Gods, flippin' America.
I hate that, in America's hyper-racialized mindscape, colors become shorthand for people.
I hate that—so hyper-racialized is that mindscape—to the American ear, the racialized meanings can tend to become the primary meanings of color words: that, even when used to describe color, and no more, such words tend to take on racialized implications.
Ye gods. Is there no way out?
So entrenched has such usage become that I recently heard a local heathen elder advise against using the term “wight” in public without qualification—land-wight, tree-wight—lest someone should mishear racial implications.
(The term “wight”—literally a “being”—refers to the other, non-human, peoples of the land. Some speak of “land-spirits” and the like, but personally I prefer "wight" because it doesn't specify kind of being—personally, I don't believe in spirits—only that they are.)
And yet. And yet.
Last night, the ancient language of the rite of Imbolc opened up before me with a possibility of hope for a greater enrichment.
-
Asatru and Heathen people from the US started avoiding the term "wight" after an international incident in which a famous author,