My White Identity, Whether I Want It or Not
It is time to unpack my white knapsack.
Hello, fellow white people. If you are like me, it is possible you haven’t thought of being white as a major part of your identity. Of course, I am white. But so was literally everybody I knew growing up. So I saw myself as a boy, or a Lutheran, or of German ancestry, or a soccer player, or a midwesterner. Later I saw myself as straight, environmentalist, and college-educated. White was in there, but it was sort of taken for granted and maybe ranked 15th or so in ranking my identities.
I am not that connected with my European heritage. When I had a choice to study abroad, I chose to study in China. Now, when I have the resources to travel, I go to Central America, or elsewhere in the USA. I am most interested in world history and have decried the Eurocentric nature of the education I received. I have even watched TV shows that deal with racism and thought to myself, “I don’t like these white people.” I have thought of myself as white-lite. I’m white, but I am aware of racism and I like to watch, read, and listen to people of all races and cultures.
This lack of connection to my whiteness is a privilege that people with more melanin do not have as an option. Their race is often the first thing people see about them, and they have to respond to anything that people project onto them because of the color of their skin. I want to live in a colorblind world where nobody has to deal with racism. But that desire to live colorblind can also make me blind to racism.
It is a paradox of dismantling racism that in order to eventually stop seeing and deemphasize color, we have to first see it and emphasize it. In order to de-center whiteness, it might take a period where it seems like I am centering whiteness.
For me, that means owning my whiteness. To be white is to have European ancestry. So this week, I have been watching John Green’s Crash Course series on European History. I LOVE every Crash Course and highly recommend them, but I have been avoiding this one because I didn’t really care to explore the details of another Eurocentric worldview. Whoa. Was I wrong. John deconstructs and illuminates history. Watch and learn.
Note: I am also attaching this article about the “classics” because it is sooooooo relevant.
