My mom had a pet lion cub when she was a child. In fact, at various times, she had peacocks, goats, and a Shetland pony named Sunshine. As a kid, I was ravenously jealous of these memories when she recounted them, but she always scoffed, saying, “It’s because we were white trash.” My mom often jokes about her upbringing in Pasadena, a poor, rural suburb of Houston. She knows how out-of-place her field of a backyard and unconventional (illegal?) pets would be amidst the cookie-cutter homes and manicured lawns of the neighborhood in which she raised my sister and I. Yet the interesting thing to me is the phrase she uses to describe the difference between her childhood and mine: “white trash.” Why “trash?” And why the modifier, “white?” Is this to say that the base unit, the default for “trash” is people of color? Or that “white” people are not naturally trashy? From this and other related, seemingly innocuous turns of phrase, the six (or seven, or seventeen) year-old me developed a sense of superiority. In my predominantly white, upper-middle-class world—where the word “black” was always accompanied by a hushed tone, a glance over the shoulder, and a raised eyebrow--I felt secure at the top of a hierarchy I subconsciously created, a caste system I imagined was universally acknowledged. I was judgmental, working off of the “trash” definition I inherited, a definition which labeled people of color as those who had less, knew less, and, truthfully, were worth less. This vocabulary was so ingrained in my understanding of my place in the world that I didn’t truly discover it until much later; it was hidden in plain sight. It took some time, but that belief was eventually eroded by experience.
After writing the above paragraph, I debated deleting it for several days. I wrote an alternative post to share, one that talked about my wonderful-Kumbayah-campfire experience at a racially diverse high school—a story which is equally true in the sense that it happened, but maybe less true in the way it defines the way I’ve walked through life. I could talk about my tío who emigrated from Mexico, my cousins Rafael and Raquel. I could talk about my experience at Duke and its many types of diversity. But if I were really going to answer the question “When did you first realize you were white,” I’d have to go back to the beginning, because I’ve always known it. But what I want you to understand is that the easily-bruised racial pride that characterized my childhood lay on an insecure foundation. Because I came from “white trash,” I always feared that maybe I was trash, too. A small and silent part of me wondered if I deserved what I had. Truthfully, that foundation was only shaken when I knew for certain I was an impostor--when I arrived at Duke University. On full financial aid, having never left the country and seldom left Texas, without the designer clothes and expensive handbags, the prep school education and self-assuredness that everyone else seemed to have, I slid quickly and gracelessly to the bottom of the pyramid. This is what I learned, though: the pyramid/hierarchy/whatever-you-want-to-call-it was still self-constructed. It was still in my head. Or at least, regardless of if other people believed in the same stratification, I was making it true by buying into it, whether I believed I was less, or more. While I still struggle to articulate the things that I feel about race and racism, I’ve found that I don’t want to be treated as “trash” or really as “white,” either. Now, I assume that no one else does.
In Kindergarten, my best friend was named Yetunde Meroe. We were inseparable. One afternoon when I was sitting in my living room with my uncle, who was visiting from out of town, I told him that Yetunde was coming over. “Yetunde….?” He racked his brain, trying to distinguish between the friends I always had running around the house. “Oh, is that the black girl? Isn’t she from Africa?” he asked me. I was caught off guard, as I had never heard someone refer to my friend in this way. Sure, Yetunde was black, and sure, she was born in Ghana, but I had never really thought about our physical differences. We were both six years old and we both liked Harry Potter so we were the same, right? Why did one of us need to be set apart from the other in such a way? This surprised me, and bothered me, but did not change the way I referred to Yetunde. She would continue to be my friend, instead of my black friend from Africa.
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| Comfortable enough in my new neighborhood to read a book in a tree. |
Jack
My first experience with race in Medellin came the first time we walked through Carlos E. A pack of 10 gringos with a Paisa guide, taking pictures of every tree, building, or graffiti we saw. We were asking to get stared at. It felt weird and uncomfortable to so clearly be an outsider in the neighborhood I was going to live in for the next 8 weeks. Suddenly I was conscious of my vans, which no paisas were wearing. I was afraid to wear shorts in fear of sticking out like the European guys in capris on the promenade in LA. I hoped that it would improve, that I would feel less like an intruder with each passing day. After 3 short weeks, it absolutely has. Everyone has gotten used to the gringos on the block. I laugh with Felipe from the bar on the corner about the first time we went to his uncle’s bar. The Frutti Jhon guy gives me an extra scoop of strawberry ice cream every time I order a cone (or two). The waitress at the bookstore met my friend on Skype. I feel as though I have already formed stronger relationships with people in the community in Carlos E. than I have in Pacific Palisades, my hometown. The initial fears of being excluded because of my race have fled completely. I feel at home.
Kate
I honestly don’t remember my first racial memory. I recognize that the lack of a particular awakening to my race reflects the privileges of my whiteness.
I know the first time I learned about the n-word. And I remember understanding adoption in part through friends with different races in their families.
But I don’t have a poignant memory of being treated differently from others around me because of my skin color. Perhaps this was because I live in a predominantly Caucasian area, so how I was treated matched my expectations as I looked around me. Perhaps this is because my home area is more liberal, more accepting, more color-blind than others. But I doubt that. Once in New Orleans, an African American art gallery owner—originally from New York—told me Bostonians are silent racists. Perhaps I just wasn’t an attentive enough kid. I didn’t have to be.
Nick
My first “racial memory” occurred when I was in the 3rd grade, when I was no more than 9 or 10 years old. It wasn’t a chastising incident, or a memory that I’m not particularly fond of, but rather the contrary. My best friend at the time, Vincent Burwell, and I were at a Cub Scouting event, and for some reason or another we had a fire going. I remember he put his hand into the fire, held it there for a few seconds, and then took it out, completely unharmed. Thinking I could show him up, I did the same, and to my dismay, I did not come out unscathed. I’m not exactly sure what had happened, maybe I had left my hand in for too long or he had dunked his hand in water prior, but I ended up burning my finger pretty nicely. He said to me, “it’s because I’m Mexican.” His skin was fire resistant because he was Mexican. Well, I’ll be damned, I thought in the 3rd grade. He’s Mexican. And I’m not. That’s why I got burned. I’m not sure if there is scientific proof for this, but it seemed very real for me at the time, and for this reason, I wished I was Mexican, at the very least so that the pain of this second degree burn, that would eventually scar jaggedly on my right index finger, would leave me in peace. There wasn’t anger or envy, because I knew that he had no control over whether or not he was Mexican, but rather this desire to not be white, which is weird to say now but an actual thought of mine when I was at that age. I legitimately wanted to be Mexican, to be his brother so that I could have skin as tough as his. Not that I didn’t love my culture and the rest; it’s just that I found myself so at home with him and his family that I wished there was no color line dividing us, that society didn’t see us as separate but unified by a common bond of friendship, of brotherhood. I am, and always was, color blind to these skin coloration differences; I call him my brother even though he’s Mexican and I am Polish/Italian.
Nikita
My mother is an artist, and she has raised me to understand that color is so much more than black, white, and brown. From a young age, I realized it was also chocolate, bronze, sienna, sepia, camel, peach, wheat, coffee, and all the shades in between. When I turned seven, I moved from my diverse, colorful home of London to a predominantly white suburb of Dallas, Texas. It is not that I did not notice I was different. When teachers would come to my name on a list, they would look up, and move on because it was too hard to pronounce. I would be one of the few children to bring my lunch to school because I was a vegetarian, and that was simply unheard of in Texas. I was also a Hindu living in the Bible Belt. Yet, as a child, I did not really notice my race. I had made wonderful friends, my English was even better than that of the native speakers in my class, and I had survived a successful year in my new home. At the end of that year, my classmates and I exchanged yearbooks and goodbyes. This day is vivid in my mind; I remember someone mentioning that “am the only colored kid” in the class. To me, this was a significant moment because I never noticed that I was the only “colored” person. My friends were peach and tan and all different shades. This was the first time I heard something so dear to me like color being referred to in a “lesser” manner. Yet, to this day, I believe race to be simply a social construct.
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| Medellín or Hawaii? |
Ryan
One of the reasons that I love Medellín is because it reminds me of Hawaii, my home state. There are many superficial similarities that I notice just by walking around our neighborhood: the temperate climate, abundance of greenery, the omnipresent sight of mountains. But I've noticed some deeper parallels—one that has stood out to me both times I've visited is how time operates.
Where I come from, we call it "Hawaiian time." When someone's 15 minutes, 30 minutes, maybe a few hours late to a gathering, we often shrug it off as being on Hawaiian time. Of course, this doesn't apply to the academic or professional spheres, but if an invitation to a beach barbecue says it starts at 11 a.m., the only real obligation is that you'll arrive before all the food is gone.
It feels very similar here to me. People aren't necessarily in a rush to get places; a normal walking pace in Boston or New York can seem inordinately hurried here or in Hawaii. Meeting a friend for coffee in a major US city generally means starting at the appointed time, and in my experience, people get worried if you're more than a few minutes late. Here, though, when I recently told my friend that I was finishing up lunch and would meet her soon, she replied, "No hay afán. Tomáte tu tiempo." There's no rush; take your time.
It's a place, like Hawaii, where I've noticed long conversations don't prompt a semiconscious checking of the time on your iPhone every few minutes, and where sitting in a cafe for hours on end doesn't induce your waiter to come by every 15 minutes and see if you need anything else.
Researchers say that although ancient Hawaiians had a rich vocabulary to describe the passage of time, they didn't keep track of precise times during the day—indeed, they might not have even used sundials or tools like that. Even after Western missionaries arrived, clocks became commonplace, and the then-American territory adopted the nation's standard time system, hours and minutes remained flexible. Many plantations, which from the mid-1800s dominated the state's landscape for a century, also used their own time systems, generally based on the sunrise and sunset at their exact locations. "It was, indeed, a matter of principle that [one] plantation should not operate on the same time as the neighboring plantations," according to Robert Schmitt and Doak Cox, who wrote a paper on this very topic.
Having grown up with both a relaxed interpretation of time and the more rigid Western tradition, neither really bothers me, and I don't particularly favor either, although in doubt, I think it's safer to err on the earlier side. But I do think that understanding other people's expectations about time is important; like a language, a culture's understanding of time informs the way it communicates and sees the world. Recognizing that others might have different expectations about time, and for important meetings, being specific about when to arrive, might preempt trouble later on. Besides, arriving later than the appointed time isn't always a bad thing, I've seen, and being early isn't always a virtue, either—the barbecue might not even be set up yet.
One of the reasons I love Hawaii in the first place, though, is how it exemplifies the melting pot analogy that we often use to describe America. Nearly a quarter of its residents identify as two or more races, eleven times higher than the national average. In the plantation era, new immigrants from as far away as Portugal and the Philippines sweat side-by-side and created their own language, Hawaiian Pidgin, to find a way to communicate with each other.
For as long as I can remember, I've known my basic ethnic composition—half Japanese, a quarter Indonesian, and a quarter Spanish. Most of my friends have multiple heritages too, and from very young, we were raised not to assume someone's ethnic story was as simple as a single word. Besides, thinking of others in terms of the color of their skin or contours of their face is too ambiguous in our multicultural state. It's not really something teachers had to write on a whiteboard or construct lesson plans around, but something we learned simply by getting to know each other. Our ethnicities were often one of the first things we talked about with new classmates, and I can't remember a time when someone couldn't give an answer or felt bad about their background.
And so even after I got older and was introduced to standardized forms that only allow you to choose one race, it wasn't so difficult. I remember filling out SAT registration paperwork with my college counseling class, and one of the first questions was about which box we should check. "Whichever you want," our teacher replied. She knew we cared about our cultural background, but, I think, also recognized that we were confident enough in that background to not let something like that be too bothersome. I wish those forms were more flexible, but I also understand that they aren't seeking a complex representation of myself, and I don't believe that by checking a box, I'm limiting the scope my own character. And anyway, I am a majority Asian.
What I do remember is being called Hawaiian. Being Hawaiian is different than being Californian or Texan or Pennsylvanian; it doesn't necessarily mean that you're a resident of the state of Hawaii, but that you have native Hawaiian blood. Growing up, it was always very clear that only kanaka, people of native Hawaiian ancestry, could call themselves Hawaiian. Kama'aina, residents of Hawaii like myself, would never use the term.
But often, when I introduce myself on the continental US, people will use the term Hawaiian to describe me, either in the ethnic or residential sense. And here in Medellín, I've been referred to as the chinito—affectionately, the Chinese guy. (For a while, I wondered why Chinese was the preferred designation for someone Asian, and after talking to some friends here, we concluded that, regardless of cultural factors, saying someone is Chinese is easier and sounds better than, for example, Asian or Japanese.)
These identifications, though, have never really annoyed me. Startled me, at first, because it was surprising to hear someone make an assumption about my ethnicity, but it's never stung. It's more a source of pride that I can explain my actual ethnic background, explain a little about what it means to be Hawaiian. But I'm always aware that it was only through enormous serendipity that I was born in a place where talking about our racial backgrounds was as common as the salty air and palm trees, and that outside our island bubble, talking about ethnicities is probably not something fourth-graders do on the playground. Maybe it should be, though.
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Cultural stimulation, across races,
at Duke with the Hindu festival of Holi
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Vaib
I honestly can't pinpoint when I first defined my self as brown. As long as I can remember, race has been an integral part of my existence. From Preschool to 3rd grade, my parents enrolled me in St. Michael's Lutheran School, a predominately white school. I learned how to fill my separate roles in my school and Indian communities; however, I don't think I ever imagined the two would ever collide together.
In the spring of 2nd grade, my teacher asked if my parents would give my class a presentation on the Indian festival of lights, Diwali, for some sort of cultural stimulation. Truthfully, I didn't even realize the racial profiled question of my teacher, but I went ahead and helped my parents schedule a day with my class.
My parents came in class and presented for my class, sighting the festivities in India with colorful pictures, savory desserts, and added videos of me dancing at a local Diwali celebration. Despite all the embarrassment from the video of me dancing with one girl on stage, I was proud. My parents had made me glean with pride as my culture was shared with my classmates. Maybe it was a product of my parents helping me integrate my Indian world into my predominately white world, maybe it was the fact that my white teacher had actively supported my cultural experiences outside of the classroom, maybe seeing my friends enjoy my culture as much as they enjoyed their own made me appreciate the benefits of the nexus of my two worlds, but certainly so, my first racial experience has only added to the dignity of my race as opposed to others.
