Spring break travel a means to reinforce white supremacy

"Spring break reminded me I can’t trust white people," wrote a university student, who believes his white classmates followed in the footsteps of their violent white supremacist ancestors with their spring break getaways.

WORLD MAY 3. 2021 15:08

A student who identifies „as Filipinx, Indigenous and queer activist” was aparently outraged that his white classmates visited Mexico and Hawaii during spring break. In the US, the tradition of university students travelling somewhere to party during their spring breaks has deep roots. Andre Lawes Menchavez devoted an entire op-ed to this topic in The Daily, the University of Washington s student newspaper, where he works as opinion editor.

According to Menchavez, by travelling during the holiday white students were following in the footsteps of their violent white supremacist ancestors and endangering the lives of local communities for the sake of their own aesthetic pleasure. Menchavez took point with his classmates uploading pictures of their vacation to the internet because he considered it to be an expression of their „colonial aspirations.” He said a former friend had uploaded a picture of her friends trading shots in a Mexican restaurant „maskless, as a masked server frantically tried to clear off their table.”

Upon seeing the photo, Menchavez realised that „even the white people you consider your friends in ths space, even those who are majoring in the progressive departments, are still not to be trusted,” according to his tweet. While „you say you love and respect my voice as an abolitionist and decolonial queer activist of color, your actions prove you to be cut from the same raggedy cloth as the nasty colonizers I despise for murdering and assimilating my ancestors,” he writes.

Menchavez recounted that white women in his race relations seminar „actively led our discussions on topics like condemning white supremacy.” Weeks later, however, they „hopped on flights to Mexico and Hawaii,” which he apparently denounces.

Noting that „locals of Hawaii are even calling their acts of tourism a form of terrorism that is endangering their communities,” Menchavez said that „whites will continue to do what whites have always done in our history — create carnage at the expense of minority communities in order to obtain their own selfish desires.”

” I now have a reminder of who and what I must fight against to achieve anti-racism in my communities,” he concluded. „Just like my ancestors, I will take note of colonial white supremacist forces pushing against the collective healing and liberation of me and my community, and I am not afraid to stoke the fires that I ll ignite on my own to burn white supremacy to the ground.”

WORLD

Tags:

colonialism, racism, spring break, travel, university, white students, white supremacy