White Racists are Just…Boring: Racism as a Function of Identity

So, like, I’m white, y’all. Like…so white I’ve got sun damage in my eyes through my skin despite wearing sunscreen every time I go out. Whatever layering hyperbolic declaration of my European ancestry is most amusing, pretend I wrote it.
It’s also the least interesting part about me.
If the cursory ancestry provided by my parents is to be trusted even a little, we’ve also been squatting on this particular continent for roughly as long as a bunch of white dudes decided it was its own nation. I’m related to well-known slave smugglers, so like…that’s obviously super exciting for everyone involved.
But again, I’m so very detached, personally, from these facts of my heritage as to be practically immaterial to my immediate existence outside of vague disappointment and disgust.
And the central core of why so many white people are…like that…to various degrees of unfolding racism, is because being white and American is all they fucking have.
I live and grew up in Texas.
The territory of Texas has changed hands a considerable number of times, leaving all that cultural influence behind. What we also under-appreciate, is the area was a feature of a widespread ad campaign during the 19th century to specifically promote immigration into the territory. “Come to Texas! Work our fields!” The Port of Galveston was a major immigration hub in its time.
Basically the state is and always has been more culturally and ethnically diverse than I think a lot of white Texans are willing to acknowledge. We, as white people, weren’t here first or even second by a number of metrics.
I grew up in Austin before a lot of the current gentrification and “yuppification,” as my mom referred to it. My elementary school was smallish and well-managed compared to a lot of modern expectations. Twenty-five kids to a classroom at most and only in the upper grades. My mom always had a complaint, though: that every year I was the “only little white girl in my class.”
And I never understood why that was a problem.
Because that was just kind of normal.
Church was the only place I went in my day-to-day that was majority white, and even that had a sort of “well of course that’s the exception” sort of feel. Black people went to the black church and Hispanic people went to the fancy church where they put ashes on your forehead. That was the acceptable separate but equal to my young mind.
I think therein lies an important key to my upbringing that I think a lot of white people, unfortunately, miss out on..
My mom’s offhand complaint was about as overtly racist as she got. Both my parents had work friends I was lightly exposed to that were non-white. My teachers, instructors, and adult women group leaders in Girl Scouts were a mix of different races. My grandfather and uncle were extremely, verbally racist, but it was so vitriolic it was weird. It was an uncomfortable, abnormal thing.
I consumed a lot of British books, Japanese anime, and Spanish-language kids’ shows and telenovellas at various points in my life. I got to learn a baile folklórico routine in elementary school, and we had Cinco de Mayo programs every year.
And whatever faults we had in the 90s, I lived through a surge of black and Latino led media. I didn’t know a fellow little girl who hadn’t committed the lyrics to “No Scrubs” by TLC to heart. It might be the only Spanish you really knew, but you could approximate the chorus to “Como la Flor.” We were out here relating to a black Cinderella and a 6th century Chinese girl who JUST WANTED HER FATHER TO SEE HER FOR WHO SHE WAS T_T
And there was a window of pre-9/11 optimism that really had some people thinking that we could solve racism in the new millennium if we just held hands enough.
Multi-culturism was just sort of everywhere around me all the time.
So being white just didn’t…mean anything to me. I don’t have a memory of ever feeling like “whiteness” was something that had any kind of inherent value. Frankly, I was kind of jealous that I didn’t have something “cool” to celebrate like the Lunar New Year.
So, as I got older, and I was directly told “because you’re white you have these privileges” I was like “oh word? Shit. Okay, damn.” Because like…I didn’t do that.
And I’m not saying there was no friction or I was some perfect little anti-racist baby. I’m saying the circumstances of my childhood made it easier to live more comfortably with people and things that don’t look like me compared to my Gen X sister, boomer mom, and silent gen grandmother. And my Gen Z niece is having it easier than me.
So when you see some white talking head complaining about an excellent Superbowl performance, it’s important to remember that they haven’t been through that same process of self-reflection or multi-cultural exposure. Or if they did, they rejected it out of hatred.
And being white is all they fucking have.
So anything they perceive as in opposition to maintaining whiteness is a personal threat.
I’m a white person in Texas. I’ve met these people. I’m related to some of these people.
They are not falling back on verifiable logic and facts. They have no sense of wonder and curiosity about the rest of the world because it doesn’t affirm their whiteness.
These people, at their core, are boring. And it’d just be pathetic and pitiable if they weren’t also the ones running things.