on being a white person in multicultural/POC spaces
Over the course of the past few years, I’ve been learning how to engage with my race. This began with realizing that engaging with my race was actually a thing I needed to do. (I’m white, so part of my privilege is not having to think about race, ever.) Since I realized being white was actually a thing that I needed to be aware of, it’s been a process of coming to terms with my racial identity and realizing that white privilege has shaped so much of how I exist in the world, including its interactions with my class, gender, sexual orientation, ability, education, language and citizenship. I am sure my whiteness has dictated way more of my life than I could ever imagine, and also shapes my queerness and womyn-ness and upper middle class-ness in ways that are tangibly incomprehensible to me. So much of what I experience on a daily basis, where I am today, and where I will go in my life, is related to the way my white skin lets me move through the world.
In terms of location and space, though, what I have been thinking about recently in relation to whiteness is my own presence in multicultural spaces. I am a member of two organizations that are explicitly multicultural, which has broad and complex meanings and cannot be succinctly defined, but which have most certainly been birthed from struggles of people of color. With that knowledge, it is with great respect, humility, solidarity, and a certain level of discomfort that I enter these spaces. The discomfort does not stem from being around people of color. Rather, it is a discomfort that my presence in these environments is taking up space that came out of the struggles of people of color who came before me. It is a discomfort that by being in these spaces, I might challenge the sanctity of these spaces, ask a wrong question, make a wrong comment, and also a discomfort with discomfort. And I think that’s where the privilege comes in. I’m not used to being uncomfortable. I’m used to comfort—in most arenas of my life, I’m used to being comfortable, having food, shelter, clothes, books, people to talk to, people to admire, supportive teachers, expectations for greatness. I’m not used to being uncomfortable.
But it is in the times and places that I have been uncomfortable that I have grown the most. That I have learned the most about maybe, maybe, someday, being any ally.
And there is that word—ally. The word that has become such a site of tension. Allyship, especially white allyship, should not be taken lightly. It is not an end goal nor a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is not a simple concept nor an identity. It is stepping back and being quiet. It is understanding when to ask questions and when to sit with discomfort. It is checking yourself and leaving room to be checked. It is knowing that some spaces just aren’t for white people. It is also knowing that if you are a white person in a multicultural or POC space, sometimes you just need to shut up. And sometimes, it is admitting that you have no idea what it means to be an ally.
I have no idea what it means to be an ally. As I inhabit the spaces of multiculturalism, built out of the struggles of people of color fighting to be recognized by institutions that so desperately work to keep them out, I try to listen. I try to sit in discomfort. I try to know that solidarity takes time. And that maybe allyship will happen one day. But that day will not be the end. But a beginning.
