Our collective humanity is comprised of our individual identities, cultures, and lives.
Too often, we overgeneralize each other’s identities and cultures. Such overgeneralizations spark and perpetuate harmful stereotypes.
People of the global majority are too often called on to validate, defend, and/or debunk these overgeneralizations – the very stereotypes that hurt us.
The notion of “a single truth” or “the universal truth” is white supremacy at work attempting to silence people of the global majority from sharing their identities, perspectives, and lived experiences for multiple truths to exist.
We each hold multiple truths.
Our lived experiences are truths.
Our identities are truths.
Our cultures are truths.
When one person of a marginalized racial identity shares a truth that conflicts with something another person of the same racial identity says, white folx will often question the contradiction and demand a singular truth from BBIA folx.
BBIA folx are too often pressured and expected to explain their truths without acknowledgement or compensation for the emotional labor such discussions take.
Pleas of “help me understand” plague the daily lives of marginalized folx who are not only undoubtedly experts of their own lives, but must too often serve as the unpaid “diversity, equity, and inclusion” consultant in white people’s lives. People of the global majority navigate through the stereotypes and “truths” written by white folx, and our actual lived experiences which are too often denied, denounced, and devalued. We are often gaslighted with relentless questioning to “prove” our truths.
Authenticity in the histories, traditions, identities, cultures, and lives of the global majority does not always show up in the form of literature and written scholarship.
Recognize and understand that the western written word too often perpetuates white supremacy.
The personal, aural sharing done by people of the global majority must be authentically accepted and valued by default.
Actively work to decolonize the idea of a “single” or “universal” truth in our collective humanity.
Listen intently without interrupting when we are sharing our identities, cultures, and lives.
Reflect deeply and internally on what we share.
Trust our truths as authentic by default, worth amplifying and celebrating when we share stories of our life experiences.
Affirm our individual identities and multiple truths within our collective humanity — not by inaccurately replicating our traditions or replicating what we do at all, but rather by amplifying people of the global majority who are doing the daily work of preservation and continuous creation of culture.
Empower our youth to truly hear, vocalize, and amplify each other’s multiple truths.
The truths of our youth are important and necessary or our collective humanity.
ALICE TSUI 徐晓兰 