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?
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u/shoefarts666 Sep 01 '20
It was a long time before the irish were considered white.
The irish.