Culture
The Day I Found Out I’m White
You can imagine my shock
A fish doesn’t know it lives in water unless it’s pulled out of the pond. I didn’t know I was white until I went to a Black church.
I mean, I knew I was of the white race, but the concept of whiteness was something I didn’t understand at all. As a white person who grew up in a tiny all-white town of 200, I naturally thought that the way I’d grown up was pretty standard.
I met a few people of other races and backgrounds in college, but still, I didn’t really re-think what race meant. I had internalized the well-meaning idea that all races are exactly the same, other than having a few different physical characteristics like skin color and hair texture.
I lived in an old, mixed-race neighborhood in Peoria for a few years.
While I noticed our Black neighbors had more lively social lives than any of my white neighbors, I didn’t want to let myself think that there was any kind of difference there. Just because the Black folks on my street had lots of cookouts with loads of friends and family on their front porch and all the white people on my street (except us) stayed inside almost 24/7 did not mean there was any difference.
