a list
new shoes
getting drunk with crusties and high school sweethearts(old friends) when i really don’t have the time
awarded workstudy two weeks into semester when all the good jobs are gone
i can’t wait for plato to be over.
As white-passing people of color, we have our own set of struggles.
We have to hear all the horrible, racist things that our white friends (and sometimes even our not-white friends) say about people of color that they wouldn’t dare say if we were visible poc. And because we look white, we are expected to be okay with it. We are expected to understand and sympathize with the “I’m not trying to be racist but…” agenda. Basically, we are expected to support whiteness as an ideal.
When we talk about our identities being anything other than white, our white friends act like we are throwing ourselves an unnecessary pity party. They act like we are so full of white-guilt that we are trying to falsely identify as people of color to get away from it. Or, worse (and more commonly), they act like looking white is some kind of accomplishment, as if you were born inherently better than your visible counter-parts, are fully aware of their inferiority, and are being ridiculous or annoyingly humble by also identifying as a person of color. This experience is similar to when visible poc are seen as “credits to their race”. Except that the white-passing, instead of being seen as being better because they aren’t “lazy”, are seen as better by default. As if being born light-skinned, instead being a product of recessive genes, is evidence that we were meant for better things than our visible parents, siblings, and friends.
Thanks for writing this, Ali. It’s something that has come as a really hard lesson for me, but I think it’s a necessary one.
Thanks for this. I’ve never claimed POC as an identity, but I am a chicano person, and I’m so particularly sick of people acting like I’m hiding with my “white guilt” in the experience of my POC parent.
For my 22nd birthday I want:
A get out of undergrad free pass
A kava-root-tincture intravenous drip
