Let me start by this: As a white person, I'm not totally sure how to approach this topic. As someone who was a missionary, I am all too aware of the "white savior complex" and desire desperately to avoid it. I am also aware how naive and honestly quite terrible I may look in some of these stories. Yet, I also know that I have a lot of white friends who haven't confronted and experienced race in a similar way as to what I have, and I want to speak to them. To tell stories and analyze how I'm learning and growing so as to help them learn and grow. And again forgive me for my overt use of my white privilege, but I think to really understand our issue at hand, that can not be swept under the rug either.
Just a little background, in case your friend shared this and you don't really know me. Until this year, I had spent the last 4 years of my life living in the Philippines. I am what you might call exceptionally white; fair skin, blue eyes, and light brown hair that for many years streaked itself blonde as it was exposed to a lot of sunlight. I can't achieve a tan if I wanted to, not even under the hot equator sun that left most of the Filipinos I lived among a mocha-y brown or darker. Sometimes my Pinoy friends would joke with me about what color coffee everyone's skin was, ranging from "hold the cream and sugar" to my laughable "only cream and sugar". I like to think that's because they think I'm so sweet rather than the color of my skin, but I digress.
I also taught at an international school, where most of the teachers were white, but most of our students were not. About 70% of my kids were Korean, with some Hispanics and some white Americans and Europeans in the mix.
During my first year teaching, I went on a trip with my school called Outdoor Education. For middle school, it's a mix of Christian summer camp meets mission trip. I was a leader of a group of girls and I noticed that one of my Korean students slowed the group down by putting on sunscreen too often. Although it was my role to make sure they reapplied sunscreen at appropriate levels during the day, her usage of sunscreen felt obsessive. And I found every opportunity I could to tell her that. This lead to a very real conversation that has been repeated to me several times since, "I'm trying to keep my skin light Miss Leneway. The lighter your skin is, the more beautiful you are." I've tried to tell my kids that's funny because in the culture I come from, people lie out in the sun for hours working on making themselves dark because browned skin is beautiful. I guess what I've failed to notice though is that what Americans really value is brown, but not too brown. And even now that makes me sad. The same way it made me sad every time I had those conversations with my kids, knowing full well their culture would never allow them to feel beautiful.
During this same time period, my white skin outside of the school had really become a nuisance. It's not that I was treated badly because of it. Quite the opposite. I had an essentially celebrity-like status and felt like I lived under a constant microscope because of it. People would openly gawk at me on the streets. Taxi drivers would constantly offer their hand in marriage. I remember one time, I went to a waterfall with some of my local friends to enjoy the day swimming and exploring. A group of us went up a path exploring towards the top of the waterfall. I got stopped along the way by someone who insisted I take a picture with them, not giving me another option. One of my friends noticed about 5 minutes later and came back for me (after they finally realized I had gotten pulled away from the group).When they saw the hold up, they laughed without end until I told them that this happened to me constantly and I was tired of it. I was tired of being paraded on stranger's Facebook profiles as white arm candy. I was tired of the constant limelight I got solely for the color of my skin. My friends were shocked to hear that this happened to me quite often and this wasn't just a weird incident.
And so I was torn. My white skin gave me a platform unlike any other, but for all the wrong reasons. I was sick and tired of being the object of attention, but also know that my behavior reflected the Christian missionary community at large (even if you weren't part of it, that's the assumption when you're white in the Philippines).
The best way we found to deal with it was to joke about it and at least get some advantages out of it, if my skin color was going to hang out and be so annoying all of the time. I got pulled over for making an illegal left-turn once. I was actually a dumb American at this point and for that reason alone, got away with just a warning. I unjustly took away the lesson then that I could probably use that logic during any part of my stay and they would never fact check me on it. Not that I ever used this to do more than jay walk and occasionally go a few kilometers over the speed limit (it's not like traffic allowed for more). We joked when we saw men staring about which one of us Greek goddesses they were staring at this time. We sometimes used our "whiteness" to our advantage, but when little girls said in the streets, "You're beautiful", we always stopped to tell them, "You are too". Sometimes I proudly add, I said this sloppily in Cebuano. After all, "gwapa" (beautiful/hot/handsome) and "puti" (white) were some of the first Cebnuano words I learned. Because I constantly heard people saying that around me or yelling that about me. However, as much as we wanted to break these cultural beauty perceptions, anything we could do felt futile as a dropping the contents of our water bottle in the large Pacific Ocean we lived on the coast of.
You get used to it eventually. And you accept that there are things you can't change. And you get tired of trying to do anything about it, because it will inevitably fail. Yet, I have one more story.
During my last year overseas, I took a vacation with two of my close Filipina friends and another white girl friend. On this vacay, we went to a waterfall/public pool place. At the gate of entrance, you had to pay to get in. When my other white girl friend and I passed through the gates, we were told a higher price than our friends had been. We questioned it, and they told us that it was the foreigner price. Our friends got the local price. Knowing it wasn't worth it to make a scene, and that we wouldn't get in without paying it, we forked over the money. As we kept walking, my Filipina friend who was right behind us, went into a loooooonnnnngggg rant in Cebuano at the lady. Although I had walked away, when she got to us she was noticeably shaking in anger at how we had been treated. We didn't get the extra pesoes we paid back, but I won't forget how someone stood up for me that day. How someone of a different skin color didn't ignore injustice I faced when she herself didn't (although mind you it was tiny injustice in comparison to what people of other skin colors face). That I had an ally who was part of the system that often made me feel so different.
I come from middle class, white America and I know many of my readers do too. Maybe you haven't ever had to think about what it means to be a white American, what unique privileges you have that many other Americans don't. Maybe you think it's okay to be "colorblind" and say "all lives matter", because you haven't ever known what it is to be on the part of the race that is seen as different by the culture you're in. That is discriminated against and treated differently solely based on the color of your skin. And it's okay that you haven't experienced the world of being the "other". The last thing we need is to feel guilty about that and just end up consoling each other over white guilt. I am tempted to face this even as I write this, knowing that I will never understand what real oppression is due to my race.
But I do want to be more like my friend. Because I know what a big difference it made in my heart to see someone fight for me, even though the struggle was not their own. I think that it's important in the face of the innocent death of George Floyd and the resulting protests around the country to realize this problem won't be fought and won until it's fought by all of us. Injustice is wrong, even when it doesn't affect you. So speak up. March. Protest.
But most importantly, don't just let this be a moment in time. If you see someone being treated unfairly in the future, stand up for them. Speak on their behalf. Because I can only imagine they're tired of fighting alone in a system that feels like it resists change with its very heart. And I use those words carefully because ultimately, that's where racism lies. Deep down in the crevices of our hearts that we barely acknowledge ourselves, let alone hope others see. It's time to look within at our own stories about how we've come to experience the color of our skin. It's time for both self-awareness and also awareness of others that it's all too easy to turn our heads to and ignore. And as we examine these stories, it's time to look for ways to change the narrative.
*I'm considering writing my next blog about how to learn about people in different cultures, which I believe is integral to all of this. So stay tuned for that.
**Also I know that I'm not perfect and I have work of my own to do on this. But hey, the important thing is that we're taking steps in this journey.
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