What is whiteness? It’s hard for me to define. Especially since most of my racial learning, as a white person in the US, meant mastering ways to ignore it.
What is whiteness? It's hard for me to define, especially since most of my racial education as a white person in the US involved learning ways to ignore it.
So far, the best answer I can give is that whiteness does not define me, nor any other single white person. Whiteness is a social construct with significant consequences. It is a culture, a way of being, and a collection of practices, expectations, attitudes, and beliefs. Whiteness is about messages, shared meaning, and common understanding.
Even though whiteness is external to me, it has a profound impact on me. I struggle to recognize when and how whiteness influences me. Sometimes it is so familiar that it feels like an essential part of who I am. Whiteness can and does affect me in every aspect of my life: physically, mentally, relationally, emotionally, and spiritually.
Whiteness is not a neutral concept. It was intentionally created to uphold a social practice of discriminating and assigning value based on skin color. As a strategy of power, whiteness fuels racism and propels inequality. Whiteness undermines who I’m trying to become, causing me to go against my values, hopes, and preferred ways of being. Every day, I question how whiteness might be trying to overtake me. This exercise helps me resist whiteness and better understand how race influences me.
Recently, this questioning helped me understand my reaction to an important event. My faith community held an evening of worship for people of color. As a white person, I realized that this event was not for me to attend. It was about our identity and shared values, as people who stand against marginalization, resource conglomeration, and dominance over others. I’m excited to be a part of this community that not only proclaims our values, but also lives them. I feel a sense of belonging here. The joint principles align with my own values, hopes, and pursuit of how I desire to be.
As I felt excited, I also felt an unexpected sadness. Why did I feel this way? I aspire to be a person who creates space and, through my words and actions, stands on the side of love. I strive to consistently identify and reject ways in which I contribute to inequity, unkindness, and lack of love. I aim to listen and respond to the needs of others.
I wholeheartedly agreed that such an evening was necessary and beneficial. I even wanted my brown children and black husband to attend. If this event and community aligned so well with my values, hopes, and dreams, why did I feel sad?
Enter my friend whiteness. Whiteness would say that the sadness was about me, that I was sad because I was being excluded. This fits with my understanding of whiteness. It suggests that as a white person, space is mine to take and that whiteness should be welcomed. Whiteness tries to convince me that when I’m asked to make space for others, I’m being left out. It suggests that something of mine is being taken from me and that I’m being harmed.
I didn't feel sad about being excluded because I wasn't actually being excluded. My participation was very welcome. It's just that the way I was asked to join in didn't align with what whiteness has taught me. My faith community provides a generous and loving space for people to practice stepping outside of the expectations, pressures, and roles that weigh on us. We are all invited to step into abundance, life, and love. That's what this event gave me: a chance to let go of the constraints of whiteness, an opportunity to experience acceptance and connection that's different from the belonging I've known in whiteness. It was an opening for me to be someone other than what I've been, to imagine and to be more than what whiteness prescribes.
It helped me realize that the story told by whiteness is just one perspective to consider - for the sadness I felt that day and for every day after. This narrative is familiar, as it places blame on others and allows me to avoid acknowledging whiteness and its impact on our world. Although whiteness is what I know and I could easily find other white people to support a story of white exclusion, I don't need to accept the narrative that whiteness promotes about the sadness I experienced. In fact, whiteness caused it.
I’m saddened that we are still living in a reality where whiteness holds power to trounce, exclude, and harm. This event is just one of many that sheds light on our racial reality. It is tragic that whiteness works against my mixed-race family and habitually harms me, my spouse, and my kids. Sadness is a suitable response (so is rage, but that is for another time).
We live in a system where whiteness seeks to preserve an order that goes against everything I stand for. It's disheartening because I often feel powerless in the face of such a pervasive and unfair system. What's worse is that I too often contribute to the maintenance of whiteness rather than challenging it. It's overwhelming to realize that whiteness creates an environment that forces people of color, including some of my closest loved ones, to seek refuge from its relentless oppression just to survive its brutality.
Oppressive forces, such as whiteness, evolve and change over time in order to persist in their purpose. I, too, am learning to adapt. As I gain more knowledge about how whiteness is a social construct rather than an essential part of my being, I can change my relationship with it. By recognizing that whiteness is separate from my humanity, and that ending whiteness does not entail ending me, I can deconstruct the whiteness that has been ingrained in me. I'm examining my relationship with whiteness because it impedes my ability to live and love fully. Whiteness, as I've come to understand it, represents what I don't want to be.
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