Insightful, as always. It is infuriating that race is not based on anything but exploitation. I would like to just give up on being white. I want no part in it. But even if I went around telling people I am not white, they would look at me and say yes you are.

Even though whiteness is not even real, most people where I live treat it as real. And my family and the people around me as a child treated it as real, so I was raised to think in terms of race.

Even as people around me as a child acted as if race was real, I also was taught that race shouldn't matter. That we should live in a colorblind world. Colorblind is a good way to describe that way of looking at race. For colorblind people, colors still exist, it is just that a colorblind person can't distinguish between them. Thus in the "colorblind" world, race and racism still existed, just that white people pretended they did not.

So in order to get rid of whiteness, I can't just say I am no longer identifying as white. That is just like saying that I don't see color - both are sort of beside the point.

I need to accept that the world sees me as white, and that many people with white (pink?) skin are unfairly lumped together and treated in certain ways because of that outward characteristic.

I am part of a new group at my school called a "white accountability group." I am one of the leaders. We haven't met yet, but I am looking forward to this group. We chose the term "accountability" over "ally" because we are not trying to help others fight racism. We are trying to be accountable for our own racism and for the ways that whiteness operates in our school. In order to be accountable for whiteness, I need to claim white as an identity, at least for the duration of my time being accountable. I can't be accountable for something I can't see.