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The funny thing is, I’m not white.

But I am white.

I’m white because I was raised by whites. My parents split up when I was three; as a child I visited my father, the source of my unwhiteness, twice a year for a week at a time at the most, til I was thirteen, and save for one very unpleasant weekend jaunt at age sixteen, I have not seen him since. But even if I had spent a significant amount of time with him, his father, the source of his nonwhiteness, left his family when he was just a kid–he was raised by his white mother and her white family. So he too, despite his biracial heritage, was pretty white. In short, in the home, I was automatically treated as white by everyone I lived with.

I’m white because I look like my mother. I don’t just sort of resemble my mother; I look so much like the mother I remember from my middle childhood years it’s creepy. There are a few differences–translated into me, her golden hair shifted to a ashier, cooler blonde; her skin so fair it was nearly colorless acquired an olive tinge. Her long delicate facial features shortened a little and became more prominent, stronger, higher in the cheekbones, nose, jawline. But these shifts from the northern European are subtle. I was a light-haired fair-skinned baby, girl, woman. In short, outside the home, I was automatically treated as white by everyone I met.

I’m white because I’m not black. I knew my father’s racial heritage, but I didn’t grow up anywhere near a reservation. I suspect it’s different if you do, but I know from experience in places you don’t, the folks thereabouts think that Native Americans are downright romantical. Noble savages! Ever read any mainstream historical romances set in the old West? Half the studly heroes were either raised by Injuns or are half-Injun themselves. Ever see one where the hero was raised by slaves or was half-African..? It occasionally came up during my childhood and adolescence that racial descent was hauled out and displayed for the herd. The response to mine was always Oh, how cool…I wish I was part..! In the town I grew up in we had very few citizens of African descent, but there was a girl in my elementary school who had a black father and a white mother. I never once heard anyone say to her Oh how cool I wish I was..!

Least important is that I’m white because three out of four of my biological grandparents were white. Seriously, that doesn’t even really compute. Barack Obama, for instance, is black. He’s not more black than white based upon the racial strains of his grandparents, is he? No. I have to say that the actual percentage composition matters not at all. It’s who raises you, what they think they are, what they tell you you are, and what society perceives you to be based upon incredibly arbitrary facial and coloring templates and stereotypes about cultures not its own.

However, my, er, questionable racial status has enabled me to be a happy skeptic of all the crap about innate European superiority all my life. I never had any societally-induced prejudices to overcome on that score. Good luck convincing me, ever, that I’m not as smart (or generally, so much smarter as to exist on another plane, ha!) as anybody else regardless of racial descent. Or as hardworking. Or as reliable. Or as moral. Or as brave. Or as–well, you name it.

But what it has not done is make me really notice racism. Not like I notice sexism. Not just the awful overt shit where somebody’s maimed or killed, but the permeating pillar of our white-worshipping society, like sexism is the permeating pillar of our male-worshipping society.

Oh, I don’t have a conscious racist bone in my body. I really don’t. I have been a source of amusement for friends that grew up immersed in racism for years, both on the giving end and the receiving end; my obliviousness is legendary. Recent example: shown picture of friend’s ex-fiancee. Offered up standard selection of remarks specially programmed into brain when shown pictures by friend of other friends or family, adjusted appropriately to age, gender and sexual intimacy of relationship. Informed that her family took a long time to really like and accept him. Delicate ground here; one can’t directly inquire as to unfortunate personality traits or physical grooming habits without implying that friend has bad taste in men or bad luck in family, so ask in a roundabout way if perhaps they weren’t ready for their little girl to get serious yet..? “NO!” friend said. “It was because he was BLACK, of course!” …it wasn’t that I didn’t NOTICE he was dark-skinned…I did. I just didn’t make the connection. I often don’t.

But I don’t have a conscious racist bone. I’m absolutely sure, white as I am, that I have plenty of unconscious ones, no matter how passionately I hate the idea and struggle to eliminate any of that horrible, irrational bullshit. Even more significantly, white as I am, I have never once, in my life, ever experienced an incident of racism directed at me.

I have had discussions with others, white others, about racism, and they refuse to believe this. Not because of my racial heritage, but because they, practically down to a man (or woman), have experienced racial prejudice, directed at them, by nonwhite people. They swear. They will even haul out the stories:

…when I lived in Baltimore and I wanted to play neighborhood basketball nobody wanted me on their team…
…when I used to drive through [majority black] county there’d be this guy on the median strip selling The Final Call and he’d talk to everybody stopped at the light except me…
…when I go to clubs downtown when the black guys want to dance with me the black girls get really mad at me…
…when I worked at [company] this one black woman who worked there got this new position there even though she had less experience than the white guys applying for it…
…I was in this 7-Eleven once and these guys started talking nasty about me and calling me “that white bitch…”
…when I go in a shop if it’s all black women working there they ignore me if a black customer comes in…”

What can I say to all those examples of virulent racism practiced upon earnestly equality-attempting white folks by the ungrateful brown? Don Quixote-like, the hopelessness of logical communication with certain attitudes has never stopped me! so I always try to inject sanity into the worldviews swirling around me. Like so:

“So, you or someone you knew didn’t get special treatment ’cause you were white..? YEOWW! ‘Is this a racism I see before me, the handle in my hand?’ ‘Out, damn’ed racism!’”

But in spite all that, I’m still white and I’m still fucking blind to racial prejudice.

What prompted this unhappy self-examination was the emergence of undeniably racist depictions in the illustration in A. Marcotte’s brand-new book, which I have been anxiously awaiting (only haven’t grabbed it yet ’cause she teasingly stated she MIGHT get down to DC for a book! reading! and if that was gonna happen at all, I was gonna wait for it, dammit). I was surfing Feministing and came across the link to the pics. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen them, though. I hadn’t closely examined them, no, but I had seen them before in passing. But til somebody basically grabbed my chin and shoved my nose into the picture and said (paraphrased) “Dumbass! RACIST!” I literally did…not…see…the racism. And it wasn’t like it was some ridiculously subtle thing. And it wasn’t like I didn’t notice the SEXIST nature of the illustrations right off the bat.

In terms of sexism, I know what it is to notice it when others don’t, to point it out knowing the best response I’m gonna get is, “Oh? Oh yeah…I guess I can see that…” Knowing that underneath it all is the refrain oversensitive making trouble angry humorless nobody means it for real people must like or it wouldn’t sell I wouldn’t care if I saw it and it was directed at my subset of humanity no sense of perspective more important things to worry about jesus!

So what do I say now?

The only thing I can think of is, I’ll try even harder, and no, it sure as hell ain’t your responsibility that I wasn’t trying hard enough in the first place. And, like Amanda, I’m really, really sorry.