Ken Burch
2 min readMay 22, 2023

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"white" is not a term you have to "claim". It's simply a part of my origins, and I've said this to you before.

It has a somewhat different connotation in the US than it does in Denmark.

In the US, whiteness is about benefiting from the historic effects of slavery, Jim Crow, and the efforts some bitter, spiteful people of my heritage to undo some of the small measures of progress people who are Black/Brown/Indigenous/Jewish/Muslim have made towards justice.

On Medium, virtually any discussion of the concept of "whiteness" is grounded in the American or British historical context.

Denmark does not have a measurable history of slavery. Nor has it been an imperial power.

But Danes have benefited from trade relations with countries who have practiced slavery/apartheid/Jim Crow.

And more recently, you have elected several successive governments who have imposed vicious, white supremacist restrictions on immigrants, and have demonized generally dark-skinned Muslim immigrants in the process of imposing these restrictions, even though those immigrants are not the cause of your country's problems- most of which, as is the case with any other European country, are grounded in the inequities, injustices and anxieties imposed by late 20th-early 21st century austerity capitalism and the war it has waged on the full-employment economy and the social welfare state which had previously kept your country in a state of near-flawlessness.

I have once again addressed your pointless questions- questions you knew the answer to all along. Kindly don't keep repeating those questions, because they are tiresome and pointless and play no positive or useful role in any discussion.

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Ken Burch
Ken Burch

Written by Ken Burch

Retired Alaska ferryboat steward, grandparent, sometime poet. Radical yet independent of dogma. Likes nice days, playing banjo and not as yet dying of Covid.

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