Passing for White. And failing.
“It’s not like I don’t have a right to be angry,” I said while taking a headphone out of my ear. It was a conversation about my blog — this blog — how it’s become an embodiment of rage when addressing issues of race or sex or any other institutionalized injustice that I see fit to fight.
“Yeah, but it’s like you said in your last blog post — you pass for white enough,” a friend of mine said. I hesitated to respond. Ultimately, in spite of finding no words to describe how incensed I felt at that moment, I popped my headphone back into the vacant space between my earlobe and tragus to return to the NPR: Latino USA podcast that I’d been listening to. I pondered the idea of going to the corner store on my break to grab fifth of whisky, because in these sobering times where passive racism is becoming irresponsible to neglect, it’s getting harder to remain sober.
Granted, he was a friend — one who actively encourages me to speak out about issues of injustice. The truth is, I can’t help but wonder if he said what he had said to encourage me to address it. He rarely means ill, and it should be noted, he’s gay — so he definitely knows what it’s like to feel marginalized. So to avoid a conflict, I said nothing. I merely acted aghast and went back to my silly podcast listening. But my friend is also white, so he sees the world from a very different perspective. And if he weren’t my friend and instead a stranger, I probably wouldn’t say anything either. I couldn’t tell him just why I thought his opinion was garbage, in that moment. It’s an issue with so many layers that it has taken me weeks to even address it. I really needed to think about why it bothered me that he suggested I pass for white.
It isn’t something that most white audiences understand — or even most people of color who don’t pass for white. White people generally don’t understand the nuances that people of color experience on a daily basis, while people of color who don’t pass for white have never been mistaken for or expected to behave white — it’s a different kind of systemic racism, where you’re both in and out of a majority and their expectations. And let’s face it — just because you can pass for white with some white audiences, very rarely is that true of all white audiences. In some ways, it makes you more susceptible to active acts of racism when others realize that you aren’t, in fact, white.
Even among the people of color that can pass for white, there are polarizing ramifications that come with passing. For instance, while I take a great amount of pride in my heritage, culture, and beating back the stereotypes employed by the systemic control of our privileged overlords, some people-of-color really do just want to fit in because of the chilling effect it has on potential conflicts born from privileged ignorance or misunderstanding. It’s not as though they’re neglecting their culture, but in many cases, they’ve set their sights on some other ultimate goal and can’t be distracted by the burden of everyday racism. Just as how not all people of color fit into a box, how not all Blacks or Latinos or Asians are the same, people who can pass for white are inherently unique too, and in some cases, even more so because we lack the same inherent connection to our community.
People-of-color who tend to pass for white are much more likely to experience racial imposter syndrome. It’s difficult to describe what racial imposter syndrome is in layman’s terms. Some describe racial imposter syndrome as the disconnect you feel from your own ethnic community because of a lack of language skills, physical characteristics, or actual physical community surrounding you. Simultaneously, you don’t entirely fit in with white society, and therefore remain as an outlier. The result of this syndrome is that you may not want to own your own culture and suffer from an ongoing lack of identity. It undermines confidence, and in some ways, leaves you without a sense of home or a place where you fit in. As a person who has struggled to find his Iranian identity due to a lack of community, language skills, and even remote family, I have suffered from imposter syndrome for a long, long time.
My own story is a long one though. The difference between September 10th, 2001 and September 11th, 2001 meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For some, it was the day that America was under threat (regardless of the havoc that continually wrecked most parts of the Middle East, much of which was sanctioned by the United States during that period). For others, it was the loved ones they lost in that terrible incident in New York City and elsewhere (2,996 total deaths confirmed — one tenth of the civilian casualties in the Afghanistan conflict that followed). And for even more, it was the moment that united America against a single threat (for which Trump, just hours before his 2018 State of the Union address, suggested: “I would love to be able to bring back our country into a great form of unity. Without a major event where people pull together, that’s hard to do”).
But for me? It was the moment that I realized:
I am different.
For some background, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prevented Asians from immigrating to the United States. It was one of those early acts of racism imposed by the US — and an early example of legal racism fueled by the “they’re takin’ our jerbs!” mentality that would later be imposed upon, well, everyone of color. It’s not all that dissimilar from Trump’s recent incompetent thrusts at banning Muslims from entering the US. Back to 1882 though, Middle Easterners (specifically Syrians) skirted this immigration ban by suggesting that because their features were more similar to those that descended from the Caucasus region (modern-day Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and parts of Turkey and Iran) instead of the Mongol region (basically, the rest of Asia) that they were “white.” They weren’t migrating to the United States in great numbers, and in a lot of ways, they did look more like European immigrants than those from Japan and China who had started spreading into the American west. Thus, Middle-Easterners got to play white for like a hundred years (instead of standing up for our black and Asian brothers and sisters? Hello!).
Side note: this also prevented “Middle Eastern” from appearing on any US census data. Since September 11th, 2001, demand to include Middle Easterners on the census has risen but many Middle Eastern Americans still wish to associate as white in regard to demographic data due to suggestions of internment or deportation from American politicians, not all that different from the tensions that mounted on Japanese-Americans following the attack Pearl Harbor. Fortunately, President Donald Trump can’t move as swiftly as President Franklin Roosevelt, but let it be said that neither of these men have had the best interests of immigrants in mind. For my part, I would sooner identify as Middle Eastern than white.
Some Middle Easterners pass for white quite easily, but we’re not talking about some tiny corner of the world with only a couple different peoples. The Middle East is composed of bloodlines from Asia, Africa, and Europe. Babylon is in modern day Iraq, the Persian empire rose to power in Iran, and numerous colonizers swept through from all corners of the world. Depending on where your family hails from, you may have Caucasian or Asian or African features or a mix of all the above if you’ve descended from the Middle East. Skin tones range from ivory to ebony, even among my own people, and many Middle Eastern regions or countries have their own colorism-fueled discrimination issues. Even while we share the same nationality, we don’t all fit into the same racial categories.
My father, an immigrant from Iran, was not a fair-skinned man. He had thick, black hair and an olive-brown complexion. His facial features were more akin to those from India than Europe, although on frequent occasions, he did pass for Hispanic (we lived in Aurora, Illinois, where a third of the population identified as Hispanic or Latino, as opposed to 11% for the state overall). On the other hand, my mom is white. Our European make-up is as much hearsay as the heroes we’ve come to include as our ancestors (there were several claims that we had some blood relation to the outlaw Jesse James, though there’s no evidence), including German, Czech, and Bohemian. Frankly, I don’t really care. Because I don’t identify as white, I don’t see any value in combatting the controversial policies of websites like Ancestry.com to discover my European origins. Like the one-drop rule I discussed in a previous post suggests, I only identify as Persian-American.
So why not attempt to pass for white and inherit the privilege that I’m due? I can change my name to Benjamin Rosi and claim Greek or Italian descent. I can force myself to forget the violent incidents that followed September 11th, 2001, and how I was consistently overlooked for employment because a manager or a human resource representative didn’t want to try pronouncing my name. I can pretend like the ban on Muslims doesn’t affect me or my family, that my father didn’t leave Iran to live out the American dream, and that I’m not one of those people. I can pretend to be just like you.
But that would not be true.
When I was a kid, I was convinced that I wasn’t different from anyone else. There was no perceived threat of Middle Easterners among the American public prior to 9/11. Teachers couldn’t pronounce my name, but that wasn’t a big deal — white people treated me as if I were one of them. When they asked where my family was from, I would say Iran — they wouldn’t know what the hell it meant though. Somewhere in Asia, I would say. It was good enough. I could play on the basketball team, join the Boy Scouts, and hold Street Fighter II tournaments in my den without ever being questioned. I could just fit in. Until I was 15 years old, I was just like you are.
After 9/11, I was chosen by my peers to be the pariah that carries the weight of the lives lost in that attack. They wouldn’t bother to ask me where I was from anymore — all of the sudden, they knew I was one of those people. It was like everyone, including Hispanics and Blacks who had been conditioned into a majority bias by their white communities, were inherently able to tell that I was different from everyone else. No, it wasn’t like I was different— I was the bad guy. People frequently started fights with me, though little or no justice was paid on my behalf by the administration. In fact, they flunked me out of a couple of high school classes for merely defending myself from physical harm, not to mention the ongoing mental and emotional turmoil I combatted on a day-to-day basis. People that I thought were my friends became some of my worst antagonists, as if they felt like I personally betrayed them. Outside of school, people would consistently question, “Where are you from?” in rural dialects, cornering me in gas stations, parking lots, Wal-Marts, etc. I wasn’t meant to feel welcome anywhere anymore. I wasn’t even even employable. Grocery stores and fast food joints wouldn’t bother to interview me, because apparently, you can’t flip a burger or bag groceries if you’re of Middle Eastern descent. Those harrowing years following 9/11 continue to reverberate through me — and today is no exception for racial injustice either. It’s not like employment bias or racial judgment has dissolved — it’s still there, but the racists pretend to be quieter now while living in liberal regions.
Have I ever met a terrorist before? Yeah. Plenty of them. Every person who ever terrorized me for my ethnicity, for my name, or my skin color is a terrorist. In fact, if you’ve ever identified as an American, I encourage you to look deep within your soul and ask yourself if you ever whispered hate speech among your friends as eleven year olds or disregarded a person based on a stereotype. That’s how terrorism looks to me. You may not be white — maybe you’re Black or Hispanic or Asian. Maybe you’re Queer or Gay or Trans. Maybe you actually are just like me, but you’ve never had to acknowledge making someone you don’t really know feel unwelcome. It isn’t entirely your fault — the cis-gendered, male caucasians aren’t always at fault either. It’s the society that exemplifies that person though.
So I suppose I prefer to be the exception, because I believe I am exceptional. In an ideal world, I wouldn’t need to pass for white to be privileged. This isn’t that ideal world, but it can be. I think so anyway. So even if you think I’m white or passing, remember that I’m not. I’m not meant to fit, because I don’t remember what it’s like to fit in anymore. Neither are millions of other people-of-color passing in this country, who sometimes feel like imposters for claiming their own race because they’re white enough. Or maybe they feel like imposters in claiming their American heritage because they’re not white enough. We’re stuck in-between our culture and societal expectations. We’re just passing. And failing.
My upshot?
I knew this writer once — Chris Terry. He’s both black and white, but he certainly passes for white. In much dumber, more naive time in my life, I used to call my friends the N-word with a soft ending. I’m not going to spell it for you, but you know what I mean. A lot of my Middle Eastern friends still say it, claiming they have as much right to it as black people, because at one time, we were called the n-word (though it was prefixed by the word “sand,” as if that should make it better). But truly, we have no claim on it because our struggles are so different. Anyway, when Chris came forward to put me in my place, my response wasn’t like, “Oh, my bad, I’m sorry.” It was, “I didn’t know you were black.” Even I’m guilty of accusing someone as passing for white, what I’m calling out — maybe that’s why it’s so important for me to call it out.
Chris’s book, Zero Fade, is about growing up black, getting the best haircut, and discovering your own identity. And it’s beautiful. A while ago, I even reviewed it on my other blog. If you haven’t read it, you should — you can buy it here. He’s got another book coming out soon too— it’s called Magical Negroes, which addresses the sense of not feeling “black enough.” Keep your eye out for it, though if you follow me, I’ll let you know when in it drops. In the meantime, pick up Zero Fade and follow Chris on social. He’s an old school punk who with roots deeper that run deeper than Joe Christmas. If you get the reference, props to you.
PS.
Are you an artist? Are we friends? Do you want to promote yourself, or just sit with me and tell me your story? Hit me up. If I’m not supporting my own people, what good am I? And if you’d like to submit a story, reach out to me. All submissions will be considered.
Peace.
