as a white passing poc do you find it hard to refer to yourself as a poc? cause i'm white/aboriginal and i feel bad kind of referring to myself as a poc cause i can pass as white you know, especially considering i'm so far disconnected from any aboriginal culture and haven't really experienced any racial discrimination..
i understand where ur coming from. i’m aboriginal/lebanese and relatively fairskinned/white passing. i never used to think about it tbh until last year i developed a phobia of the sun and did everything humanly possible not to expose my skin to sunlight (ocd is a bitch btw) as a result my usually sorta tanned complexion was not so much anymore and people around me started callin me “just a white girl” and it was weird realising that my culture and ethnicity became invisible to others when i stayed out of the sun
i struggled with it and my phobia in general for the next while. obsessive googling about race/skin etc. didn’t really help and neither did this hellsite (everything can be very subjective/polarised on this site when it comes to nuanced issues). i was confused cos i thought maybe i was only considered a ‘poc’ when i had a tan so i stopped saying i was and it caused me A LOT of anxiety especially when my own therapist said that i shouldn’t “lie about my herritage for attention”
then i found out i wasn’t alone
nicole richie, halsey, alexa chung, wentworth miller, audrey plaza, vanessa hudgens, rashida jones, gigi hadid, rami malek, melissa fumero are just a few of fellow mixed white passing people in the media who have spoken out about similar mixed white passing struggles also youtubers @claudiaboleyn and @marinashutup talk about passing for white on their channels, but most importantly they do not identify as white
it took me a long time to figure this out. the reason im telling you all this is because i don’t want u to agonise over it the way i did so here goes:
u are never gonna be able to control how others see u and thats tru about anything. don’t concern urself with it when u can’t change it
passing for white is not the same as being white. white passing is conditional at best
passing for white can feel like a double edge sword at times but at the end of the day we have privleges that our non-white passing poc friends and family don’t have. it’s not something to be afraid of. it is something u can use to help ur own people and others and thats awesome
ur experience as a white passing poc is still completely different from someone who is white
just looking white doesn’t erase your ethnicity, or ur experiences
enjoy your culture, its okay. u might look white but u have as much right as anyone else in your culture to enjoy and celebrate it. remember white people can’t do this cos they are white
think of it like this: there are loads of poc mixed with white who are not white passing, struggle with similar issues but are not considered any less of either of their identities (see: amandla stenberg, hunter page lochard, tracee ellis ross, zendaya, zayn, riz ahmed, rosario dawson, barack obama)
u were raised in a completely different way to white people and so u see the world differently to them and i’ve found that most of the time other poc kno this from the way u act even if u haven’t experienced discrimination because discrimination is in no way the only thing that identifies u as a poc and u should always try and remember this when u doubt who u r
i hope this helps!! im always here for u if u need it xox
