_I am sure many would proffer that this is a nitpicking of sorts; - TopicsExpress

_I am sure many would proffer that this is a nitpicking of sorts; refocussing minute details in language so as to only hopefully reconstruct perception. This, to great extents, is true. I am nitpicking, focusing heavily on the structure of wording in our language. Language is the means by which we communicate the world we perceive. It builds the realness of the world around us in many respects. Small details add up, and when reiterated for years, decades, and even centuries, these small details become necessary building blocks for the way we define things, the way we see the world. It is very true that people have strongly identified with their race: priding themselves in their heritage, their culture, the history of those who forged the way for them. However, especially in minority populations who have been subjected to standards of identification which are distinctly and blatantly not their own, it is important to break free from this history of subjugation, of a literal slavery to a history which only works to remind that we are bound to structure, that our individual agency is second to structure when it comes to how we allow ourselves to be identified. There are fears – great fears and anger – which arise when one is confronted with the idea of re-writing one’s history. We know this in the fight to regain control of how our histories are told, many minority populations fighting to end a white writing of their histories. However, is it not our duty to take control of our histories, destroying what we have accepted as our identities and to build them anew for ourselves? Recently – and I will end on this note – I stumbled upon a quote attributed to a female Muslim student named Noor Tagouri, who wants to be the first hijabi American anchorwoman and to change the perception of Muslim women in the public eye. She says: “For a star to be born, there is one thing that must happen: a gaseous nebula must collapse. So collapse. Crumble. This is not your destruction. This is your birth.” Break down the walls of identities built around us, which were never our own from the start. It is not a destruction of the self, but a recreation of who we are, and we should own it. We are our own selves, slaves to no one but our freedom to exist as our own._ ~Undoing Race, 2014