There is only about two or three steps between "white man's burden" and "white male privilege," and as antagonists in the larger construction of human tribal instincts, these willful distortions of intent and meaning manage to sell you isolation (of self or of your fellow travelers) or justified anger and conflict. Both exaggerated mirrors, the two sides are locked together. Their mutuality is insured by their meanings. The second is born of the first which should indicate a level of linkage and dependence that will forever inform a dialogue based on these terms. Thus to move the subject of race and all of its assumptions, a new vocabulary must be agreed on that neither denies nor stays stuck in the past.
"This journal is not a mere literary diversion. The further I progress, reducing to order what my past life suggests, and the more I persist in the rigor of composition--of the chapters, of the sentences, of the book itself--the more do I feel myself hardening in my will to utilize, for virtuous ends, my former hardships. I feel their power." --Jean Genet
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