not that kind of white person
This Week in Reading
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
Such a Fun Age is a novel told from dual vantage points: half from the perspective of Alix Chamberlain, a wealthy, white mother, and half from the perspective of her Black babysitter, Emira. Alix is beautiful and successful and runs a business vaguely centered around the concept of female empowerment. After her husband makes a racially insensitive comment on the local news, she decides to atone for her whiteness by befriending Emira, a recent college grad who is deeply uncomfortable with Alix’s sudden and transparent chumminess. The novel illustrates the chasm between Alix’s intentions, and the way they are perceived by Emira. Alix desperately wants Emira’s approval—she tries to downplay her privilege with self deprecating stories about scoring bargains on home décor and fancy wine, offhandedly criticizes the ridiculous white mothers that she herself invited to her daughter’s birthday party. She wants to enjoy the luxuries of her status while distancing herself from the characterizations that come with it. Alix doesn’t feel like she belongs to the community of wealthy white moms she finds herself in in Philadelphia. She is an entrepreneur, a self-starter! One of her best friends is Black! She only wants what is best for Emira; she believes herself to be motivated exclusively by benevolence.
Like so many white people addressing race, Alix is obsessed with distinguishing herself from That Kind of White Person. Liberals claim they “don’t see race” to distance themselves from overt racists who might don a white cape and light a cross on fire in a Black family’s front lawn (I’m not that kind of white person). Progressives proclaim that they do see race, that colorblind politics ignores the inherent inequality baked into the foundation of America (I’m not that kind of white person). You might post a black and white selfie in the name of ~feminism~ (I’m not the kind of white person who doesn’t support women). Or you might share an Instagram graphic that criticizes #challengeaccepted for distracting from its original goal of raising awareness about femicide in Turkey (I’m not the kind of white person that subscribes to white feminism). Or you might share a post that fact checks the origin of the trend and proves that #challengeaccepted began in 2016, years before this latest iteration intended to amplify the plight of Turkish women (I’m not the kind of white person that shares misinformation). Or you might share a counterpoint to the original counterpoint that purports that the account behind the graphic is a Turkish nationalist organization that supports the Armenian genocide (I’m not the kind of white person that ignores human rights crises abroad).
It’s a collapsing hall of mirrors, each assertion an attempt to distance oneself from the previous iteration of That Kind of White Person-- with none of these reflections leading anyone closer to actually ending systemic oppression. I too am implicated in the hall of mirrors: critiquing the refractions of performative activism is yet another way of distancing myself from the self congratulatory call outs and counter call outs I see other white people engaging in online (I’m not that kind of white person). Trying to distinguish yourself from That Kind of White Person, is exactly what makes you That Kind of White Person.
I joke that my primary demographic on Instagram is masochistic white girls. My DMs are full of white woman who love to be checked— as if a self call out will absolve them of their own privilege and implicit biases. They use self-accountability as a device to head off any potential, more painful, community accountability coming their way. Again, I am implicated in this. I am doing this right now, in this very sentence: using self-awareness to draw an audience’s attention to the flaws I have already identified in hopes that they will not uncover any other sinister truths that I have yet to discover within myself.
I am both white and not-white, a personal cocktail of privilege and oppression that is mine alone to unpack. I’ve felt the heavy complexity of my biracial identity my whole life, but it wasn’t until 2016 that it came sharply into focus. Up until then I had been happy to brush my race aside; whatever burdens that came with being Vietnamese American were seemingly erased by the other inordinate privileges that defined my existence: my pale skin, my father’s last name, an extremely comfortable upper middle class childhood, an education from an elite university. The 2016 election blew that apart for me. The swift executive orders against refugees felt like a personal attack on my family, who had passed through camps in Guam and Arkansas. The Department of Justice’s reversal of protections for LGBT+ people made me feel vulnerable in a way I had never before experienced in the various liberal metropolises I called home. And yet, simultaneously, I felt indicted by the reality that white woman had been key to Trump’s victory, felt responsible for my fellow white woman who had done such a thing to my country. To be half white is to function as both a victim and oppressor simultaneously. My body is a site of consensual, loving colonization. I am the colonizer, and the colonized. I am hurt by racism, while simultaneously benefiting from it. I don’t know what I am supposed to do with that.
I told a story on Instagram a few weeks ago, about a white woman who had, immediately upon learning that I was half-Vietnamese, asked if my father was a GI. I hesitated to share this example, partially because the racism experienced by someone like me, with my freckles and white last name, seemed trivial in light of daily violence that people darker than me face. But my hesitation also stemmed from how obvious of an incident it was, the kind of conspicuous racism that feels far away from normal, civil conversation. Half a dozen people responded to that particular slide, my message requests full of white women expressing their disbelief about the comment. I can’t believe they said that, was the common sentiment. “Damn!” “Holy shit” “[open mouth shocked emoji]”. This, was to miss the point. The actual point was not what was said, but the fact that it was said by someone I liked and respected. By someone I still like and respect. The point was that this kind of comment happens, in a more subtle form, all the time, by almost every white person. If I met you before, say, 2013 (an arbitrary date around which the public conversation around race seemed to become marginally more thoughtful), there is a 95% chance that you said something othering or fetishizing to me about my race during the course of our friendship. I don’t need an apology for it now, and I definitely don’t have the emotional energy to absolve each individual of their decade old offenses, but just know that this is true. If you are white and were alive before 2013, you have probably been That Kind Of White Person before. You probably still are, to some degree. “I can’t believe they said that” you say, which translates to “I would never think to say that, I’m not that kind of white person.”
Now in 2020 my perspective on my own race has sharpened again. What part of my self description as white-passing for all 27 years of my life was a genuine acknowledgment of the very real privilege my proximity to whiteness affords me, and what was a subconscious distancing from the otherness that came with Vietnamese heritage? I’m going to tell you another story, one that I have thought about incessantly for years but only started sharing recently: When I was in high school I worked at a very charming local toy store run by a truly wonderful family. One day my coworker, a white girl a few years older than me, told me, absolutely unprompted, that she was afraid of my mom because she had “a scary accent.” That day, at age 16, I heard my mother’s accent for the first time in my entire life. At the time I was shocked that she had the nerve to say such a thing about my mother to my own face. Now I wonder if witnessing these kinds of comments from a very young age, some more explicit, most less so, caused me to latch onto the whiteness that was the norm at my suburban elementary school— like the racism I witnessed against my own family could not hurt me personally if I used my white-passing privilege as a shield. Mainly I am just mad that I have been haunted by this comment on a monthly basis for the past ten years when I know that this coworker has never thought about it again.
To say “that is the point” (as I have done-- three times and counting in this newsletter) is to miss the point— which is that white people will never truly get the point, will never understand or experience or be able to empathize with the pain felt by communities of color. But we, the Good white people are desperate to get the point. Or more specifically, we want to be validated that we "get it". We, unlike the That Kind of White People, have done our homework. We listened to the podcasts we were supposed to, we followed the Black activists on Instagram, we retweeted the scorching tweets that implicate white complacency at large. We’re confused and upset that we didn’t ace the final, after dutifully making flashcards that help us identify statements as “racist” and “not racist.” I don’t know where the emergency exit is as the hall of mirrors collapses around me, but I do know that acknowledging whiteness does not separate it from us. We are, exactly, that kind of white person.
Studio-ing
("Solidarity", 2020)
After a particularly exhausting week on the internet, I completely freaked it and designed and ordered 25 of these DECRIMINALIZE HETERO MARRIAGE bumper stickers. Finally, the gays can reciprocate the allyship the straights have shown us by valiantly getting drunk at Pride every year and taking their bachelorette parties to gay bars! Finally! We can fight for straight rights! Love is love~~
This newsletter is way past my usual word count so I’ll just link to my official artist statement for this mini-project.
Further Reading:
I know Citizen by Claudia Rankine has been on every anti-racist booklist on the internet, but damn, it is truly a masterful use of language to convey the sheer magnitude and exhaustion of the microaggressions Rankine experiences in her own life.
Another piece of content worth the buzz: the Nice White Parents podcast is like hearing the voices of the PTA parents from my suburban school district. It is giving me a lot to think about in terms of how I want to approach my future child’s education.