#mena stuff

May this Easter season bring you the peace we all deserve!

I was tagged by @rhunae (Thanks darlin! <3)

Rules: Put your music on shuffle and post the first 10 songs that come up and tag 10 blogs.  

Florence + The Machine - Jenny of Oldstones

Sam Cardon  - A Loa’s Bargain

Nightwish - Yours is An Empty Hope

Justin Timberlake - Drink You Away

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll

George Michael - One More Try

The Cure - Same Deep Water As You

Peter Murphy - Should the World Fail to Fall Apart

Siouxsie and the Banshees - Israel

Johnny Cash - The Kneeling Drunkard’s Plea

Tagging: Anybody following me who wants to? lol

Mmm, I can’t really answer this question for you, I think? It’s something you have to decide for yourself.

Ask yourself a couple of questions. First off, do you feel that you in any way have social repercussions for your identity?

Do you feel that your identity is important enough that someone saying you are white is wrong? As a comparison, if you have any queer experiences, and someone calls you straight/cis/whatevs you know that little feeling in your gut like “not quite friendo”? I get a similar feeling when people insist on calling me white (even though that actually happens fairly rarely. White people can smell the “foreign” on you as far as I can tell).

Think on why you want to reclaim this part of your identity that, through no fault of your own, was alienated from you. Is it because you feel that you belong to that group, even if other people may not be as open to it? Or, is it because, and this is going to sound bad, but you need to ask yourself this. Is it because you want to wear the trappings of an oppressed group w/o actually feeling that oppression yourself.

That said, it’s really common for ppl who are “white enough” looking to be cut off from their heritages by society or their parents in an attempt to give them an advantage. My brother and cousins got all the “how to act less brown” lessons and I got all the “how to look more white” ones, including not being allowed to speak in my own damn native languages until at this point I’ve wholly lost them.

So if you decide for yourself, after analyzing your motives (and “helping my brother” is a totally valid motive!) then by all means, do what you can to reintegrate the stuff that you were denied. But do it carefully and respectfully. Remember that you didn’t grow up in that culture and if someone who did is like “ur doin it wrong sit down and listen for a minute” do that. 

Just because you may have a right to be there doesn’t make you an expert, okay?