1.
At first it’s probably not obvious that you are their only nonwhite friend. Maybe you can’t remember them hanging out with any people of color except for you, but you don’t know all the people they know. All those tiny thumbnails of white faces, commenting on their political status updates and praising their selfies on Facebook — that’s Facebook, what can it really tell you about someone’s life? Sure, you might go over to your friend’s place for a barbecue or a Super Bowl party and realize that everyone there is white, but that’s still a small sample, ten or twelve people, and at least no one seems visibly weirded out that you’re there, too.
Then, a few years later, you go to their wedding. You’re in a crowded reception hall with the two hundred and fifty people your friend is closest to in the world. You’re the only person of color who made the cut. Maybe this doesn’t actually bother you all that much; maybe you can guess all the reasons already, and some of them seem valid. But as you talk to the people around you, making friendly chitchat at the open bar (how did you meet the bride?), you can’t help but wonder if any of them have noticed what you’ve noticed. (It’s not as if you can ask. There is never a good way to ask white people why their party is so white.)
The funny thing is, you don’t spend a lot of time wondering what it is about your friend’s life that has led to you being, as you so often are, the only nonwhite person in the room. Instead, you ask what it is about you. How did you — of all the brown people in all the towns in all the world — slip past their usual defenses? What is it that made you acceptable?
2.
The girls in my class at Sacred Heart were almost uniformly pale, blue-eyed wisps with hair that ran the gamut from light blond all the way to dark blond. I never understood why, but looking back now, I suppose all the Scandinavian blood in the Pacific Northwest might have had something to do with it. In any case our school was tiny, and I had the same kids in my class year after year, the same boys with saints’ names, the same pretty, fair-haired girls. I desperately wanted to look and be just like those girls. I aspired to friendship with them, but even though they didn’t hurl racial slurs like the worst of the boys, I knew my place, and it wasn’t with them.
Still, when a group of girls came running up to me one day in sixth grade and climbed up close to my perch on top of the monkey bars, the part of me that was capable of feeling deliriously hopeful wondered if they might change their minds about me. For one glorious moment, I pictured myself walking down the hall with those white girls, sitting next to them in the cafeteria, being asked over to their houses to play. One of them, whose blond hair was more ashy than golden, climbed up and settled herself just a few feet away from me. Her voice sounded strange, suspiciously friendly as she said, “We have a question, and you’re the only one we can ask. We were wondering…”
I felt sure it was a trap, but curiosity got the better of me, and I waited.
“…Do you have a sideways vagina?”
“What?” I had no idea what she was talking about, which didn’t prevent me from flushing hot with embarrassment. What she’d said made no sense. “Why would you ask me that?”
“My brother told me Asian girls have those,” she said, beginning to laugh.
I don’t remember if the other girls laughed, too; I think one of them might have tried to say something to me, something nicer, but I’d heard enough. As I dropped down from the bars and ran off, I heard the questioner call after me, “So is it true? Are you going to check?”
3.
Rules for getting along with white people, practiced (sometimes consciously, but often not) from early childhood until my twenties:
Always sound reasonable.
Never sound bitter.
If they ask whether you think something they said, thought, or did is racist, the answer they’re looking for is No.
Don’t remind them that you’re different.
If differences happen to come up, act like they don’t matter.
If they seem to accept you, feel grateful.
4.
For those who truly believe themselves to be “colorblind,” there may be no person of color more approachable, more accessible, than a transracial adoptee. I’m not one of you, but I was raised among you. Who else could be more inclined to sympathize with, give the benefit of the doubt to, well-intentioned white people just trying to make sense of this perplexing “race” business? I can’t possibly have a chip on my shoulder if nice white people adopted me. I can’t be one of those angry hyphenated Americans if my assimilation began just weeks after my birth.
Over the years I met white people who said things such as “you’re not like other Asians” or applauded me for “not caring about political correctness.” Sometimes they called me “refreshing.” Many would look at my transracial adoptive family and see none of its challenges or complexities, only a beautiful postracial vision of what family could be when race was barely acknowledged and never discussed.
Sometime in college, I think during my freshman or sophomore year, a friend said to me: “You know that everyone who looks at you sees ‘Asian’ first, ‘woman’ second, and everything else after that, don’t you?” I thought about her words for days, weeks, turning them over and and over in my mind, embarrassed and fearful and a little bit angry, too. That might have been when my view of myself began to shift, I don’t know — I just know that it didn’t happen all at once. I had been raised not to think about these things, had learned to feel grateful when my friends didn’t seem to notice (or mind) the face I presented to the world. For years I had believed that if I talked about race, I would be setting myself apart from everyone else I knew, drawing a line that no one who loved me wanted to see or acknowledge.
Today I think a lot about my complicity in racism, then and now, and what living a life just adjacent to whiteness meant for me as a kid. I think about the white people who still feel comfortable saying racist things to me (“you won’t take this the wrong way”), who invite me into all-white spaces and assume I won’t notice or care. I wonder to what extent my assimilated adoptee accessibility functions at the expense of other people of color; I wonder how many of my relationships provide safe ground from which people can claim not to be racist. In short, I wonder if I really am a token.
As I’ve aged, I’ve found that I don’t always know what to do with some of the people I became close to before I started asking these questions, back when I was still just trying to keep my head down and my mouth shut. Some of them clearly don’t know what to do with me, either. “I know your views on race have evolved,” one old friend said to me several years ago, “but have you ever considered that maybe some white people are hesitant to talk about race because every time they try, some minority bites their head off?”
Another friend engaged me in a conversation about adoption, only to inform me that “racial issues” and “identity politics” weren’t relevant to her or her transracially adopted kids. I knew why she wanted to believe that, and I tried to be as tactful and empathetic as I could, but I left the discussion feeling certain that I had disappointed her. I had moved from my designated mark. I had been the one to put distance between us.
Whether or not it’s my fault, a part of me often wishes I could say I’m not a threat or a disappointment to you. I’m not even a real Korean. At times, to my great embarrassment, I still feel more comfortable with white people than I do with Asians. The former might have the ability to make me feel invisible, but with the latter I sometimes feel deeply inadequate, as if I don’t have the knowledge or the tools or the experience to be the person I was born to be.
5.
Things Korean people have said to me upon learning about my adoption:
“Were your parents married?” [For a while.]
“So that’s why you’re such a banana!” [I suppose.]
“You don’t look full Korean. Were both your parents Korean? I guess maybe you don’t know.” [I do know.]
6.
In middle school I finally made friends with white kids, who were still just about the only kids around, but I also met two Asian boys. One was Vietnamese, the other white and Japanese, and their presence in the halls of my glorious new public school seemed nothing short of miraculous. Where had they been? Had someone beamed in their families from some other place, a wonderful place where absolutely everyone wasn’t white? Would more show up if I prayed hard enough?
We had more classes together in high school. They insisted that I join their team when we had to form competitive exam review groups in history, joking that we’d wipe the floor with the white opposition. It was the first time I’d ever witnessed Asian jokes made by Asians, and I was startled by the difference it seemed to make. Wow, I thought. We are allowed to do that with one another. I didn’t really know how — I knew I wasn’t Asian in the same way way they were. I had identified yet another way I didn’t measure up.
Mostly, these boys and I talked about upcoming exams and college applications and who was dating who. We did not talk about racism or not being white or our feelings about it, which is why I never told them how much their friendship meant to me, or how it had never even occurred to me that I could be proud of my never-acknowledged heritage until I met them and saw their pride. But when I pointed out a boy from my old school who’d pulled his eyes back and taunted me with the old “ching-chong” routine, one of them offered to kick his ass for me. And when another guy asked, clearly with no offense intended, “Are you from North Korea or South Korea?” and I started to answer (because that’s what I always did back then), the other jumped in: “Dude, you can’t ask her that!” That was how I knew they understood without having to ask; it was how we talked about racism, and around it, without ever naming it.
7.
I was in my early twenties when a white colleague proudly informed me that he didn’t care about race, personally, and couldn’t see what all the fuss was about anymore. “I just think it’s completely irrelevant nowadays, what matters is the kind of person you are. Like, I really don’t see you as Asian, Nicole.”
“Oh,” I said. “You really don’t have to say that.”
This person and I did not have enough history (and I did not yet have enough confidence) to have a long argument about colorblind racism. But a few weeks later, on the phone with one of my best friends from high school and still thinking about that exchange, I asked if she had ever “forgotten” I was Asian, or thought of me as white. Even in high school this friend had never minced words; she always seemed to draw from a bottomless well of self-confidence, and I was sure she would tell me the truth.
“I never thought of you as white,” she said. “If anything, I think a lot of us saw you as the representative of all things Asian, because you were the only one we were close to.” For a moment she sounded as if she wanted to laugh at everyone’s foolishness, but she didn’t. “I’m sorry if I ever said or did anything that made you feel that way. Like a token, I mean. If I did, that was really ignorant of me.”
I told her not to be silly, because I couldn’t remember her ever saying anything of the kind, but I still appreciated her words. Growing up, I wanted so badly to talk to my white friends and family about how it felt to be different — I wanted to ask them, does it matter to you? – but I was never brave enough to bring it up. I didn’t even know what I wanted them to say. The fear of being my group’s Yellow Power Ranger/Asian sidekick was always a fear I had back then, a fear I didn’t know how to vocalize.
I know what it is to assume whiteness is the default because whiteness is all you ever see. If any of my white friends were ever guilty of pretending I was white, I know that I was guilty of it, too. And then there were the confusing times when it really had nothing to do with pretending, when I quite honestly almost forgot that I wasn’t — until the next question, the next double-take in the grocery store, the next Where are you from?
8.
Recently I had an illuminating conversation on Twitter with Rohin Guha and others about race and relationships and changing views. We talked about the fear of being viewed as a stereotype, even by close friends and loved ones, and how hard it can be to know what to do — when to educate, and when to step back for the sake of self-preservation.
“So much of getting into my 30s has been this idea of…reasserting my value,” Rohin wrote to me, “and telling people [I] am not your token.”
For me, I find it’s easier to assert myself in these matters, draw the necessary lines, with strangers and new friends. Old friends, after all, knew you one certain way, and asking them to see you another way is asking them to adapt. It would be wonderful if the kindest and loveliest people always found this easy to do, and the ones who resisted were just the most unfortunate, unregrettable assholes — but of course it doesn’t work that way. None of my friends, new or old, are really assholes; if they were, we wouldn’t be friends. And I tend to want to be patient with people, because over the years many, many people have been patient with me when I didn’t deserve it.
Rohin told me his choice just depends on the relationship. “Is it a friendship you care about? Then sit them down. Explain their harmful language [and] its consequences.” Honesty, he added, “is the cornerstone of any lasting friendship.” I agree that it’s impossible to maintain any kind of real friendship without honesty. But what if you are honest when you feel offended, or when something is just objectively wrong, and your friend doesn’t react well? What if they feel betrayed and label you the bad guy? Do you throw away those five or ten or fifteen years of friendship? Or do you keep challenging them, trying to reach them? How long do you keep trying?
I know there are people in my life I should try to bring along, and I know there are people I may one day have to jettison if they don’t drop me first. The problem is that I still haven’t figured out where my line is – it moves around so much you couldn’t truly call it a line at all. I sat and talked with the white friend who breezily said, “oh, I haven’t been following Ferguson at all,” and gave the person who took umbrage when I explained why she shouldn’t refer to Asian people as “Orientals” a very wide berth. The choice to stick with one whilst quietly withdrawing from the other had far less to do with the weight of their actual words or opinions than it did with our history, the quality of our friendship, the depth of my attachment.
Still, there’s no tried-and-true formula I can use to determine when a relationship is worth fighting for and when it isn’t. And sometimes it’s not my friends, but my family members who test me the most: the aunt who still insists on calling me her “Asian princess,” the grandparents who don’t understand why I needed to search for my Korean birth family, the relatives who complain about “a flood of immigrants” and “people taking over the country” with no acknowledgment that I am also the child of immigrants. They say things I wish they wouldn’t, and then I say things I occasionally regret, but for all the fuss I make, for all my determination not to let these things go unchallenged, we seem to end up exactly where we started, none of us willing to budge.
These days I speak up more often than not. But sometimes it doesn’t feel entirely safe. Sometimes it feels beneath me. And sometimes I can’t just walk away for good, no matter what the person has said. Maybe that’s weakness, maybe it is conditioning — I know at least part of it is love. So I’m left rallying useless arguments and wondering how many times I can have the same debate without changing someone’s mind. How many times I can bite my tongue, or accept a change of subject, without feeling small or resentful. I suppose I’ve been grappling with these questions more frequently of late because life has been so much busier, so much more challenging, and I feel the need to protect myself; to make hard but necessary decisions; to prioritize some relationships over others and — most importantly — choose who gets to spend time with my children and potentially have influence over them. I know I could try harder to educate and maintain relationships with some people; I could give up and allow others drift away. But the variables that go into all of these choices are so many and complex, and I suspect that pat answers and real peace of mind may long prove to be, as my own history was for so many years, just out of reach.
Tags: family, friendship, nicole soojung callahan, personal history, race, racism, transracial adoption
Thank you for this. It is powerful and I am contemplating it. I don’t have a response or rebuttal except, thank you for letting me see you.
I’m so sorry you had to deal with any of this. It must take up so much time & energy.
I thought of pointing out that in neighborhoods with a significant Asian population, like the one I grew up in, Asian kids might not feel so isolated in majority-white schools, but then I realized that this was probably because of the “model minority” double bind.
This is excellent. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing this. I felt really disappointed in myself and embarrassed when I realized a while back at my wedding that with the exception of one person, every guest was white. I’ve sought to change this since but it is definitely something that I need to be explicitly thinking about and not just lament or magically wish to happen.
I was thinking the same thing- my best friend and maid of honor is African- but then I remembered that I invited her mom and sister, and my coworker and another friend. :/ But for me that doesn’t change my worries that most of my friends are white.
I’ve just developed this philosophy that I can’t do anything but be open to everyone, and scrutinize my friendship decisions more carefully. As a long term depression sufferer it’s something I had needed to do anyway, so I essentially make more efforts to reach out to people. Having PoC friends is also easier with a strict no-racists rule. Because racists don’t like me for me anyway, fuckers.
I’ve been thinking about how I make friends–which is already a bit more difficult as an adult, though I’m in a university setting, so that helps–but, basically this amounted to going to different places and talking to different people. On a very superficial and easy level, I also overwhelmingly follow people on twitter who don’t look like me so that even if I am not succeeding momentarily at getting outside of a white people bubble, I see and listen to other voices and perspectives. Basically, it comes down to the fact that I have to accept that I have been stupid in the past and chose to tend to certain friendships, rather than others because of comfort and ignorance, and didn’t pay attention when potential good friends were lost.
I just want to make you aware (from my black male perspective) how refreshing and encouraging your comment is; coming from someone in a majority/white culture.
The behaviour of the white people in this article is absolutely baffling to me. Maybe it’s just because I grew up in a very diverse city where befriending and interacting with non-white people was commonplace, but I can’t understand how a white person could be so ignorant and prejudiced and….I don’t know, insulated? Why on earth would someone only want to befriend other people of their own race and feel threatened or uncomfortable around people of another race? I probably sound really privileged asking that – I’m fully aware that my surprised and horrified reaction is a sign of privilege itself, a sign that I wasn’t forced to grow up dealing with this kind of racism every day. But it just…appalls me that white people make minorities feel this way, and I honestly feel confused as to why we do it. I hope to god I have never made any of my non-white friends feel this way. It’s so ridiculously unfair that minorities have to go through this.
Thank you for writing this article, Nicole. I’m so sorry that you had to have these experiences. :
I live in a super-diverse area and I still related to what Nicole said. It’s honestly the area perceived to be beyond racism where prejudiced and oppressive behavior finds this weird haven, I think, because it becomes sneakier. They know they can’t call you by slurs but they find other, more insidious ways to assert their whiteness.
Argh, that is terrible. 🙁
Since I read this I have been thinking back and trying to examine my own friendships and behaviours throughout my life, trying to figure out if I have unknowingly been doing or saying racist things. It’s a difficult thing to figure out – I mean…in school, it just never occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t be friends with a person/I should feel weird about being friends with a person because they were of a different race? And not in the “I’m colourblind because I see all POCs as no different to white people” way – my non-white friends have always mentioned their race/ethnicity/culture and we have always talked about the issues they face re: racism in my country (I’m from Sydney, Australia), and about racism in general. Perhaps it’s because Australian racism has been such a visible problem (we’ve had riots and blackface and other humiliating things happen here), so it’s less taboo to talk about it? Our treatment of asylum seeker, for instance, has been an issue that continues to make headlines over and over again – and a few friends of mine whose parents came here as asylum seekers are always discussing how the issue makes them feel – maybe if the issue were less visible, they would feel less inclined to talk about it.
I don’t know – all of that said, I’m aware that most white people are prone to go on for hours defensively explaining why they’re not racist, and as much as I try not to fall into that trap, I’m sure I do sometimes. I read Nicole’s “rules for getting along with white people” or comments that have been made to her (like “you’re not like other asians”, who the hell thinks that is okay to say), and it makes me feel angry and alienated from the people who say them. But then I worry that I’m making it all about me, or that I’m falling into some kind of cognitive dissonance about the whole thing – it’s hard to figure out how to talk about how appalled I feel at the racist behaviour of some white people without implying that I’m a special person who is immune to it all. I’m also aware that I don’t really have any right to complain about how hard it is to talk about racism as a white person, when it’s a much much more difficult thing for non-white people to bring up and discuss without someone dismissing them. I’m just never sure when it’s better to discuss something or shut up (as you can probably see in this comment, ugh).
At the very least, this article has prompted me to talk to my non-white friends about how they feel about the differences in our races and whether I ever do/say anything that makes them feel minimised or offended, and learn from any criticism they give me. Hopefully it will bring us closer together and I’ll figure the rest of the stuff out as I go.
I’m moving to Australia from the US and I’m pretty concerned about this. People seem more casually racist in some ways, sometimes? But y’all have a different history than we have.
I’m gonna guess that we can and should talk about this, because white folks need to talk about it. But PoC don’t have to do all the work. I mean, it’s basic decency, as you know.
Around here, it’s understood that people are more comfortable with others who look and act like them or like their family, and people are really OVER willing to excuse “discomfort” with the unfamiliar because of that.
Some possibly more well-intentioned people avoid what they see as bothering members of other races out of confusion or a desire to not offend or impose on them. I suspect there are plenty of people who are terrified they will be accused of being racist, too, or worse- really say something racist.
But don’t forget our old buddy white supremacy, at work in all places at all times in the Western world!
Also from Sydney here.
I think part of it in Australia is that, for all of our much-touted multiculturalism, it isn’t really that multicultural – or where it is, it’s mostly different types of European. In my year in primary school we had one non-white boy (I think he was micronesian; it was a long time ago!). In my high school classes we had a handful of Asian kids, and a couple of girls who were 3rd generation Australians of Indian heritage. Since moving to the UK I’ve made friends with people from a variety of races, because I have met them.
Oh wow, really? Maybe it was where I went to school (Ryde East Primary/Malvina High in the North and East Ryde/Gladesville areas), or the fact that the schools I went to were populated with kids of mostly low income families (including mine) – but I would say there was about an equal ratio of Asian kids to white kids, and then we also had a mix of Eastern European/Middle Eastern kids. A lot of my non-white friends had immigrant parents and they spoke a second language at home – I remember feeling a bit fish-out-of-water when I went over to their houses, haha. That said, a few of my friends from primary school went off to private or selective high schools, and I definitely saw what you’re talking about there – a very strong culture of white students with a handful of non-white students mixed in. It’s interesting. I agree with you that Australia has a lot of trouble putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to being multicultural – I lived in Brisbane for a few years and wow, there’s a lot of intolerant white people there.
This article and the responses to it have definitely caused me to think long and hard about my friendships and my own conduct.
I forgot to say also that I really appreciate your input – thanks for your comment. 🙂
Do you live in New York City by any chance?
No – Sydney, Australia. 🙂
I live in New York City, and while not homogeneous like my small hometown, it is certainly still racist, just in a different way.
Along with kaythah’s point, I’ve found that even in diverse areas (cities/suburbs/whatever) there are still ways and places where people build pretty segregated spaces for themselves and that’s where these kind of conversations can happen. It doesn’t have to be big, you can just happen to be the “safe” POC with three white people, and all someone has to do is lower their voice a bit (because other POC are always listening?) and say something like “why do Black people complain so much about race?”
Ugh, it really makes me sick when people slip casual racism into a conversation. I totally see what you mean though, and I definitely think there are social groups/certain areas in my city where that kind of thing happens a lot. Thanks so much for shedding some light and helping me make sense of all this. 🙂
No problem! Btw, this is sad to say on the Internet that spans the world but when you mentioned in a comment upthread that you’re from Sydney, part of me was like “ooooh so that might explain your reaction!” I live in an American city that is 60% Black but travel in spaces and places that are almost 85% White (while I am part of the 15% non-White) so I feel like I see this a lot.
The segregation is enforced in the same way that the racial assumptions are enforced. It’s endemic. Most of my friends were black in a predominantly black area, but my school was predominantly white, and it would have been very easy for me to just . . . drift into a different social circle, where I clearly “belonged”, and I was constantly asked why I wouldn’t do so. (Answer: these girls were my friends and had been good friends to me for many years, and I didn’t see any reason to ditch them for other people who didn’t seem as nice or as fun.)
People are okay with three white girls being friends with a non-white girl. They’re okay with there being a “token minority” in a group, because it’s almost a visual confirmation of who’s in power. I found that they’re not okay at all with three black girls being friends with a white girl. They’re uncomfortable about a “token” white girl. And by “they” I mean mostly white people. White people don’t like seeing the white girl being outnumbered by her non-white friends, and there’s definitely pressure to stop actively hanging out with people who don’t look like you.
That’s not to excuse anyone who only has the token non-white friend, just to say it’s clear that the people in authority very much want that to be the way it is.
People are okay with three white girls being friends with a non-white girl. They’re okay with there being a “token minority” in a group, because it’s almost a visual confirmation of who’s in power. I found that they’re not okay at all with three black girls being friends with a white girl. They’re uncomfortable about a “token” white girl. And by “they” I mean mostly white people. White people don’t like seeing the white girl being outnumbered by her non-white friends, and there’s definitely pressure to stop actively hanging out with people who don’t look like you.
Damn, you’re totally onto something here. This is making me think of two things:
1) A white acquaintance of mine who went to a mostly black HS in Baltimore, and how she apparently got a lot of questions asking if she would do it over again since obvs she must’ve been uncomfortable being in the minority. I know The Wire hasn’t really helped with depictions of Baltimore City schools, but she attended a HS that is considered one of the flagship HS.
2) Many of my white friends who have quietly raised anxiety about sending their white kids to public city schools where they “might be the only blond kid” or whatever in class and all of the subconscious undertones of that. I have a friend who actually said that who went to the same HS we did, which was majority POC, so while she would deny racism until the end of time, I feel like there’s a lot of anxiety from white people about being in the minority in any way.
The more I think about it, the more I remember that we see this on a national level and on political stages too.
I kept meaning to check in earlier and GOT BUSY INSTEAD, but I’m here reading now. And yes, I’ve heard numerous white friends talk in hushed tones about their objections to their child’s districted school, because it’s great to live in a diverse community until you realize your child might not enjoy the privilege of being in the majority [but hey! they will still enjoy white privilege, so, SILVER LINING]. I’ve also heard stories about kids being mean to the white kids in the class, sometimes accompanied by claims of “reverse racism.” And while I don’t doubt that it happens and I can sympathize for obvious reasons with anyone being excluded or bullied at school (it obviously should never happen!), I also wonder if these parents are upset IN PART because, well, they assumed that if anyone was going to be targeted, it would NOT be their white children. The racial hierarchy is not what they expected, and it is Too Much.
Yeah, there is definitely fear behind the “concerns” and it’s the same fear that men often have in, say, hiring environments where most of the staff are women. They expected to be in a privileged position and are now frantic to think they might experience the discrimination experienced by others. For some reason it never occurs to them that they’re not getting the same experience at all, because it’s an experience they’ll only have in this one environment, not systemic everywhere they go.
I should note that “reverse racism” was never something I experienced and I wasn’t trying to imply as much. I was certainly poked fun at for being the only white girl, but it was always good-natured and never felt anything like what you describe in these essays. No one ever made pointed comments or inappropriate remarks, and any assumptions were generally positive – for example, lots of people assumed that my parents made much more money than they actually did. Even being the oddity, I still experienced the privilege of the social hierarchy. You can’t exactly feel deeply hurt when someone makes fun of your “white girl dancing” when every positive representation of a human being looks like you.
Definitely didn’t mean to imply you believed you’d experienced reverse racism! Sorry if it came across that way.
No, just making sure I hadn’t phrased it poorly! I feel like it happens a lot that when a white person talks about their experience of being the only white person in a space, it’s to proclaim reverse racism, so probably worth saying plainly that this was most definitely not my experience.
That fear always comes with the assumption that anyone who isn’t white is automatically more prone to violence than those nice safe white children, who certainly never hit each other or do anything bad ever.
THAT’S why they expressed anxiety about sending their kids to public city schools? Not lack of funds, overly large classes, massively overworked/exhausted/burnt-out teachers? Not the idiocy of the common core and regular standardized testing?
The emphasis on being the minority is underlined when they say “I’m worried they’ll get picked on because of..” and that thing has something to do with them, um, not being black.
The rest of those things, while they don’t go without saying because many middle-class parents and parents-to-be that I know will talk about them at length, are generally understood to be serious issues.
“Many of my white friends who have quietly raised anxiety about sending their white kids to public city schools where they “might be the only blond kid” or whatever in class”
Oh my god, what is wrong with people. Who thinks like that.
I’m white, and live in a city which is more Asian than the county surrounding…I got LOTS of this from relatives and coworkers when I moved. Aren’t you afraid they’ll be the only white kids in class? Or, disguised: their classes will be really competitive!
Somehow, I think my kids will survive not being in the majority.
I think there are different forms of racism in different areas. There are shitty people everywhere, and ignorant people everywhere. I do think in more diverse places, it is easier for well-intentioned white people to learn how to be less racist/makes unintentional racism rarer (I could totally be wrong about that, of course), but cities can also breed really ugly forms of racism.
I kind of side-eye one of the crowds I know that is mostly white people and a few Chinese/Korean girlfriends (me having been one of them). (To be fair, I think they also run with one Asian guy. I just never see him.) I know why I know these people — we happened to go to a high school that had a significant Asian population.
My main core of friends are all ones I know from that high school — all Chinese, one white. We always joke that she’s our token white friend. I feel lucky I’ve always had a chance with all of them to air some of my racial anxieties — I’ve always been one of those Chinese girls who felt she was more “white than Chinese” (whatever that means) and trying to grapple with being “other” to both Chinese and white groups in different ways. I’ve asked myself more than once if I’m racist because of how I feel about these identities. But I’ve always enjoyed a privilege of being able to think about it as much as I want, and to be able to push it away when I don’t want to.
Thank you for sharing this, Nicole. Even though I’ve had a much easier existence on the whole, I remain aware my experience is not universal. What people have said to you is insanely unacceptable.
The girls in grade school, yeah, that was awful and unacceptable. But what’s funny is that I understand where absolutely every other comment I mentioned came from. I get it. I get the fear of talking about race because you think you’ll say something wrong. And I don’t want people to feel bad for me because I’ve had some negative experiences — it’s small potatoes compared to what many others experience, and I am okay. I just want people to think about the stuff they say to their own friends (and not-friends) now.
My whole conversation with Rohin, I think, was circling around this point that, in a real friendship, there HAS to be the room to say, “That was a shitty thing you said, but I know who you are and I know we can be better.”
I grew up in an area where there was a strong Japanese American community for me to belong to. My parents were very involved, and I was often surrounded by people who looked just like me. At school, I was just one “flavor” of Asian, and there were times when the other Asian kids and I would have to patiently explain that we weren’t all Chinese. That none of us were Chinese, actually.
I do think it’s interesting that as an adult, my group of close friends includes quite a few Asian people, but not exclusively so. My brother, on the other hand, has an almost exclusively Asian core group of friends. I don’t know why this is, but I think about it fairly often.
On the flip side of this, my very white girlfriend is one of two non-Asians at just about any family gathering. She enjoys being in my family photos because it’s so easy to pick her out of the crowd.
“I know your views on race have evolved,” one old friend said to me several years ago, “but have you ever considered that maybe some white people are hesitant to talk about race because every time they try, some minority bites their head off?”
News flash to anyone aligned with the dominant social demographic (including me): if “every time” you try to talk to someone not aligned with the dominant social demographic about the gap between your experiences, you “get your head bitten off”? YOU DESERVE TO HAVE YOUR HEAD BITTEN OFF because you are obviously spouting self-comforting nonsense that privileges your limited worldview over the voices of people who know better, and you should learn to stop talking at people about their own experiences and start listening instead.
I have been struggling with this one a lot lately. I heard it said several times at a town hall in the wake of the Ferguson non-indictment. I’ve heard it from colleagues when discussing diversity and inclusion programming. I’ve heard it from friends and family alike: That in order to learn, white people need a “safe space” where they’re not going to get “called out” for doing or saying something wrong. Aside from the fact that THE WORLD IS YOUR SAFE SPACE, WHITE PEOPLE, some of the time it seems like the person genuinely wants to learn. Others, it seems like they just want a safe space to say awful things and be applauded for being “brave” enough to admit their prejudices out loud.
But a huge hallelujah to the last part of your comment. The best advice for my fellow privilege lottery jackpot winners – Talk less. Listen more.
I get the need for a safe space, and as you point out, most of society is one unacknowledged safe space for those who happen to be assigned a place of numerical majority in a given society.
I also find it useful to think in the terms described in this essay about The Ring Theory of Kvetching, a.k.a., how to offer support “without saying the wrong thing.” The idea originated in supporting someone who’s ill or otherwise experiencing a life crisis, but the dynamic can be extended to all sorts of demanding or difficult subjects and times.
The model described in that essay is: support goes inward, dumping goes outward. That is: empathy, listening, offers of help go inward toward the person who is experiencing the most hardship in these specific circumstance, and someone less directly affected by the particular circumstances under discussion should find another place to air their (very real) anxieties or need for support regarding the phenomenon or injustice in question.
If you want to scream or cry or complain, if you want to tell someone how shocked you are or how icky you feel, or whine about how it reminds you of all the terrible things that have happened to you lately, that’s fine. It’s a perfectly normal response. Just do it to someone in a bigger ring.
During the initial Ferguson protests, for example. I had a weeks-long, recurring conversation with another white-lady friend (with whom I often hash out the personal or abstract aspects of important topics) in which we aired our our mutual anxieties about how to be most effective in seeking police reform, how to be most supportive of our friends of color and of larger populations of color, the sickness of white people overlaying our own narrative onto the facts… and also our plain, naked sickness and rage at the injustice. Having a place to air those anxieties and angers made it easier to stay focused on how to help, and it didn’t displace our less-central fears and feelings onto people whose lives are more directly affected.
There are plenty of experts, activists, and academics whose daily business is working toward racial equality while including and instructing white people who want to be involved in the fight for racial equality. It’s an industry, and — like any other industry! — it’s not fair to assume our friends and colleagues have any duty to undertake our education when there are actual foundations we can seek out instead.
The ring theory is an amazing way to think about race discussions – I have always heard it being applied to illness or disability, but it works ridiculously well with race discussions as well. Thanks for the advice!
Ahhhh this explains everything! I have a friend who was like “you can’t talk to First Nations people about race, they will spit at you” and I was thinking, I feel like there’s something wrong with this but I’m not sure what. My “friend” was probably saying completely horrible things to those people, wasn’t she.
I bet your friend was also REALLY unwilling to be educated or corrected. I don’t actually think people are getting their heads bitten off – people who are not used to being corrected (especially by someone not from the dominant class) being challenged get REALLY MAD.
Look, people are sometimes stupid and ignorant and need to be educated. Most people. God, I made jokes about tests “raping” me when I was 18, and I am so humiliated looking back on it.* If you can accept that about yourself and learn to listen without defence, learn to hear correction without hearing “I’m having my head bitten off”, then you’ll get less and less thoughtlessly horrible. If you can’t, you’ll just keep on being horrible.
*That is only one example of horrible thoughtless things I have said and done in the past, and I have never been ill-meaning. I have been ignorant and thoughtless and privileged, but not ill-meaning.
I agree-I don’t think people are getting their heads bitten off either. It sounds like (typical white people) getting upset at being disagreed with.
Maybe your friend has always tried to talk at First Nations people about race, rather than with them.
oh for sure. Talking at people (any people, really) is her main mode of communication. She’s not super into like, listening to what other people say?
As a white person who wants to talk about race, it was important and helpful to realize three things: 1) Sometimes I will say something offensive and get my head bitten off. 2) Sometimes I will get my head bitten off just for being a white person in the wrong place and time. 3) Neither of these things are harmful to me. The former is always beneficial, and the latter is beneficial in that it causes me to check in and re-evaluate to discern whether it’s scenario 1 or 2. In both situations, I don’t lose face by sitting down and shutting up – that’s a good skill to practice, too. And in neither situation am I materially harmed. I might feel a little bruised or chagrined but such is life. This is what you have to do if you want to engage, and it’s worth it.
Neither of these things are harmful to me.
Such an important point!
Wow, what an enlightened view to have. I live in the philly area; can we be friends, lol? Seriously, that’s refreshing to hear, as I’ve often wanted to say to those in the dominant culture, you’re on top of the mountain and always will be — where is the threat to you?
I don’t think it’s always self-comforting nonsense, and I do very much understand the fear and anxiety some white people have about possibly sounding racist. What I don’t appreciate is when that fear gets elevated to the same level as a person of color’s fear of racism itself.
I quietly backed out of this discussion yesterday because I was doing the classic thing: re-centering conversation, at least in this thread, on white people’s experiences and mechanisms for engaging with the challenges of racism. That’s a useful conversation, but I didn’t mean to inject it here where it doesn’t necessarily belong.
But I came back to say: I really appreciate you pointing out so concisely the gulf between the fear of being perceived as racist and the much more damaging, dangerous experience of actual racism.
“Today I think a lot about my complicity in racism, then and now, and what living a life just adjacent to whiteness meant for me as a kid.” This really haunts me. Thanks for writing this.
This haunts me too.
That’s been my biggest epiphany of last year: focusing on my complicity in racism. I don’t want to gloss over Nicole’s experiences as a transracial adoptee, but I do think that this is something really other Asian Americans (and Asian Canadians) can really relate to. More often than not we occupy that space of being the “good” or “safe” POC, until something happens in foreign policy and we’re no longer “safe” for whatever reason, from the yellow peril of the late 19th century on through to WWII to islamophobia of the 20th/21st century.
racism! yay! :/
Perpetual foreigner syndrome plays into this, too: we’re okay, and “safe,” until we’re not. Until they have a reason.
So many feelings. Thank you for sharing your experience of being a POC living in this country. I can’t tell you how important it is me to read these because it helps me to gain a greater understanding of what it means to be “brown” in this country.
I am a non-adopted, Black person so our experiences differ, however, I see so much overlap as well – behavior rule checklist, being the only POC at an event, identity policing by people who share the same heritage, etc.
“I can’t be one of those angry hyphenated Americans if my assimilation began just weeks after my birth.” I’m in love with the phrase “angry hyphenated American”. I often feel like a angry hyphenated American when trying to have conversations around race. See: behavior rule checklist.
Man, I remember when I was 13 and got called out by an authority figure for calling myself “Chinese-Canadian”, basically implying I wasn’t patriotic (and the idea of patriotism being inherently virtuous is a whole other thing). It stung, and I’m still mad about it today. He was an ex-teacher who was chaperoning our overseas trip, and today as an adult, I know he stepped over a huge line.
Newsflash to “non-hyphenated” citizens who get angry about it: Have you ever thought maybe “Canadian” is the main noun and “Chinese” is just a minor descriptor, and the order of the words is not actually assigning value? Yeah.
Or maybe we feel the need to hyphenate because people always assume we’re only the first half, never the second half, and we have to emphasize that maybe people can be both? I feel you on this, so much. I remember many conversations about this with classmates in high school.
Soooo true. I’m non-white, and if I only said I was American, the spoken and unspoken reaction from a good percentage of whites would be “no you’re not.”
“What are you really?”
As a white family looking to adopt and not concerned with the race of the child. If we adopted a child of another race would it be harder for the child? Do you think you would have had an easier time with a different family?
I recommend reading one of Nicole’s previous pieces: http://the-toast.net/2014/11/11/race-adoption/ where she discusses transracial adoption, specifically her experiences as an adoptee, in-depth.
The fact that you’re asking this question is a great start. I don’t think the answer is easy or “cookie cutter”. It will all depend on the individual child, the age, the environment/culture they come from + age, the environment/culture they will be assimilating to, the ethnicity, the region you live in (deep south, Bible belt, northwest, northeast, midwest, etc.), and other unforeseeable factors I’m sure.
So…it’s hard to know for sure. Just know that there WILL be challenges and you need to resolve within yourself if you are ready for whatever the challenges may be and if you are ready to expose to the child to the challenges. Keep in mind that it may be the best thing that ever happens to the child. You just don’t know and “hindsight is 20/20”.
Just make sure you make yourself “aware”, always look for your “blind spots” in this arena because we all have them, and avail yourself to the vast array of sensibilities and knowledge within the child’s ethnicity/culture so that you’re not blindsided.
Thanks for this. I’m a white girl who ten years ago told one of my best friends, whose parents emigrated from Taiwan, that I thought of her as white. I feel deeply ashamed of this. I’m really glad to see more pieces like this.
“but for all the fuss I make, for all my determination not to let these things go unchallenged, we seem to end up exactly where we started, none of us willing to budge.”
THIS right here sums up exactly what I feel so often. I try to say things more often – recently I hyperventilated on Twitter over having told someone on my own Facebook page that his words upset me – but it’s hard, and so, so often it seems like I’m talking to the wind, and at what point do I have to decide if their ignorance (or willful ignorance) means it’s time to walk away from people who care for me? Whom I care for? It’s rarely so simple as “If s/he’s racist, you shouldn’t be friends.”
Thanks for this one too, Nicole. I appreciate your writing so much and I love how you’ve captured the tension of trying to be true and make the world the place you want your children to grow up in while loving people and family that have no plans or intent to change their infuriating and hurtful comments and behavior.
This was so great, Nicole. We talked about this on Twitter too. You have that masterful superpower that I love in an essay, where you clearly delineate the messy feelings and thoughts.
This essay kind of makes me think about how and why we make friends, you know? I was an angry young feminist in high school. The friends I had didn’t seem like friends that would last, and we did fall out of touch when we weren’t in the same classes.
I remember very clearly the moments of trying to talk to people about these ideas of race or gender or even small things I felt sensitive to, and being continually dismissed, so when I wasn’t, I stuck with those friends like glitter or glue. Now, since I would always “teach” people on the internet, I have no interest in teaching people IRL for free. I don’t know. I think I need to write this essay on my own time.
Yes, write that essay IMMEDIATELY and send it to me!!
I know a lot of this is just me growing up in a super white area, and me being raised in a very conservative/religious family to boot. It all had an impact on the young person I was and the friendships I made.
Brilliant, Nicole. Challenging, honest, provocative, real. Thank you. Your voice is so valuable.
Hands up, white people who went and looked at their FB friends list to see how it shook out, POC-wise.
Just me? (For the record, just under 10% on my pseudonym/public profile, just over 10% on my private/real name profile, with of course a lot of overlap on those lists.)
Thought-provoking and smart and wry writing, as always – I was engrossed.
<3 <3 <3
I’m gonna steal ‘angry hyphenated’ to be Australian and it’s gonna be great.
I am sometimes the token, and I’m often angry about it, to the point that I’m just not making new friends right now unless they’re not-white. I’m totally into it. And my white friends have to be able to deal with my brand being ‘angry about racism’ because otherwise there’s literally no room for them. Nothing will ever entice me, ever again, to be friends with people who can’t deal with that.
Your essay is excellent, sorry for making it all about me. I’m just having some feels.
I’m glad it struck a chord/seemed real to you, Stephanie. I fully support you embracing your anger (not that you need my support). And your real friends, as Rohin also said to me, will stick with you.
Nicole, I always love reading your work. I went to elementary, middle, high school and college in schools that were near 50-50 Asian/white splits and am constantly sort of interrogating my past and trying to understand how the racial dynamics changed in my classes and social groups as we grew up. You always seem to have something to say that I haven’t thought about before. Thanks so much for this.
thank you for sharing this
I always look forward to reading your articles, Nicole. I grew up with a (white) immigrant mother who is incredibly personable and asks anyone with an accent where they’re from or about their ethnic background. She still strongly identifies as *insert European country here*, and raised me to do the same. I struck up those kinds of conversations myself, but it wasn’t until college that I realized the taboo on asking about that aspect of a person’s background. Hearing it from an immigrant, and as a child of an immigrant, it always just seemed like a normal thing to talk about. Unfortunately, it seems like a number of people just use race as a measure of how “other” a person is, which is really what they want to know. I actually had a boyfriend tell me I wasn’t really *country*, I was just American, which 1. made me want to punch him, and 2. was an interesting flipped demonstration of the assumption of white=American and non-white=foreign.
Thank you, for this. It resonates deeply with me and I’m kind of crying over here but – thank you. Someone needed to say it.
Section 7 really hit home for me, I have been told that I wasn’t really black, I was an oreo, the whitest black person they knew, or, and they would say this one with these wide happy smiles like it was something to aspire to, that I was an “honorary white person. Some how who I am didn’t match up to their preconceived notions of what a black girl is supposed to be like, the fact that they actually liked me,so I guess that made me practically white. The fact that I actually laughed that off, you know, no big deal, makes my stomach twist. What that actually meant didn’t hit home until I told my mom about it a few weeks later and saw her face make the oddest expression. I wish I had called them out. You really hit on a lot of points about what it is like to be a POC in gener in a majority white space, wonderful work.
Thank you for ALL Of this. I want to call out so many quotes, but especially this:
“At times, to my great embarrassment, I still feel more comfortable with white people than I do with Asians. The former might have the ability to make me feel invisible, but with the latter I sometimes feel deeply inadequate, as if I don’t have the knowledge or the tools or the experience to be the person I was born to be.”
So painful–this is something I often feel but hate vocalizing. I’m 23 and I feel like I am learning how to “be” with black people in America because my parents are not from here, and I mostly grew up around white people. It doesn’t come naturally and I feel so ashamed, because there’s a certain level of judgment (internal and external) that comes with my lack of cultural fluency for something I’m supposed to be a part of. Thank you thank you thank you for enunciating this thing that’s so tough to admit.
I am with you on this so, so much! I am first/second generation, black, and grew up around mostly white and Asian people in a city where the intense colorblindness saved me from what could have been super racist and traumatizing but also made it clear that it wasn’t polite to be too aware of my own blackness (or make other people aware of it) (like somehow it would break the illusion that was holding us all together so peacefully). And now I feel like ALL of the internalized racism and identity confusion.
I’m trying to figure out if there is some part of the internet where there is a community of black millenials who were raised in America in communities external to American black culture
I very much enjoyed reading this. I love your writing voice and style.
Your rules for getting along with white people hit me deep. Always good to be reminded of white privilege to be a better ally.
I’m a quarter Japanese, and just now at 29 I’ve realized that it doesn’t matter that the rest of me is 75% white, it just makes me light yellow, which is still yellow. I thought that way when i was younger, because if I was black everyone would say I was black, even if just a quarter, but because I was Asian everyone would say “well, you’re mostly white” or that “you’re really not THAT Asian”. I did #3 for a while, but then after getting tired of being asked “no, where are you really from?” and hating everyone, I decided to just announce it right after being introduced. Que white “friends” horror to me “always trying to be different” and “always bringing up the Asian thing” because “You’re not even really that Asian”. But, I’m almost always the most colored person in my group of friends. Until some weirdos upgrade” for a halfu or full Japanese person, that always makes me feel even worse. My Asian friends always accept me as I am.
Also, what the heck about the sideways vagina thing? My Grandpa married my Grandma thinking that… I can’t even. I’m going to tell people from now on that mine is just at an angle
This really hits home because I’ve spent so much of my life in majority-white spaces and many of my friends are white, and sometimes, I do feel most comfortable with my white friends, and it’s confusing as hell, especially, if your friends are well-meaning and try hard but they still don’t quite get it (because it’s impossible for them, really) or they say something and you don’t know how to address it. Ugh. Thank you, Nicole.
I’ve been thinking about this for the last week. I grew up in a small town in Oregon, too – population 2,000 when I was born. We didn’t have any people of color, or at least, it didn’t seem we did. That is, there were no African Americans, no one of Asian ancestry, no one speaking Spanish at home. Mostly there were just white loggers and white fishermen. However, by today’s standards, we definitely had people “of color” in our town, because quite a few people were part-Indian*. One friend’s dad was Blackfoot, from another state. Another’s grandpa, although I didn’t know it back then, was actually the chief of the tribe that had lived there before us (and, though most of us weren’t aware of it, still did). Another owned and operated an Indian-related tourist attraction. But the kids themselves had reddish, blondish hair and looked pretty much like the rest of us. At the time, we white kids thought of Indian ancestry about the same way we did about being part German, part Irish, or part Italian, except cooler, of course, because Indians had real skills that we wish we had too, skills for living on the land, out in the woods, or along the river. Otherwise, the part-Indian kids were just part of “us.”
Now, of course, reading essays like this one, I have to stop and think what it was like to be one of those part-Indian kids. Did they also, inside, identify as part of this essentially white “us”? Or did they feel frustrated and annoyed that we white people were so oblivious? Kids back then played “cowboys and Indians.” Did they experience this as microaggression? Did they have to shut away part of themselves to get along? Learning, as I did when I grew up, that our local native people had been ravaged by smallpox and other diseases before the white settlers even arrived, and that many of those who lived were then herded onto reservations to free up the land for white farmers and white resource extraction, I wonder how this affected the part-Indian kids I knew back then, when they were kids and later when they grew up and learned about it too.
And now for part two, the asterisk and after.
* First, when I say “Indian,” I feel compelled to clarify. As a kid, we said “Indian,” or “American Indian,” to make it clear we weren’t talking about people from, you know, India. Then we learned this was insensitive and we should say “Native American.” Nowadays we might say “First Nations” or “First People,” or still “Native American,” so I feel self-conscious about saying “Indian.” I feel like people will assume that I’m back in the oblivious Dark Ages, as if I were saying “Oriental” when I’m talking about an Asian-American. I want to find some graceful way to work into the conversation that, in fact, I said “Native American” like a good, properly educated white person, until my work collaborators at the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board told us that they would rather be called “Indians.”
But second, to reflect on that, I’m also aware that there isn’t some graceful way to work that into a conversation, without making the conversation about me, and that isn’t where the conversation belongs. So I’m left feeling awkward. And that’s probably just how it should be, maybe. It’s not for the people of color to listen to me and absolve me of insensitivity, “Yes, we can see that you’re one of the good white people, we know you’re on our side.” After all, I probably still do oodles of insensitive things, all the time, and although I hope I’m always learning, I know I’ll never entirely get it right. But still, it’s no fun to feel awkward and to anticipate being judged, hence the compulsion to explain that at least in this one small context, I’m not entirely ignorant. So there’s that.
Anyway, keep it up, Nicole!
I want to personally thank you for writing this article. It spoke alot to me as an Asian-American guy. I wish you didn’t have to endure all the bad memories. I wish I didn’t have them too along with the rest of Asian-Americans out there. Good read. I sent this article to my brother.
Excellent & a lot of food for thought. Thank you for being willing to share.
Hi!
I’m a transracial Korean adoptee of the mid/late 80s, so i wanted to thank you for writing this! This is so accurate, I could have written this myself, word for word, right down to the part about the yellow Power Ranger.
I’m also close to 30 now, and have been thinking recently about how I’m often the only Asian person among my white friends, family, and co-workers, and how I am also often complicit in many ways of fostering a narrative of my whiteness. At the same time, I’m also realizing that while my friends are pretty good about race issues, that there’s still not many people who look like me around, and that sometimes feels like something that’s missing.
It’s good to know that this is a shared experience, and not just “know” it statistically must be, but to read about it in-depth.
Cheers!
Allie