“I Thought I Was White: On Coming to Terms with Racial Realities”
“Many minorities believe the myth of the “post-racial society” that tells them that their race is inconsequential to their lives. The theoretical is continuously contradicted, but it still permeates many of our understandings of race.
It causes individuals to find themselves entirely responsible for issues that are compounded by institutionalized racism”
Oh, the damage done by all of the “multiculturalism!” that happened in my 90s childhood, where we would occasionally all bring in a ‘dish from our culture’ and learn from our teachers and parents that our willingness to condescendingly eat food from a country that probably none of us and maybe none of our living relatives had ever been to while avoiding talking about race somehow was the way to not be racist…
I wish this piece was longer. This conversation is so important to have, and I sort of wonder if there isn’t a whole generation of us wanting to start talking about how to have a race identity, people who are children of Caribbean/African immigrants and part of a few generations of Black success stories such that every high-income neighborhood got a sprinkling of Afro-American people (0.2 to 2% in 30 years is progress?) and so that every good high school had like two black kids per grade to awkwardly glance at during lessons on slavery.
This story could probably be told with a bunch of other ethnic groups too, and probably plays out in different ways in different parts of the country, and there should really be a 6-part New York Times piece with an interactive feature and some ~stiff interviews with post-post-racial millenials trying to be honest without alienating their communities. (and now that I am reflecting on conversations with other people and on the title of this piece, I am thinking of stories non-white people have told me about realizing that they were not white/my very specific memory of learning that I was a concept called ‘Black’).
I emailed the woman who wrote the piece, and in response to a question about how others had reacted to her article, she said “In terms of feedback…a lot of people didn’t read the article beyond the title :-/ I got a lot of “how could she think she’s white? doesn’t she have a mirror?”. Perhaps it was too esoteric? IDK. I found that a lot of post-grad millennials and older women got it. The older women seem struck by the irreverence our generation has towards race. Some people think it is progress.”
