Peeking into the rock

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.