Maria Kramer – How does my race influence how I experience race?

I am Maria. I am a woman. I am white.

I was born and raised in an all-white neighborhood and went to an all-white school. I didn’t grow up in a super wealthy neighborhood or went to a private school for gifted children, there were just not a lot of people of color in my town. We did have lots of people from Russia or Poland, but they were all white. I did have the privilege of traveling a lot as a child and teenager and I have been to many countries and have seen different skin colors, cultures, ethnicities etc.

When I switched schools in 9th grade our gym was chosen to be one of the facilities to have refugees stay, because they were still remodeling the facility they were supposed to stay at. This was the moment it struck me. Some of my fellow students have never really seen a person of color in real life, only on TV (where they are highly underrepresented!!). Our sports club had a young girl from Syria try jump rope at our club to integrate them and there was this white girl from our team who asked her if she has always been this tan, even though its winter. From that moment on I became interested in the topic of race and racism. I am an adult now. I see things differently now than I used to and so a group of fellow students and I started researching this topic a bit more in university.

I interview people of color and white people to research more on the topic how my race influences how I experience racism and if white people are aware of white privilege. I started the Interview with the question of how the interviewee sees himself/herself. Person 1 answers with “My name is ___, I am 24 years old and I identify as white.” and I thought to myself: that’s exactly what I would have said. Person 2 answers with “Hello I am ___ from Germany. I am 22 years old. I would identify myself as a white person, because of obvious reasons such as my skin color and for other non-visible reasons such as the way I am treated by people around me such as my family and friends.” and I thought: wow this is a great answer. This person goes to University with me and it is not the first time they think about race, racism and self-identity. (They also lived in Thailand for 2 years, which I found out later in the interview.) And then I had my third interview and I asked the same question. “Can you tell me a bit about yourself? Name, age, ethnicity, the race you identify as” and this answer sticks with me ever since. “I am ___ from Germany. I was born in ___ and I am 21 years old. I don’t see myself as a white person or a person of color, because I don't differentiate it like “Hi, I am a white person or a person of color [...], but I have a white skin color.” And there I am, sitting in front of him thinking, why did you say it this way? Why are you not able to see color? Or are you just not willing to see it?

This inspired me to write about white privilege, critical whiteness and color blindness of white people.

In my opinion white people see themselves as individuals, rather than part of a social group. The majority of white people don’t think they belong to a race, because they are “just” white.

Christopher Doob, professor of sociology at Cornell University, writes that this racial colorblindness represents the "whites' assertion that they are living in a world where racial privilege no longer exists, but their behavior “supports” racialized structures and practices", which is untrue. Saying you don’t see color reproduces a form of racism. Being white and saying you don’t see color makes you erase every little difference there is between races and implies, that there is only one race. The dominant race. White. And why would someone try to do that?

I think most white people never have the need, the urge or maybe even the possibility to think about their race. Their race has not influenced their live, their job opportunities, the looks they get on the street. Person 3 says that the first time they got in contact with other skin colors and their representation was in history class in High School, but isn’t that one of the problems as well? School history books are only telling one side of the story. They are teaching people that the white people immigrated somewhere and wherever they went to they built a beautiful new place, invented fire and taught the culture they found how superior white people are. This happens in a very subtle way and we never really think about, but that is exactly the racism it reproduces.

There are so many white people who are not aware of their white privilege. Walking through a supermarket and the only hair product assembled in the aisle is for white people's hair. Opening up a first aid kit and having “flesh-colored” Band-Aids that only match the skin tone of white people is a white privilege. And even though these examples can easily be dismissed by white people, by finding an excuse that they do have curly hair and need special products it is still a white privilege. They also see a more positive portrayal of people who look like them on TV, the news, newspaper, the movies etc. Most of us have a very limited understanding of racism, because we never had to be trained into thinking in complex ways about, because that would not benefit our white dominance. But there is also the other side of this white privilege. A side where you get treated differently in obvious ways and it makes you think about it. Person 2 in my interviews mentioned that he used to study abroad, and they felt superior, because they were treated differently from the natives, even though they fluently speak the native language. “For me, in comparison to native people, it made me feel like I am not an ordinary person, in a positive way.”, he says benefiting from this white privilege they don’t want to have. In this dominant position, white people are almost always racially comfortable. People of color did nothing to deserve to be treated unequally. Just like white people didn’t “earn” disproportionate access to fairness, but they still receive it as a byproduct of institutional racism and bias.

All in all, I must say that I was very surprised by all the answers in my interviews. I am surprised, that white people are so aware of their race and the racism they are reproducing, just like I was surprised that someone who is involved in academic context claims to be colorblind and doesn’t differentiate between white people and people of color. I know that “othering” of people will not end in nearby future and that white people will continue to have racist thoughts and perspective, even if they are unconscious. I am hoping for a much deeper and complex understanding of how our society works and I know that the way you experience race is not only dependent on your skin color, but other factors as well, like age, location, class etc. I think every individual experience race and its “consequences” differently. One can only have positive experiences with their race, another one maybe never had a reason to rethink their race and racial behavior towards others

Bibliography

1. Doob, Christopher B. (2013). Social Inequality and Social Stratification in U.S. Society. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson.

2. Ansell, Amy E. (2008). "Color Blindness". In Schaefer, Richard T. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society. SAGE Publications. pp. 320–322.

3. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo (2010). Racism Without Racists: Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America (3rd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 26–28.