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More on white (and off-white) identitySubmitted by Prometheus 6 on September 23, 2003 - 5:54am.
on Race and Identity For some reason I think it possible the title may offend, yet it's the most accurate I can think of. Today's posts in the Identity Blogging thread come from Erica at Swirlspice, Kim at Mizzkyttie's Mind and Robin at obstreperous_girl.Erica comes from a place that, biology be recognized, most of us are at: being of mixed-race: We all know by now that I'm biracial. Half black, half white. I thought about trying to answer these questions as they are. As if I'm white. And it's not possible. Because I never think of myself as white. I think of myself as half white, too, ya know. Sometimes. If the questions were about being black, it might be easier, but only a little. Mostly I just think of myself as being mixed (or swirl). Because, as I believe Halle Berry said her mom told her, you look black and the world's gonna treat you that way. I see brown skin in the mirror. Most times, people can't even tell by looking that I'm mixed. I don't think. It's not like people ask. So my answers come more from the standpoint of what it's like to be biracial. Neither black nor white.
I'll let you read on her experiences at her place, but I'm going to quote one more thing here, something I noticed myself years back. Whites are not advantaged; they are free of handicaps. Whatever the starting point, Whites can proceed through life without preconceived notions of their relative ability to succeed, accomplish, advance. Non-Whites bear the weight of lowered expectations. When they perform to similar standards, it's either viewed as exceptional, or still not good enough.
This is why white folks dislike so much Black progressive rhetoric. It tends to say white people are privileged and a poor white boy knows that's just not the case. He'd feel it. So he rejects it. The need for programs to compensate for systemic racism needs to be explained in terms of a system that drags on minorities rather than one that rewards mainstream folks because they're NOT rewarded…they're just not obstructed either. This, by the way, is part of the race problem that's not what you think it is. Kim comes from a mixed race perspective as well, but the races are Filipino and White: Thing is, I’m neither here-nor-there. I’m not white, I’m not Filipino. When filling out paperwork, and faced with the section marked "Check Which Applies: Caucasian, African American, Native American, Hispanic, etc.", unless there’s a box marked "Other", I don’t know which box to fill in. It would be so easy to put a little check mark in the "white" box, but to me, that would be like scribbling over the Asian half of me - an Asian part that’s really more Polynesian, with a blend of Hispanic culture in there, as well. Some would say that "it’s only a box, it’s only a bit of paperwork," but in my eyes, it’s so much more complex than that.
Again, much more at her place. I quote this out of a distant recognition of her issues. My daughters' mother, my ex, is half Japanese and half Irish. Stunning woman to this day, and she had to deal with the Asian femininity stereotype too; to some degree, even from me (hey, I had to be young and stupid at some time in my life). And my daughter has had to deal with the multi-category error as well: Japanese people see the Japanese in her as clearly as Black people see the Black in her. She has been claimed by both and screamed on for not claiming back because she really preferred the no-race concept to the all-race one. It was the world that taught her race matters more than I. All of my interpersonal relations, from childhood ‘til now, have been relations with people of a race different than my own. Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, Native American - I am many of these, but none of these, all at once. When with White people, I am viewed as Filipino. When I’m with Filipino people, I’m instantly marked as White. As for other races, I know I don’t seamlessly blend in with them, either. Almost every man who’s been attracted to me, has lead me to question whether they thought I was beautiful based on me, on who I am, or on the "Asian Tiger-Lady Exotic Lotus Flower Kama Sutra Sex Creature" stereotype of Asian femininity.
Robin is white, but in an interracial relationship. Canadian, female, 27, brought up in a middle-class home, bi-sexual (although in a het relation right now) white, english speaking (which holds a unique distinction in Canada), almost BA educated, grew up in a small town-now living in a small city, and in an inter-racial relationship (he: Black, American, Upper-Middle Class background, PhD).
Starting with a list of the benefits of being white (more accurately, a list of the obstacles she's seen that she seen that she hasn't had to deal with) she shifts to writing stream-of-consciousness style. So, I guess being white means being granted certain status and rights that I accept without question. I don't have to think about it. I remember a conversation with another student one day. We were talking about a documentary we had watched where an aboriginal women remarked that she didn't know she was an "indian" until she was made aware of this fact by white people. This student couldn't grasp how this women did not know she was an "Indian," to which I told her about how Kama (nickname for the afore-mentioned partner) didn't realize he was black until he was almost a teenager. She found this idea absurd. I asked her when she realized she was white. Silence.
(This is a great deal harder than I anticipated) But she does the work, and presents something of a tangled mess…which, if you're going to be accurate, is probably the only thing you can do. |
