All In Passing

I know this guy. You know him too. He’s a little bit country, a little bit rock ‘n roll, a little bit racist and a little bit misogynistic. He’s full of off-color jokes and thinks #metoo was all about him.  He has a voice and he thinks it matters. Fact is, it does.

This is the guy who thought Brett Kavanaugh was sadly misunderstood—boys will be boys.  He’s the guy that thinks women overreact and have too many opinions. He never stops hoping his popularity, and hairline, will last while he’s fearful of the world rapidly changing around him; afraid of not keeping up. This is a guy who gets away with most things and is surprised when he doesn’t.  He loves Trump’s America and is proud to check the box on the form that says “white.”

I’m trying not to let the news affect me. But whether it’s a disrespectful teen staring down a native American or a group of men demonstrating against peaceful anti-racist men and women, then running their car into the group, I’m having trouble with the label “white,” as it applies to me.

For a long time, our nation has identified with color: white, black, redneck, blue collar, pinko, white collar crime, to name a few. All these colors have meaning and are far from the neutral colors I long to embrace, grays and beiges, which are understood to allow for questioning thought and not the absolutes of black and white. Thinking in gray means you aren’t subject to the rigidity of seeing things only one way and that learning something new is always an option.

White Supremacy, White Power, White Right, and White Nationalists are names that conjure the hate that belies each group’s fear and fuels each member’s individual anger. These are men and women who will never understand when I say I’d like to identify as something other than white, because their perspective shows them that rights have been taken and that life isn’t fair when others are allowed to play in the sandbox.

This guy is part of a group (whether he knows it or not) that allows a president to condone hate speech and teaches all are not equal. These are the reasons I fret over what to call myself and after thinking long and hard, I choose to label myself as “off-white,” a neutral color that will let me think outside the edges of black and white.

As a white woman I have the luxury of being able to make such a statement without much fear of impunity. My livelihood doesn’t depend on my political views and my friends and family won’t abandon me as a result of this declaration. I know I’m more fortunate than most and that to proclaim my desire to differentiate myself from such hate-spewers, could be taken as an elitist way to say I identify with marginalized groups.

But change has to start somewhere.

Although I will never fully understand and feel the impact that racism has on people, I do know it’s a result of small thinking and that we need to transcend this behavior. This can be done through everyday interactions as well as on a more global level, by refusing to accept that the political climate we live in today is acceptable as our future.

Silencing voices can only happen when we choose to use our own. And when we do, we’ll need to see well beyond black and white.