hi! anon from earlier. hope you all are having a good day!
also i'm somewhat new to this so i am trying to be respectful/use right language and i am truly and genuinely sorry if i get that wrong
i (singlet, white) have a system friend who is living in a white body but has POC headmates. lately they have been talking to me about IDing as POC and changing how they dress so that they are perceived as brown - not just POC, but specifically brown. this makes me uncomfortable as the body the system is in is not brown, and does not have the life experience of being brown. i also feel uncomfortable about the idea of someone accessorizing differently (headwear, clothing) in order to be perceived as a different race. i don't know if it makes a difference, but my friends also say that the body itself does not have a living/presenting identity of its own, and so the body is white, but the entire system is POC.
if y'all have the time/energy/ability, i would really like some help in understanding and talking about this. i don't want to ask my friends about it as i'm afraid they will get upset and say that i'm being bigoted or unsupportive. maybe i am, but i do want to understand. any advice would be greatly appreciated! thank you!
Yeah no as a system of color what they're doing is... extremely racist. Alters cannot ID as a separate race from the body, they will never have those lived experiences and therefore will never understand what it is like to live as a person of color. And outright trying to change their appearance to pass themselves off as a different race is race-fishing, which is both appropriative and really fucking racist. They are not people of color, they are the same race as the body because race is based off of genetics and heritage and social perception (last one to an extent, as some light-skinned poc don't always get perceived as their actual race). Alters can have appearances that differ from the body, obviously, but different appearances does not equal different race. Alters that appear darker in skin tone being labeled as poc while in a white body is more often than not built off of racist racial stereotypes of who people of color are.
What the body is is still important in certain contexts. Race is one of them, because race is based off of the body. Same with some other things (for example, age. Yes alters can have different self perceptions of their individual age but, for instance, an adult alter in a minor bodied system should NOT be treated the same as one in a bodily adult system because age is largely based off the brain and it's stage in development as a whole). Saying the body doesn't have an identity by itself does not mean it is devoid of any traits. Certain things are not just identities that can be picked and chosen based on personal preferences, sometimes there are things your body simply is or isn't and even if you don't like it, that's how your body is. An example of that for me other than race (because obviously to me, my race is something I just am, I can't just pick and choose that, but I find it is harder for white people to understand when race is the only example used) is me being disabled. I simply am disabled. My body does not function as well as typical. Even if I didn't explicitly identify as disabled, I still would be perceived and live life as a disabled person does because that's how my body is.
Hope that helps it make sense. I'm sorry about your friend. Personally I would tell them bluntly they're being racist, and if they refuse to listen then cut them off, but they aren't my friend so what you decide to do is ultimately up to you.
