hard when everybody else kind of is. I'm ending on a sarcastic note because I really don't know what to tell you at this point.

Part 2 of the rant is over, for real now.

If I attacked everybody whis white and owns a new range rove and has been to Asia as a tourist, I'm sorry but actually I'm really not so sorry at all.

Buonos Dias.

in Friendship and Solidarity with ALL my bros and sisters,

Teddy Smile