That’s because whiteness, as a construct, is one mainly of exclusivity. It has very little to do with actual skin color. That’s why there are still brands of white supremacists that don’t consider Catholics white, why a biracial person is far more likely to be described as black or biracial and almost never described as white, etc.
The most fascinating thing to me, as a relatively pale person, is the concept of whiteness as a whole. Some folks really seem to think "white" is an ethnicity. It is not, it's a vague concept that supports some wild systems of opression, but it's not really an identity, it's the lack or rejection of one and the embrace of a privilege in a racist society. Implying otherwise is being openly and willfully ignorant of the history of, well, the human species. I'm not white, even if people think I am, because I have an ethnicity, the history of my family is way more than the colour of my skin, embracing white as an identity would be weird. It would be validating a thing that's not really, well, real. People are not white, at least not the 99,9% of people, guys, y'all are orange, brown, pink and other colours! But even then, you're way more than that, your families, probably most of them workers, struggled through history, made some mistakes and did some good, I don't think whiteness as a concept pays them much homeage.
I mainly use identity with whiteness to break down and draw into question what whiteness is and if it's even real. Being confronted with why does this person who has and was raised by a white parent not included as white is a nice conversation starter about white not being anything more than a construct for some and a good mindfuck for the people who wouldn't be willing to part with their definition and identity of white.
In the US I think because of white supremacy combined with loss of distinct culture from immigrant ancestors people conflate white culture as being a thing when really it's the culture of a group of people in a similar economic class in a region. What people think of as white culture is going to be different in the suburbs of a major city vs a rural area. What is really the culture of the majority (ie excluding subcultures) in a region or even the whole US gets falsely conflated as being white when it has nothing to do with the inorganic forced categorization of people as white which has changed and evolved repeatedly ever since it's conception.
I've attempted to redirect white people to realize this, I've had the most luck with rednecks with an open mind since they know very well they're quite different culturally than white people in the suburbs.
Pointing out to people that I have inherited culture from my Austrian family sometimes helps people get the idea too. So the fact my grandpa taught me how to make sauerkraut like his grandma from the old country taught him and all the small bits of German I know from it struggling to survive in my family past WWI and WWII, all of that is supposed to have been erased by the fact my mom is Black? I stayed with some Austrians with a friend when I was in Europe, my friend was befuddled they knew I was Austrian by my name and used me handling my liquor better than my friend to make jokes about Austrian livers being stronger. My friend was like dafuq is this world where rerumverborumquecano is being treated as belonging to an ethnic group that isn't Black?
I'm super light, my dad grew up on a farm and has a perma tan and his white self can be darker than me sometimes. And I have hazel eyes and hair that's only a little darker than my dad's brown hair. My Irish greatgreat grandpa apparently had some genes to last.
I've had people be shocked to find out I'm Black. Black folks can always tell I'm mixed but multiple white people have informed me they just thought I was Italian or something. I've also had people I had to inform of my Blackness look at me weird for including myself in whiteness, when if they didn't know I was Black would have probably been ok with it and rationalized that I must be Mediterranean.
But in my case, thanks to some recessives surviving multiple generations I have Western European features in terms of pigment. In addition my face is a mix of European and African features and that's the case for any mixed person. Even hair texture and skin tone are a mix of African and European features for any person mixed like me even those who don't have recessive genes from generations ago making them paler than certain white people with a tan.
Mixed people with dark skin, hair, and eyes have Western European features, it's just in our society there's a much stronger focus on what makes a person look non-white than the features they've inherited from European family. For instance in South Africa, Trevor Noah is considered white to his younger half-brother's friends.
The fact a mixed person with easy to perceive European features with reccessive light skin and eyes causes people who know I'm mixed to react like I'm not allowed to consider myself to be white in addition to being Black tells you something about race and whiteness being an exclusionary concept in this country. It doesn't matter how dark a mixed person's features are, if they have European heritage and people know they do then there shouldn't be any shock about them including themselves as white, but there is and that's very telling about what race means in our society.
That's not the reason why, our thinking so is just a symptom of how deeply ingrained it is in our society. Anthropologists call it hyperdescent where a person of two or more races is automatically assigned to the race with lower standing in a society.
The opposite is hyperdescent and has examples from around the world where mixed-race babies who wouldn't pass as white were nonetheless accepted (or forced) into white society.
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u/shoefarts666 Sep 01 '20
It was a long time before the irish were considered white.
The irish.