On whiteness
Apr. 26th, 2005 08:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gaudiorIn one of my classes today we watched the film The Color of Fear, which is a documentary about a therapist putting eight men of various colors in a room and not letting them out until they have deep insights about race. It was intense and cool and thought-provoking, with a hint of California. But nothing's perfect.
And it made me think. One of the things which one of the Black guys pointed out was that white people here don't talk about themselves as white-- we talk about ourselves as American, or human. (Did you notice the thing I did with capitalization there? That was totally deliberate). We'll mention the European country our ancestors came from, but if we're filling out a form, we don't check "Half-Russian, a quarter German, and a quarter Lithuanian, I think"-- we check "white." But you just don't hear about "white culture" or "the white experience" unless you're talking to White Supremacists. It's like white people don't have a race that matters to us.
But we totally do. And it undoubtedly determines a lot about how we see ourselves, and how we see other people, in ways we don't even think about. And since I would really, really like to not be racist and dumb, I need to learn to see what I don't usually see.
The first dozen things I came up with were all nots-- not having trouble getting a cab because of my skin color, say. But there is the flip side of that. I am white, and so almost all the movie stars look like me. So do almost all the television characters I watch, characters in books I read, comics, etc. For that matter, so do most anime characters (well, anime characters don't look human, but they look more like white people (hair color, skin color, eye color, eye shape) than like any other race, including, usually, Japanese)-- because (correct me if I'm wrong) people like Tezuka based a lot of their work on the work of people like Disney. Because Japan was trying to industrialize, and the very industrialized countries at the time were run by white people, so that's what the Japanese took to make over in Japanese ways.
Which leads to the other big one: because I'm white, I look like a lot of the richest and most powerful people on the planet. Because white people were good at invention and exploitation, and fortunately situated in a historical context, and managed to take over continents (North and South America and Australia) with lots of resources in them (well, maybe not Australia) and do things with them. So now members of my race are things like President of the United States, or the owner of Microsoft.
People of my race wrote the history books I read, and I have no problem at all finding admirable and hateable historical figures who are white-- hundreds of them. When I was younger, learning about history in school-- anywhere from the Middle Ages to the Victorian ones... I could easily picture myself back then and there, because (except for my incredible good health), I would fit in just fine. The people I read about from back then looked like me. And if I point to a historical figure and say, "Wasn't he amazing? Doesn't he make you glad to be human?", odds are good that he was white, too. All the major psychologists I can think of were/are white.
And I'm beautiful, according to all the fairy tales. The fairest in the land, lips of rose and cheek as white as snow. And good, too-- the white knight fighting the forces of darkness and all. There is some damn good sf/fantasy by people of color (Samuel R. Delaney, I love you), but most of the authors I read are white, and their symbolism reflects it.
Most of the places I go in this country, I'm safe. If I wander into somewhere that isn't safe, I know the police will try to protect me. And back me up if there's a dispute, probably. The law is, for the most part, on my side. True, I'm gay and Jewish-- but nobody needs to know that if I don't tell them. If I run into a KKK member, say, I can always nod and smile and slip on by, if I want to. And if I were to get into a fight with such a person, people would say that I was being admirable and sticking up for justice and for my oppressed brethren.
I know my vote counts.
I believe that I don't scare people. According to the people in the documentary, that's not exactly accurate. But I've been given no reason to believe otherwise. As far as I know, I am cute and harmless and no-one could ever hate me. I haven't committed any atrocities, after all.
Actually, that's the other thing-- I don't have an "ethnicity." Not one I'll admit to, anyway. I might list the above-mentioned background countries, but I personally don't identify with them terribly much. I think of myself as just American. But there's not much I can think of that ties Americans together. McDonald's... the Pledge of Allegiance... English... Halloween... pot... these are all, as my TA pointed out, things which mean different things to different people. And gods know, it's not like we have a religion or an accent or a climate or suchlike to tie us all together. The country is huge and still young after 300 years or so. So identifying as "American" is sometimes something which makes people feel empty-- but not enough to make us identify strongly as white.
Which is, I think, in no small part because no one can escape the fact that white people run the world, and white people perpetuated and perpetuate a lot of misery to do so. So if you're white, you have the choice of either a) embracing the race and saying "Yeah, we took over the world, and it's because we're the best-- strongest, smartest, whatever. Go, us," or b) saying, "Agggh, I have all this privilege and power, and I know I didn't do a damn thing to deserve it, and in fact a lot of it comes from atrocities-- and I don't want to commit atrocities-- but I can't imagine living without the power I have-- um, I'm not really white. Not really. Not in any way that matters. Can't we all just be human together and not let race bother us?"
Because if I look at the above, then pretty soon, identifying strongly as white sounds like gloating. Which I don't want to do, because, as I said, I know I didn't do anything to deserve what I have. I just got born into it. And I, as a reasonably empathic person, can see quite easily that if I were one of the people who didn't have it, I would be pissed. And I hate it when people are mad at me. And if I weren't careful, it would be terribly easy for that to turn into hatred for the people who might be mad at me. It already kind of is fear. I mean, one of the things I'm working on in therapy is the idea that anger can be okay, either directed at me or directed by me at other people. It's not an idea I'm at all comfortable with.
Which ends up meaning that all my interactions with people of other races-- or even with other white people talking about race-- have this lurking terror of saying the wrong thing. Because then I might offend someone, and then they might get mad at me, and gods know the anger which people of color are justified in having in this country could be so huge that it would utterly overwhelm me if even a little of it were pointed in my direction. Or at least, that's the fear. So I get very uncomfortable around people until I think they know me well enough not to blame me for things-- and even then, I get uncomfortable when race comes up.
This is icky. I don't like it, and I don't like saying it. But my not saying it wouldn't make it not true. And I would like to be able to get through this fear enough that it wouldn't interfere with my life and my relations with people.
Step one: admitting you have a problem.
On to step two...
And it made me think. One of the things which one of the Black guys pointed out was that white people here don't talk about themselves as white-- we talk about ourselves as American, or human. (Did you notice the thing I did with capitalization there? That was totally deliberate). We'll mention the European country our ancestors came from, but if we're filling out a form, we don't check "Half-Russian, a quarter German, and a quarter Lithuanian, I think"-- we check "white." But you just don't hear about "white culture" or "the white experience" unless you're talking to White Supremacists. It's like white people don't have a race that matters to us.
But we totally do. And it undoubtedly determines a lot about how we see ourselves, and how we see other people, in ways we don't even think about. And since I would really, really like to not be racist and dumb, I need to learn to see what I don't usually see.
The first dozen things I came up with were all nots-- not having trouble getting a cab because of my skin color, say. But there is the flip side of that. I am white, and so almost all the movie stars look like me. So do almost all the television characters I watch, characters in books I read, comics, etc. For that matter, so do most anime characters (well, anime characters don't look human, but they look more like white people (hair color, skin color, eye color, eye shape) than like any other race, including, usually, Japanese)-- because (correct me if I'm wrong) people like Tezuka based a lot of their work on the work of people like Disney. Because Japan was trying to industrialize, and the very industrialized countries at the time were run by white people, so that's what the Japanese took to make over in Japanese ways.
Which leads to the other big one: because I'm white, I look like a lot of the richest and most powerful people on the planet. Because white people were good at invention and exploitation, and fortunately situated in a historical context, and managed to take over continents (North and South America and Australia) with lots of resources in them (well, maybe not Australia) and do things with them. So now members of my race are things like President of the United States, or the owner of Microsoft.
People of my race wrote the history books I read, and I have no problem at all finding admirable and hateable historical figures who are white-- hundreds of them. When I was younger, learning about history in school-- anywhere from the Middle Ages to the Victorian ones... I could easily picture myself back then and there, because (except for my incredible good health), I would fit in just fine. The people I read about from back then looked like me. And if I point to a historical figure and say, "Wasn't he amazing? Doesn't he make you glad to be human?", odds are good that he was white, too. All the major psychologists I can think of were/are white.
And I'm beautiful, according to all the fairy tales. The fairest in the land, lips of rose and cheek as white as snow. And good, too-- the white knight fighting the forces of darkness and all. There is some damn good sf/fantasy by people of color (Samuel R. Delaney, I love you), but most of the authors I read are white, and their symbolism reflects it.
Most of the places I go in this country, I'm safe. If I wander into somewhere that isn't safe, I know the police will try to protect me. And back me up if there's a dispute, probably. The law is, for the most part, on my side. True, I'm gay and Jewish-- but nobody needs to know that if I don't tell them. If I run into a KKK member, say, I can always nod and smile and slip on by, if I want to. And if I were to get into a fight with such a person, people would say that I was being admirable and sticking up for justice and for my oppressed brethren.
I know my vote counts.
I believe that I don't scare people. According to the people in the documentary, that's not exactly accurate. But I've been given no reason to believe otherwise. As far as I know, I am cute and harmless and no-one could ever hate me. I haven't committed any atrocities, after all.
Actually, that's the other thing-- I don't have an "ethnicity." Not one I'll admit to, anyway. I might list the above-mentioned background countries, but I personally don't identify with them terribly much. I think of myself as just American. But there's not much I can think of that ties Americans together. McDonald's... the Pledge of Allegiance... English... Halloween... pot... these are all, as my TA pointed out, things which mean different things to different people. And gods know, it's not like we have a religion or an accent or a climate or suchlike to tie us all together. The country is huge and still young after 300 years or so. So identifying as "American" is sometimes something which makes people feel empty-- but not enough to make us identify strongly as white.
Which is, I think, in no small part because no one can escape the fact that white people run the world, and white people perpetuated and perpetuate a lot of misery to do so. So if you're white, you have the choice of either a) embracing the race and saying "Yeah, we took over the world, and it's because we're the best-- strongest, smartest, whatever. Go, us," or b) saying, "Agggh, I have all this privilege and power, and I know I didn't do a damn thing to deserve it, and in fact a lot of it comes from atrocities-- and I don't want to commit atrocities-- but I can't imagine living without the power I have-- um, I'm not really white. Not really. Not in any way that matters. Can't we all just be human together and not let race bother us?"
Because if I look at the above, then pretty soon, identifying strongly as white sounds like gloating. Which I don't want to do, because, as I said, I know I didn't do anything to deserve what I have. I just got born into it. And I, as a reasonably empathic person, can see quite easily that if I were one of the people who didn't have it, I would be pissed. And I hate it when people are mad at me. And if I weren't careful, it would be terribly easy for that to turn into hatred for the people who might be mad at me. It already kind of is fear. I mean, one of the things I'm working on in therapy is the idea that anger can be okay, either directed at me or directed by me at other people. It's not an idea I'm at all comfortable with.
Which ends up meaning that all my interactions with people of other races-- or even with other white people talking about race-- have this lurking terror of saying the wrong thing. Because then I might offend someone, and then they might get mad at me, and gods know the anger which people of color are justified in having in this country could be so huge that it would utterly overwhelm me if even a little of it were pointed in my direction. Or at least, that's the fear. So I get very uncomfortable around people until I think they know me well enough not to blame me for things-- and even then, I get uncomfortable when race comes up.
This is icky. I don't like it, and I don't like saying it. But my not saying it wouldn't make it not true. And I would like to be able to get through this fear enough that it wouldn't interfere with my life and my relations with people.
Step one: admitting you have a problem.
On to step two...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-27 01:51 am (UTC)Sorry for going on for so long, but it's something I feel strongly about.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-27 03:54 am (UTC)I think the concept behind your icon is a rather good example of this. : )
(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-27 10:45 pm (UTC)Hadn't thought about it, but this icon "steals" from at least three sources . . .