Disconnecting from Whiteness

Reconnecting to Celtic ancestors has opened up unexpected revelations regarding socio-political aspects of our society that I hadn't felt or considered before. They were fringe ideas that didn't speak to me - that I now consider foundational to progress and worth sharing.

"White" and "Canadian" are two terms that have de-coupled from my identity now that I've re-connected to Celtic ancestors.

Whiteness is dependent on the erasure of the rich European cultural heritage with which we came to this country. Before the 18th century, no one thought of themselves as "white".

“Whiteness” was applied in the census in America. Canada recorded “race/tribe” as country of origin, even when the citizen was born in Canada.

My Irish ancestors were likely categorized and separated primarily by religion in a time when there were very few melanated people in Ireland. Historically, non-melanated people were culturally diverse, with significant spiritual beliefs that shaped the way we perceived the world and our place in it.

The Invention of the White Race

By Theodore W. Allen
Long heralded as a classic study of the origin of white privilege from the activist who first coined the term, Theodore W. Allen’s work remains an indispensable resource for making sense of our conflicted present, a reference point for everyone from Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Nell Irvin Painter to Reni-Eddo Lodge and Aníbal Quijano.

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In "The Invention of the White Race", Theodore W. Allen "details the creation of the "white race" by the ruling class as a method of social control, in response to labour unrest precipitated by Bacon's Rebellion. Distinguishing European Americans from African Americans within the labouring class, white privileges enforced the myth of the white race through the years and has been central to maintaining ruling-class domination over the entire working class."(Versobooks/Invention of the White Race)

Bacon's rebellion was precipitated on wanting to get rid of the Indigenous people on the land that Bacon and his cronies wanted for themselves, so... not so much the heart-warming story of labour-class solidarity. It was more about forcing Indigenous genocide to support a land grab.

The rebellion resulted in the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 which strictly regulated interaction between slaves and free citizens and served as the foundation of slave legislation. It also began the institutionalization of "whiteness" and the privileges afforded them.

Aside from the institutionalization of racism and anti-blackness, the adoption of "whiteness" erased all diversity and ancestral connection to cultural roots, beliefs and belonging for European immigrants and instead smeared them all into a blancmange of "whiteness".

We were no longer French, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Ukrainian, Polish, Hungarian, German, Dutch etc... we were "white" and the value of whiteness was that we wouldn't be treated like Black or Indigenous people.

The promise was that we would be safe.

White people could be poor, but at least we weren't Black or Indigenous, and we were promised we'd always be treated "white" if we didn't make too much of a fuss about being poor. Newly "White" people everywhere jumped on board.

[I don’t assume any of this happened consciously.]

Not only did "whiteness" create a superiority and a separation between European immigrants, Black slaves, black freemen and Indigenous people; it also cut immigrants off from the roots that nourished us in our homelands.

We lost touch with our ancestors. We lost touch with our cultural beliefs.

We lost touch with our ancient and ongoing identity.

We lost touch with our belonging.

We also lost touch with our own colonization by oppressive invaders and supremacy establishments.

For your enjoyment - a collection of anti Irish, Scottish and Welsh images and penal laws.

We lost touch with the source of the trauma and the shame and adopted a fresh new identity. Now we belong to "whiteness". Whiteness is such a poor, anemic substitute for the richness of our ancestral cultural grounding.

A “White Canadian” Cut Off

When I was 10, my teacher gave us a multicultural project where we presented our family heritage to the class and shared any stories and items we had in the home about our cultural heritage. My father responded to my ask with an angry, emphatic "We're CANADIAN." and that was the end of that.

I was envious of my classmates' stories of Europe and the Caribbean and South America and Indonesia and Asia. For a long time my ancestral identification started in the Canadian prairies with my grandparents. I knew nothing further than that and I was afraid to ask.

My family's favourite response to emotional anxiety is to cut off. This is a strategy outlined in Bowen's Family Systems Theory and it is a band-aid to pain, not a healing. It's like amputation instead of antibiotics.

This cut off is exactly the emotional reaction I got from my dad when asking about our ancestry. His emotional anxiety and pain regarding his ancestors was managed by cutting off ancestral connection and claiming roots begun anew, independently in Canada, with no connection to the past and all that fuckery and trauma.

I can understand the desire for that.

I can understand the desire to form a new identity, fresh and unburdened by the oppression, dehumanization, degradation, inequity, shame and trauma of what was delivered to my ancestors in Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales.

My Celtic culture was outlawed everywhere.

The penal times meant no worship, no tartans, no bagpipes, no Irish language, no Scots Gaelic, no clans, no land, no ancient earth wisdom or practice of our spiritual ways. It was made illegal (and viewed as "ignorant" and backwards and barbaric) to worship trees or even possess the seeds of our sacred trees and plants.

The Celtic ways of life in Ireland and Scotland were outlawed and scorned. Starting in the mid-18th century, the Highland peoples were forcibly removed from their lands to make way for sheep pasture. They were relocated along the already populous coast to fish, kelp or quarry. Many Highland peoples were given assisted passage to the new world or were gathered under false pretense and forced onto ships of immigration.

Then there was the “famines”.

The Celtic peoples of Scotland and Ireland have been through several “famines”. The Seven Ill Years in the 1690's killed up to 15% of the Scottish population due to crop failure and war time economic slumps. Many more Scots immigrated to Ireland, just in time to go through the Great Famine starting in 1847.

My family has hemochromatosis because it helped us survive the famines. There wasn't even really a famine in Ireland and Scotland. It was a potato blight that affected one crop; but because of the socio-economic and political oppression by England, the Irish and Scottish people starved and died and left for the New World en masse. It's estimated that over 250 000 Scottish and Irish immigrants came to the Americas between 1717 - 1775, and another million immigrated in the 19th century.

That's a lot of fucking Celts in North America.

Celts whose ancestors on this land have been almost completely cut off from our culture and spiritual identity and opted instead for becoming "white" and "Canadian".

As I said earlier, "white" is an anemic panacea in comparison to the deeply nourishing richness of Celtic spirituality, culture, language and identity. Whiteness has nothing to offer except not being Black or Indigenous; and that is valuable only as long as we want to preserve a system of inequity, oppression and supremacy based on melanin.

As a reconnecting Celt, I have more identity in common with Indigenous world view and belief than I do with any of the created systems of whiteness operating in North America. None of the "white" systems of hierarchy and privilege based in oppression of black and brown bodies nourish me like my Celtic foundations.

The same is true of my identity in "Canada". It is a place name that erases the diverse Indigenous peoples that had established civilizations and nations on Turtle Island long before European settlers arrived. "Canada" erases the truth of that history and the truth of who actually stewards and protects and has rights to this land in the first place.

The **Canadian Native Flag** was designed by Kwakwaka’wakw artist Curtis Wilson. His design for the flag is meant to represent First Nations in Canada to the public. We hope this Indigenous Peoples flag brings a better understanding of the First Nations of Canada and a vision for a unified Canada that still revels in its diversity and history rooted by the Indigenous Peoples and First Nations Tribes.

"Canada" leads us to believe that Turtle Island was empty and Europeans came in and claimed what was unclaimed and free for the taking.

Except it wasn't.

Gross beliefs of supremacy made the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island invisible and disposable as a people. They weren't deserving of respect or honour as they were, and their value was in erasing them and assimilating them into the "white" society so that the parasite class could take Indigenous land without consequence.

It is creepy to see how treatment of Indigenous people by the British and European settlers, paralleled the treatment of the Scottish and Irish and Welsh in the UK. Take their land, forcibly move them to less productive areas, make it hard for them to survive, outlaw their language, cultural and spiritual practices and push a narrative of the people as primitive, backwards, lacking value or worth, useless and despicable. Push a social narrative that results in self-loathing and self-hatred and a disconnect from the foundations of identity that give meaning and worth to our lives.

I can only guess that my ancestors never healed their trauma and that unhealed trauma made it seem more appealing to disconnect from the pain of their own cultural oppression and become "white" and take on the role of supremacy and oppressor. Leave the trauma behind and be born anew in a new land, as a landowner and not a tenant - but don't think too much about the people that were here before us.

Don't consider how Indigenous people are being dispossessed in a similar fashion. Don't recognize or acknowledge that our abundance and prosperity is the result of an Indigenous people's genocide and oppression. It's easier to see them as "other", (since now we're "white", not Celtic, now we're "Canadian" which is another name for "white") and less valuable, fearful and strange. It's better to be the bully than be bullied.

In doing this we traumatized ourselves a second time.

There is so much shame in our existence as displaced Celts on Turtle Island. We were oppressed and shamed for hundreds of years for who we are in our homelands and then we participated in oppressing and shaming others on Turtle Island. We thought we could get away with it if we called ourselves "white" and called this place "Canada". The shame is still there until we heal it, and we can only heal it by feeling it.

The fear of feeling the hurt is what stops us from healing shame.

Be not afraid.

The shame isn't who we are, it's what we've done and mistakes can be fixed and reconciliation can be made. We can act differently. Shame wants to tell us that the way we got it wrong means that we are wrong - our existence is wrong. That's very dramatic of us. Our shame is a little drama queen trying to avoid doing the work.

Healing the shame means feeling the shame which allows us the room to find our identity in deep and nourishing ancestral foundations. Healing our shame and trauma opens the door for us to connect to who we really are, and where we really come from and the ancestors that are waiting to teach us.

In my case, I am Celtic, and we are beautiful fucking magick.