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So I got this weird phone call today. A sweet young person from the University asked me if I would participate in a special day where alumnae of color come to advise students of color on how to achieve the kind of career success the alumnae have achieved.
I listened to the description of the event, waiting for the punchline that would make the invitation make sense, but finally I realized there wasn't going to be one, and I said, "Wait a minute. Are you under the impression that I am an alumna of color?" I should have said "successful alumna of color" as well, but I didn't think of that till later. She said yes, and I had to disabuse her of that idea and thank her kindly for the invitation but also suggest that she could find someone who fit her criteria -- any of her criteria -- better than I.
I think I know how this happened. For many years whenever I fill out the ethnicity questionaires, I check "other," and write in "semite." This is because I don't really fit into the category of "white" very well, given the kinds of experiences I have had and the kind of wordview I have, and I am on a mission to desimplify ethnicity, and I haven't yet come up with a better way to correctly express my skewed relationship to mainstream privilege and all that. I do not mean to claim that I have the experiences that a person in a caste of color receives in this country. When I need to make the distinction in that direction, I own up to being white enough for the purpose. I never expected that anybody but statisticians would be looking at these questionaires, though.
But it tells you something about what "ethnic" means in our society: "ethnic" means "of color." There are even contexts in which this is a useful meaning. There are other contexts in which it is not, and I spend more of my time in those contexts than in the other ones, so I simply didn't realize that I was setting a trap for myself and the people I wish to ally myself with.
But I don't think I'll stop, because I don't think it's a really important or dangerous trap.
I listened to the description of the event, waiting for the punchline that would make the invitation make sense, but finally I realized there wasn't going to be one, and I said, "Wait a minute. Are you under the impression that I am an alumna of color?" I should have said "successful alumna of color" as well, but I didn't think of that till later. She said yes, and I had to disabuse her of that idea and thank her kindly for the invitation but also suggest that she could find someone who fit her criteria -- any of her criteria -- better than I.
I think I know how this happened. For many years whenever I fill out the ethnicity questionaires, I check "other," and write in "semite." This is because I don't really fit into the category of "white" very well, given the kinds of experiences I have had and the kind of wordview I have, and I am on a mission to desimplify ethnicity, and I haven't yet come up with a better way to correctly express my skewed relationship to mainstream privilege and all that. I do not mean to claim that I have the experiences that a person in a caste of color receives in this country. When I need to make the distinction in that direction, I own up to being white enough for the purpose. I never expected that anybody but statisticians would be looking at these questionaires, though.
But it tells you something about what "ethnic" means in our society: "ethnic" means "of color." There are even contexts in which this is a useful meaning. There are other contexts in which it is not, and I spend more of my time in those contexts than in the other ones, so I simply didn't realize that I was setting a trap for myself and the people I wish to ally myself with.
But I don't think I'll stop, because I don't think it's a really important or dangerous trap.
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Not actually directly applicable, but I do recommend this column by Patricia Williams if you haven't seen it:
http://www.ywca.org/site/pp.asp?c=lkJZJdO4F&b=6223479
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And she's right. And it's probably directly applicable, as it makes me uncomfortable about this thing I do(I don't want to be one of those liberals who try to deny the role of color in US society! Damnit!).
I really, really, don't want to define myself as not-black: I want to define myself (the way I really see myself) as "marginal." But I don't want to subvert the purpose of demographics.
So now I have to wonder if today's experience doesn't just show me that that's what I've been doing, and maybe I ought to stop, and choose soime other context for dealing with this.