“Please stop saying ‘White’….”
It was easy to see I had touched a nerve.
“Please stop saying ‘White’ as if it’s some kind of existential leprosy!” the angry White man wrote to me. “People of Caucasian descent are not ‘white’.” [sic]
His comment was in response to “The story we were told,” a piece I published here on Medium on November 14, 2024, nine days after the election (https://medium.com/@karen.shipp/the-story-we-were-told-9b3e4f093bf2).
It was easy to see that I had touched a nerve.
He went on, “The only ‘white’ people I’ve ever seen are some circus clowns, mime actors, Japanese Geishas, and other human beings with painted faces.”
Deep-rooted, passionate emotional reactions, a therapist once told me, are rarely about the presenting cause. She called them “ancient history,” because what gives these emotional reactions such power is that they go deep into the history and psyche of the person reacting.
So, I was not really surprised that a White man of a certain age was having a mental meltdown at being faced with an ascription of race. The truth is, we White folks were never taught to think of ourselves as having a race at all.
In her book Learning to Be White, minister and theologian Thandeka writes that she was asked by a colleague “what it felt like to be black.” Thandeka immediately recognized that the White woman who asked her the question did not understand that she herself had been assigned a race “by America’s pervasive socialization process….”
Searching for an answer, Thandeka invented the Race Game.
“The Race Game…had only one rule. For the next seven days, she must use the ascriptive term white whenever she mentioned the name of one of her Euro-American cohorts. She must say, for instance, ‘my white husband, Phil,’ or ‘my white friend Julie,’ or ‘my lovely white child Jackie.’ I guaranteed her that if she did this for a week and then met me for lunch, I could answer her question using terms she would understand.”
Thandeka notes wryly, “We never had lunch together again. Apparently my suggestion had made her uncomfortable.”
She continues, “African Americans have learned to use a racial language to describe themselves and others. Euro-Americans have also learned a pervasive racial language. But in their racial lexicon, their own racial group becomes the great unsaid.” (emphasis mine)
The great unsaid. I was gobsmacked the first time I read that phrase. It is true that most discussions of race in America have traditionally focused on BIPOC (Black Indigenous People of Color). Whites only come into the discussion because of their attitudes toward the people called “non-Whites.” (That nomenclature all by itself speaks volumes about White supremacy, doesn't it.)
I personally recommend the Race Game to any White person. Try it for a week. Journal about what you find. But getting back to my story —
The White man continued, “Yes, some persons of Caucasian descent were sometimes quite cruel to some persons of color in the southeastern United States at a certain period of history. That does NOT justify the erasure of history, or a lot of hand-wringing and apology on the part of the actual or putative descendants of the persons who committed the cruelties of the past.
“People evolve. Most of them try to do better. Get over it!”
I responded, “Mr. P — , I did not choose the word ‘White.’ It was written plainly on my birth certificate. You are absolutely right that none of us are ‘White.’ Any more than any of us are ‘Caucasian’ (i.e., born in the Caucasus).
“The word ‘white’ was used in a legal document for the first time in 1681 in a Virginia law prohibiting marriage between an ‘English or other white man or woman’ with any person of color, including ‘negroe, mulatto, or Indian man or woman bond or free.’
“‘White’ does not describe a physical or biological reality. I am not ‘White,’ you are right, and neither are you. Any more than my husband is ‘Black.’ That sociological and legal reality was foisted upon all of us without our consent. My goal is to confront history and become part of cleaning up the mess our ancestors left for us.
“I thank you for sharing your perspective. You have been heard.”
I want to respond here to something Mr. P. wrote that I did not include in my original response. Let’s pick apart this sentence: “Yes, some persons of Caucasian descent were sometimes quite cruel to some persons of color in the southeastern United States at a certain period of history….” (italics mine)
Oh dear. Can you count the racist tropes in this one sentence? First off, we’re still dealing with the belief that the problem with slavery was not the immoral enslavement of human beings, but the sometimes cruelty of some White people toward the enslaved.
And then there’s this: “…in the southeastern United States at a certain period of history….” (italics mine) Lord, have mercy. Could we qualify White supremacy and racism any more narrowly! White people in the north were more than happy to recapture people who had run away from chattel slavery and return them to White people who claimed “ownership” of them. For a hefty fee, of course. (Can you say White solidarity?) And who sailed the ships that brought stolen people from the continent of Africa back to our shores? The trafficking in human beings was not limited to the “southeastern United States.”
Nor was it confined to a “certain period in history.” Racism is still alive and well and finding new forms of expression. For example, the racial slur “DEI hire.” White supremacist groups are exulting in the new administration because the current occupant of the White House pardoned them and thereby gives them his stamp of approval.
All of which makes crystal clear the importance of education, which is currently under attack. I don’t engage in “hand-wringing and apology,” nor do I want to see it from other White people. But before we can straighten out the mess we created, we need to see and acknowledge our part in its creation and maintenance. And how in hell will we see that if we are afraid to look at the truth?
So, Mr. P., with all due respect, you get over it. And I’ll keep writing about Whiteness, because “We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.” (Ella Baker)
NOTE: I recommend that every White person read Learning to Be White, by Thandeka. However, just to be clear, I receive no kickbacks for recommending her book.
