HOW I DISCOVERED I AM WHITE
ByĀ renegademama (Janelle Hanchett)
When I was 14 or so, I asked my grandmother why we didnāt have a āwhite clubā at school. I donāt recall her response, but I do remember feeling particularly smug and vaguely angry that there was a āLatinoā club and a āChineseā club but not a āwhiteā club.
Oh the unfairness! Oh the disparity! Why do we celebrate their heritage but not ours?
And I didnāt think about race again, at least not much, until I dated an African American man in college and a stranger whispered ānigger loverā in my ear one night as he walked by us in a grocery store. Disgusting.
I figured he was a strange exception of horrible racist creature. He was, after all, approximately 97 years old. (Well, 70, but he appeared 97 to my fresh young eyes.)
And then, a few months later, when my boyfriendās roommate took me aside and asked why I have to ātake a good black man who was in college,ā when so many black men were incarcerated. I concluded she was crazy. And mean.
She hurt my feelings. Poor Janelle.
Beyond these few moments, and a couple others, I didnāt really think about race. Well, I thought about how people made arguments āabout raceā when clearly they were not. I mean why do they make race an issue? Itās obviously not.
Oh yeah, I had America all figured out: If ya work hard, you get ahead. And if you donāt get ahead, itās because you made bad decisions. And if you get arrested itās because youāre breaking the law, and people who break the law are more likely to be black. Obviously. Thatās why theyāre always getting arrested. (Howās that for some cyclic logic?)
I knew this to be true because:
America was awful to black people but that was fixed during the Civil Rights movement;
Therefore, we are all on equal footing now and if you donāt succeed itās because you arenāt trying.
I learned it in school. It was fact. School teaches the truth.
And then, graduate school, and Professor Lee.
āNot all white people are white supremacists, but all white people benefit from white supremacy.ā
She made us repeat it like a mantra. At least 3 times. I read Tim Wiseās White Like Me (I have mixed feelings about him now, but I digress) and bell hooks and David Roedigerās Wages of Whiteness and learned how our economic systems benefit from racism and we read about thehistory of American immigration laws (have you ever read them?) and colonialism in the Philippines and elsewhere (yes, America has colonies but we call them āterritoriesā), and we read about redlining and white flight (ever wonder how black people ended up in urban centers?), and we read some DuBois and Omi & Winant and literature by people of color and all of the sudden I realized I had been fucking lied to.
I understood America through white eyes. I understood the world through the mainstream, polished glasses of a nice clean history of āwe used to be bad now weāre not the end.ā
I discovered I was white.
āNot all white people are white supremacists, but all white people benefit from white supremacy.ā
She wanted us to see that as individuals, not all white people are bigoted. But she also wanted us to see that every white person ā whether they are bigoted or not ā benefits from the racially structured hierarchies in America. They benefit from racism.
Yes. Even me. Even though I am not āracist.ā
How? And she explained whiteness. She explained that āwhiteā is the standard. White is the background against which difference is measured.
In other words, itās āwhiteā until further notice. Itās āwhiteā until proven otherwise. Itās āwhiteā or itās the āother,ā and it has nothing to do with actual numbers, percentages of āminorityā population. It has to do with power. It has to do with the culture of power. What do I mean? If a comedy film features a white family, itās a comedy. If it features a black family, itās a blackcomedy.
White is the standard. And Iām white. Therefore, I am standard, and that benefits me.
When I walk into a room, I donāt fear that Iām representing my whole race. I have never acted badly then thought to myself āOh shit, I sure hope they donāt hate all white people now.ā
Or, in other words, even though pretty much every Columbine-type-school-kid-murderer is white, Iāve never developed a distrust for white, socially awkward high school kids.
A few do not represent the whole.
āPrivilege is passed on through history.ā
Whatever. I grew up POOR!
But then I thought about how, in the late 1940s, my grandmother was the first woman editor of the University of Washingtonās newspaper. After she graduated, she and my grandpa bought and ran small newspapers in northern California. The family business they built employed my family members for 40+ years.
In the late 1940s, black people were not allowed to sit in the front of the bus.
How can I deny that my grandparentsā access to education and economic success did not materially affect me in a positive way, directly, through my father? I thought about the loans my parents were able to take with financial backing from my grandparents, and how that benefitted me. My life. My quality of life. The neighborhoods we lived in. The schools we attended. My cultural knowledge.
āWhy donāt we have āWhite History Month?āā
Because White History Month is every month other than February, asshole.
āThe culture of power determines which version of history is told and retold.ā
Prior to the Womenās Rights Movement, women were stuck in the home while men went to work and supported them. But then women were liberated and able to get jobs working outside the home.
WRONG. White, middle to upper class women were āstuck in the home.ā Women of color have ALWAYS āworked out of the home.ā In fact, the women of color were probably working in the homes of the white women about which our history is written.
So one of the most oft-repeated, trusted narratives about American history erases the history of women of color. It is dead fucking wrong. It isnāt even kind of right. They are erased. Non-existent. Unseen.
They are Chapter 10. They are a chapter that ends with ābut then Martin Luther King, Jr., and all is well.ā
They are Chapter 10. I am chapters 1 through forever, and every day I cash in on that fact, whether or not I support the systems making that happen for me.
I realized the reason I had never thought about race was because I was of the privileged one, because I didnāt have to, NOT BECAUSE RACIAL DISPARITY DIDNāT EXIST. I didnāt have to think about race because I was having a fundamentally different life experience than people of color. But I could ignore them, because of my privilege.
I was able to hang out in meltin-pot, āpost-racialā land was because the structures of that society allowed (and encouraged) me to ānot see raceā while continually feeding me narratives about āequality,ā āmulticulturalism,ā ācolor-blindnessā and āghetto urban lifestyles.ā
I spent a lot of time in graduate school in the library, writing at a computer. Like, hours. Whole days. When I had to pee, I would ask the person sitting next to me to watch my stuff so I didnāt have to pack it all up and carry it down the hall to the bathroom. I did it a 100 times.
Once I looked over at the person next to me and my first thought was āOh you canāt ask him. Heāll steal your stuff.
He was a young black man wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt.
I was sickened at myself. I was horrified at my response. There was absolutely nothing different about him than the 100 other people I didnāt hesitate to ask, except he was black.
I realized that not only do I benefit historically and presently, every day, from the color of skin, I have also internalized cultural narratives regarding blacks and whites that manifest whether or not I support them.
āHey, would you mind watching my stuff for a minute?ā
Does it mean my grandmotherās accomplishments are less badass? Nope. Does it mean I do not ādeserveā success? Nope. Does it mean that I am a bad person? Nope.
It means that we live in a highly racialized society rooted in a history of discrimination and that we have a long way to go. It means that I have had an advantage over people of color. Yes, always. Yes, no matter what. Because even if youāre poor and white you can join the culture of power by learning the walk and talk. But you canāt change your skin color.
From the day I was first introduced to this āother story,ā I couldnāt get enough. Not because Iām some sort of saint or conspiracy theorist, but because I was curious. I was interested out of a sense of shared humanity. And I was fucking angry that I had been swindled. I wanted the truth. Or, I wanted a fuller picture. I wanted more sides.
That, my friends, is pathetic in its privilege.
I learned in graduate school what every person of color knows through life experience. I learned in graduate school that we werenāt āfixedā during the Civil Rights movement.
But when this information was presented to me I felt a sense of relief, because I think deep down I always knew something was terribly wrong, but I couldnāt put my finger on it.
I donāt understand the white rage I keep reading on the internet.
Run over the protestors. Theyāre making me late for work.
STOP PLAYING THE āRACE CARD.ā
I donāt understand it. Whatās at stake, people? Whatās at stake in accepting that racism exists? Or even entertaining the thought? Are people really so stupid they canāt fathom that other people might be having a different experience than they are? Is it really that hard to comprehend that something can exist EVEN THOUGH YOU DONāT PERSONALLY SEE IT?
(Although youāll see your privilege if youāre willing to examine your life honestly.)
Why the hell are people so unwilling to listen?
Letās think about this for a moment. A whole community of people are saying this exists. Data shows racial disparities in economic, education, justice, and healthcare systems. Basically, ALL OVER THE PLACE. Unarmed black boys and men are killed without recourse. Repeatedly. The comment sections of these crimes are riddled with assholes shouting āGood. One less loser.ā
But people still claim āRacism doesnāt exist.ā But hereās the thing: The only way you can discount the words, lives, efforts and voices of hundreds of thousands of people is THROUGH THE RACISM YOU CLAIM DOESNāT EXIST.
You can only ignore them if theyāre arenāt worth hearing.
You can only ignore them if theyāre liars. If theyāre just looking for a handout.
If theyāre not human like you.
You can only ignore them by using the very narratives you claim arenāt happening.
And letās be honest, we can only ignore them because itās easy, because weāll never have to walk a day in their shoes, and itās just so much more pleasant to turn away, look away, focus back on our lives.
But the sand is getting skimpy and our heads are showing. At this point, if weāre not part of the solution weāre part of the problem.
Iām using my voice to talk to you. Iām using my voice to talk to my kids. But it isnāt enough. Weāre looking for places to volunteer. Iām looking for actions I can take.
Weāre at a crossroads. This cannot go on. Weāre crushed under the weight of hatred, history, silence, violence, bullshit media and the insidious defense of systematic unequal distribution of resources, and at some point, none of us will be able to breathe.
It feels small and pathetic to be one person in this mess. I feel stupid and vulnerable and slightly insane to be writing this here, now. But fuck my feelings. Fuck feeling uncomfortable. Fuck the nonsense that keeps us quiet and content and cozy in our little post-racial dreamland.
They canāt breathe, and Iām breathing just fine.
And that is precisely the problem.