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For whatever reason, my husband and I often times have people say racist things to us, and are shocked/ embarrassed when we respond negatively to them (from looking at them askance, to actually telling them that’s not cool). Maybe it’s because we’re both lily-white Midwesterners, maybe because we dress “white”, or maybe just because people aren’t thinking about the words coming out of their mouth. But for whatever the reason, we end up with a lot of people telling us racist things.

Last Christmas, my Hubby and I were sitting to next to a lady on our flight back from Washington state. We were having a nice conversation with her; talking about our families and what we did over the break. We started to talk about what our families did, and I made mention that my father was in the Border Patrol. That’s when the fun started.

Lady: Oh, I’m so glad we have those agents. Especially after 9-11
Me *non-committal*: Yeah, I guess there’s a good reason to have a Border guard.
Lady: Especially after I went to Canada on this trip.
Me: Really? That long wait is a pain in my nalgas. Irritates the heck out of me.
Lady: Oh, well that’s bad, but it’s better than the alternative. When I went to Canada, I went to a mall, and it was just full of those people. It’s like we weren’t even in the United States anymore.
Hubby: Well, you were in Canada.
Lady *blushing*: I mean, like, North American
Me: What do you mean, those people?
Lady: You know, it was full of people that looked like they should be in Iraq, or India or something.
Hubby: Huh, I happen to think that having diversity’s a good thing.
Lady: Yeah, of course *stumbles, mutters* but I felt weird, like an outsider.
Me: I can understand how that goes; I’ve been the minority before. Makes you have some sympathy for different minority groups, right?
Lady: *blushes harder* yeah, I suppose.
Hubby: So, what did you do in Canada otherwise?

Then, last week, Hubby (in his full pilot’s uniform) ends up sitting next to another person coming to Minneapolis, via Detroit.

Person: I hope that we won’t have too much trouble in Detroit, with the workers and stuff.
Hubby: Oh, we probably will; all the workers are pretty pissed off that they’re getting laid off.
Person: But Detroit’s going to be really bad.
Hubby: Why’s that? (At this point, completely confused)
Person, *leaning in conspiratorially*: I hear there are a lot of…colored people, in Detroit.
Hubby *Bursts out laughing*: I don’t think you have anything to worry about.
Person *looks upset*

Finally, this weekend, we went to Minneapolis, to celebrate my mother-in-law’s 50th birthday (wow, isn’t she old?). Now, this one the parties involved should have known better; I’m not a complete stranger that they’re just going to assume I’m going to go along with even “soft” racism. Father-in-law (FIL) and I have already mixed up after he reiterated the Rush Limbaugh quote about Colin Powell’s endorsement. But, the party involved started talking about security, and the really ridiculous standards that TSA decided to pull out of their asses to keep us safe, and FIL had to bring up racial profiling.

FIL: If they’d just start profiling guys, that’d fix the problem and we wouldn’t have to do the stuff.
Me (possibly tipsy at this point): Oh, yeah, brilliant idea! I can just think how wonderful that would be to stop terrorism. Because, you know, that last guy to run an SUV into a women’s clinic, was a white male, so all we’d have to do is stop all white males! What was the name of the Prime Minister of Israel? She had a really great way of stopping rape. Oh, and there was that guy with the gun at the Universalist Unitarian church, he was a white male aged about 50 too!
Party with us: Women pointing at their husbands and laughing, MIL looking pained, FIL looking mad.
FIL: Yeah, because that’s exactly the kind of stuff I’m talking about
Hubby: It wouldn’t work, anyways, those groups aren’t stupid. They’d just get someone else to do stuff.
MIL: Would anyone like any thing else to eat?

It’s amazing to me on some sort of level the number of assumptions people seem to have. They assume that I’m going to just go along with sort of “soft” racism because I’m white. This is a silly assumption in the US today, because really, who doesn’t at this point have a friend, or a colleague, or hell, even an extended family member who’s non-white even if you’re white? Most people at this juncture in history think racism is bad, but suddenly it’s not racism if you’re just saying that “those people” shouldn’t be a majority in a country because it makes you uncomfortable, or “those people” are more dangerous than white people, or “those people” should be the ones getting extra-attention because they’re more likely to commit terrorism. I’d like to think it sounds ridiculous when I phrase it like this to them (and based on their reactions, they probably did too) but then they go ahead and say it without thinking.

This is nothing for Hubby and me. We have plenty of privilege to protect us from this sort of racism: while it’s infuriating for us, it’s still only a sort-of byproduct for wanting equality. For a person of minority, s/he wouldn’t have even had a nice conversation about family members, or it might have been a flinch away. Or it would have to be an “ignore the family members saying stupid things” as my black, Hispanic, and Asian cousins will attest to.

I really wish this stuff didn’t happen.

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.

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