Blogging and Identity, Part 3

1. what does it mean to be white? what does it mean to be White?

To be white means nobody looks at you twice (usually). Nobody looks at you with fear (usually). To be white means nobody's trying to figure out what's "in" you. To be white means you blend in. You belong. You look like most people around you. To be white amongst other white people means the issue of race never comes up. That's not true for non-white people. Black people joke amongst themselves about being black. Latino people do it. Asian people do it. Indian people do it. White people don't.

I don't look at being White as being the Majority. I look at it as not being a Minority. We create labels for things that are different, and Whites are not different. Whites are not advantaged; they are free of handicaps. Whatever the starting point, Whites can proceed through life without preconceived notions of their relative ability to succeed, accomplish, advance. Non-Whites bear the weight of lowered expectations. When they perform to similar standards, it's either viewed as exceptional, or still not good enough.

2. how has whiteness affected your worldview?

Whiteness has affected my worldview in that, for better or for worse, it keeps me from feeling wholly black. Mostly it changes the way I think people perceive me.

My mother's family is the black side of the family. They're riddled with some of the stereotypical problems lower-middle-class black people often find themselves in. And they're pretty tight knit. This is where I learned what I know about being black. I'm much closer to them than my father's side of the family. They look on the outside like a typical middle-to-upper-middle-class achieving bunch. But they have no sense of how to relate to each other and how to stick together.

Historically my closest friends have been white. My closest black friends in college were like me, growing up in majority white environments, preferring "white" activities, liking "white" music. I feel like I don't act black. I feel like even though I look black, the fact that I'm only half black makes it a little more okay to not act black. I can prefer those white activities and like that white music because I'm half white, too, ya know. I'm black, but not all black. I'm never white, but not all white.

Now I have a lot more black friends than I used to. But even amongst them, I feel like I'm passing. I only socialize with them as a group on occasion. I don't look to them first for entertainment (unless there's a step show I want to go to). I feel like I can maintain the "I'm like you" facade for only so long, and it's hard work to do so.

Think about what you think "black" is. That's about what I think it is. Going to church and being spiritual. Speaking a certain way amongst other black people. Liking a certain type of music. Feeling a need to connect and identify with my African roots. Preferring the company of black people.

In 12th grade my whole senior class (all 52 of us) went on retreat. We did some honesty circle thing where you could say anything you wanted to to anyone else in the circle. Up to this point I was well aware of the dichotomy I had going between my normal clique and my black friends from the basketball team. There was another black girl in my class that had a sort-of playful "I'm Your Black Friend" relationship with my clique that did not extend to me. She said to me, in that honesty circle, that she wanted to apologize because all this time she had thought less of me for being mixed. And I was completely floored. I'm not sure I even really processed that until years later. I had no idea that she thought that. I had no idea that someone could think that. I could see if she didn't like me because our personalities were incompatible, or because I said something to piss her off, but to have written me off right from the start just because of that? I couldn't fathom it.

3. how has whiteness affected your educational experience?

I went to catholic school in the suburbs, not to Detroit public schools. Throughout grade school and high school, the fraction of minorities was roughly a third. In grade school it was blacks and Chaldeans. In high school it was blacks and a few Asians and Filipinos. In my primary and secondary education, I don't think my race had much effect on how I learned. As I mentioned, I was already starting to maintain parallel friendships.

Then I went to the University of Michigan. A huge school. An academically challenging school. The school in the middle of that whole affirmative action mess. Supposing I did get accepted there on my own academic and extracurricular merits (which I'm 95% sure I did, and maybe that other 5% is only a lack of self-confidence), checking that African-American box certainly brought me some financial aid I wouldn't have otherwise had. In fact, U of M was one of my last choices and I ended up going there because it was the best of the few schools I could afford.

I spent the summer before my freshmen year on campus in a program for minority engineering students. There's a whole suite of programs, for kids as young as 7th grade and on up to incoming freshman. That was the first time I had ever hung out exclusively with other black people (and a couple Latino people). The program I was in included an internship at the local EPA lab and math and computer programming classes. There was also a strong emphasis on networking skills. The internship was great, but looking back, I wonder about the classes. We were all accepted into Michigan Engineering. There were kids from the three Detroit magnet high schools (pretty good), from Ann Arbor public schools (really good), and kids who had turned down MIT to come here. Why did we need extra help?

Once freshman year started (and every year after that), there was strong pressure to join the National Society of Black Engineers. I never did. I still do not belong. Never mind the society membership, the networking opportunities, the leadership opportunities, the resume filler. I never joined because I never felt comfortable with that group of people. Because I perceived it to be more about being black than anything else. It was as much a social activity as a professional activity.

I found the black students in my engineering classes to be among the more aggressive students. The ones who always went to office hours, who finished things early, who were more likely to convene in informal study groups. And I really think it's because they felt like they had something to prove.

And here I am saying they. Not we.

Once I got into my classes in my major, all 150 of us generally sat in the same areas of the lecture hall. The black students were always right down in front. My friends and I typically sat about 2/3rds of the way back, to the right of the aisle. I tried for one semester to do something different and sit with some black people I knew at the front of the class. I did terribly that semester. I didn't work well with them in groups. I didn't like sitting in the front of the class. I didn't even particularly enjoy their company. But the next semester when I went back to the back, I could tell that they noticed. They'd make comments when I'd come up to talk to them between classes or during breaks (because I was friendly with everyone, if not friends with them).

So from the standpoint of sitting in class and taking exams and writing papers and conducting labs and that godawful group math bullshit, I don't think the quality of my education as handed down by my instructors was affected by my race. But the way I conducted myself in class, based on my social habits dictated by race certainly had an impact.

4. how has whiteness affected your experience with authority?

I don't think it has. I don't think I've had any unwarranted brushes with the law. I've never felt like a superior kept something from me or treated me differently than my similarly-performing peers. I've never perceived a threat I thought was based on race. However, I've really only worked in blue collar environments, university environments, or for large corporations with huge (over?)emphasis on diversity.

5. how has whiteness affected your experiences with people of other races and ethnicities?

I always take a tally of who's around me. I've noted how diverse my group of friends looks (these are people I know from Minneapolis) and made jokes about being poster children for diversity. I joke with my other biracial friends about who's got better hair and how we swirls need to stick together. But because of the variety of this group of people I have fallen in with, I think less about how I stick out or blend in as an individual, because there are so many different ethnic groups represented, and because we all seem to mesh well on account of our interests. Plus, since the percentage of minorities is so much smaller in Minnesota, I think people are just relieved to have other minorities, period. I sort of approximated this in college. Prior to that, even though there are a lot of (and a lot of different kinds of) minorities in the Detroit area, I didn't have a whole lot of close personal exposure to people other than blacks, whites, and a few Chaldeans when I was too young to know what was going on.

I know I'm inclined to think that I feel better about a place if there are more minorities present. I always assume that it lends some diversity to your experience. However I've learned more about Indian and Asian culture from the few people I know (and know well) in Minneapolis than all the Asian and Indian people around me in Detroit.

Is it easier to be color blind? Is it better to be color blind? Or to acknowledge race and accept it? Is it even possible to look at someone and not take their color into account at all? Or does it make more sense to see someone, notice it, tuck it into the back of your mind along with that flat Midwest accent and the book they're talking about, and proceed?

Maybe I don't give my friends enough credit. Just because I can't see me and not think about how brown I am doesn't mean they can't. Or maybe on some level we're all seeing it and acknowleding it and moving right along because it's really not that big a deal.