Race, particularly which populations/groups are considered white, is a political construct (as opposed to ethnicity). I knew that much. I also knew that the English (or, if you want to be persnickety, Anglo-Saxons) didn't consider the Irish, Italians or Scots to be white. What I didn't know before today was that it was only within the last one to two hundred years that that judgement/perspective changed. If it hadn't, then historically, I could have been considered non-white, since I'm three eighths Scottish by blood (mixed with some French, Irish, Viking and Welsh for good measure). However, people of Spanish and Hispanic origin aren't considered to be white (at least not in the Americas).
What does it mean to be white, then? It's certainly got nothing to do with biological or demographic classification (such as the amount of melanin in one's skin, or lack thereof), determined by how far one lives from the equator. It's political bullshit designed to keep people divided and hating each other, to enable the elites (colonialists and their descendants) to keep opressing "the wrong sort of people" (id est, anyone whom isn't in the arbitrarily-determined group of people of whom they approve and consider worthy of respect). From an ethnic/biological standpoint, it could be argued that there is no such grouping of individuals as "white people". From a cultural/socio-political standpoint, though, there's very definitely a problematic hierarchical construct/structure used by oppressors to continue the oppression of people of certain ethnicities.
I'm not even sure where that leaves me, but if "White" was removed as an option for race identification on various governmental and employment equity forms, I'd be OK with that. Maybe that's because I've got white male privilege and being given shit about it doesn't bother me in the slightest. Maybe that's because my being perceived as white isn't an impediment to my making my way in the world, which is white privilege. Whatever the reality of it may be, my skin colour is no more a core part of my identity than my gender, sexual orientation or the size of my dick. These are certainly not attributes that give me any sense of pride, either, although I'm not ashamed of them.
I hope that how I'm perceived as a person has less to do with my physical appearance and features than the expression of my thoughts and my actions towards others. I'd like to live in a world where those are the only criteria that matter in how people judge and perceive each other. I'm well aware that I probably never will. If you want to judge or hate me for being a cishet white man, go ahead; it's really no skin off my nose what some Internet stranger thinks of me and I don't believe it should be. There are more important things about which I concern myself, such as paths to peace, tolerance and unity (and, on a more immediate/personal level, finding permanent employment and making a positive contribution to the world). If I am susceptible to carrying the white man's burden, then I'd like for my attempts at saving others to be those of contributing to dismantling the pervasive and systemic power structures set up by my ancestors (both near and distant), rather than inadvertently perpetuating them.
I hope, most likely in vain, that this is the whitest shit you read this (or any other) year.
Post image: Statues of former presidents of the USA, copyright Randy Duchaine/Alamy
