All white people look alike – A lesson from the border
By: Iyabo Onipede – Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.
When I came to this country, Honestly, I think back to then and blush at how “green” I was. Coming from Nigeria, culture shock was a real thing. I am so embarrassed to say this, but I could not tell white people apart. Everyone, from the deeper olive toned skin of Italians to the Nordic Scandinavian palest skin, all morphed into one collective as “white people.” This meant that if you were non-black, you were white, one seamless collective that was the majority and held the power, history and prevailing values of this, the greatest country on the planet!
Sorry! That is just how my brain worked. It was 1981 and I was 16 years old. I entered the great US of A via the hustle, bustle and sensory overwhelming New York City for six weeks and then went to Towson, Maryland, a beautiful, scenic suburb of Baltimore to begin college. I was thrilled. I was totally oblivious to my naivete.
In college, I met this lovely African American twenty-something year old lady whom I shall call “Angela.” She saw how I struggled with names and faces and she decided to help me out. She sat me down and made me watch the soap opera, “All my Children.” First, I could not even understand the concept of a soap opera. Then, she explained who Erica was and her various husbands (shocking). Then, she tried to get me to follow the story line. I figured if I could conquer understanding this immense anomaly, I could do anything in America. During the ads, she would painstakingly weave together the different facets of the story line for me and patiently answered all my ignorant questions. No Tivo back then! We could only talk during the ads. I started taking notes and leaning into the TV intently, somewhere deep inside of me, knowing that this cultural learning moment, held the key to my future.
I would get the actors and actresses confused as they all looked alike and Angela embodied the patience of the biblical Job as she would describe a “bob” haircut as opposed to a “pixie” haircut. What were “bangs?” Duh! The most confusing was “curly” hair. What she called curly was straight to my eye. Curly meant thick, coily, and tight, the norm for African hair. Big waves of curls in 18-inch hair? Straight to me! Ok? I am sure it did not help that the dorm TV was black and white. Teaching nuance is an art reserved only for those endowed with spiritual gifts.
I did not know the difference between dirty blonde, brunette, blond, ash blond, brown or dark haired. Maybe I could tell a red-head. Maybe. They were just all “white people.” Tall was anything above 5 feet 8 inches. But I could tell men and women apart. That part was fine. Everything else, was a blur. I felt stupid. I felt like a fish out of her natural habitat of water. But I was determined to grow lungs and suck air.
And suck air I did.
By the way, my mother was a white Irish American and I still had issues identifying difference in what was not my previous daily norm. I did not grow up with the visible absorption of a diversity of white people all around me all day long. The reticular activation system in my brain was attuned to dark African skin. Not white skin.
Fast forward to April 2018.
A friend, another beautiful young twenty-something African American woman, was telling me how exhausted she was about white people demanding (very nicely) that she educate them on yet another “black issue” like Starbucks or something equally offensive. She is smart as heck. Y’all, she is a bio-ethicist (????? – I bow!) with a great job that she loves. She works with mostly white Americans and each day, someone comes up, oozing with sincerity and good intentions and asks her questions that make her feel she is behind the thick Plexiglas of a laboratory, being observed for a modern-day version of a freakish Frankenstein experiment.
She said, “Everyday, they look at me with fascination in their eyes and ask me questions like ‘are those twists or braids in your hair,’ ‘hey, I was listening to Kanye on my way this morning. Do you like his music?’”
She went on with a series of endless agonizing questions and finally said, “I am exhausted and it is not my job to educate white people about being black. It is not my damn job! I am sick of this!”
I did not really get it. But ok.
I paused and looked puzzled. I said, “But if black people do not take the time to educate and respond to sincere and genuine curiosity in order to bridge differences, what will happen?”
I thought that was the sweetest way possible to point out the absurdity of her statement. After all, the requests are done in good taste and are genuine attempts to bridge gaps that exist.
She asked me, “You came to this country when you were 16. Who showed you the ropes? You had to learn it by osmosis. You had to adapt because you had no choice. You recognized that if you did not adapt, you would drown. Nobody taught me how to navigate this white world that I must live in. I go to work and I figure out what a micro-aggression feels like in my gut, wondering if I am reading too much into a benign statement. I have to be 10 steps ahead of my peers to keep up with them because they instinctively know the system. I don’t trust anyone. No one looks out for me on my job. I asked to be mentored and I get blown off. No one is interested in my application for PhD programs. Why should I have to teach ‘them’ how to talk to me, why my hair care is different, why I like a certain kind of music, why I provide for my mother, why I may choose to have a child without getting married since there are too many black men in prison, or why police brutality is a treat to my own brother who is a straight A student? Why should I be the one to answer these questions? So, yeah, tell me, who showed you the ropes?”
O boy!
I recounted to her the story of TV watching in my dorm room at age 16. Today, I am 53. That “true friend,” the angel whom I call Angela, who took an hour a day to walk me through Days of Our Lives, is literally the only person I can think of who took the time to explain to me anything about how to navigate white American culture. Just because I had a white mother did not mean I understood how to navigate this majority culture. I was clueless, and I did not know I was clueless. She instinctively understood community and interdependence. She was born into privilege and had traveled to various far-flung places on the planet with her parents and wanted to understand how my mind worked. She was committed to being a support system and a cultural broker for someone like me.
My friend I was talking to this week, went on to discuss how the beginning point of any process of educating the white people she interacted with was so low that she felt she was a kindergarten teacher. She said, “If you really want to know about me, why do you know absolutely nothing about my social-cultural context?” She went on to express the deep dissatisfaction of embracing, and responding lovingly, to a curiosity that so focused on superficiality and not her depth of personhood, her relationship to her community and her place in the larger context of the world.
She talked about how she felt like a subject studied in a classroom in these conversations. She likened it to feeling like she was being observed like when we watch with fascination the naughty nature of pandas in those adorable 3-minute clips on Facebook. She said, “I just want to be known and seen for who I am: A complex living breathing expression of life. Not an object of fascination.”
She went on to say, “When I think about my contribution to the world, and the contributions of my ancestors to build this country, to make this the greatest country in the world, and you treat me as if I am a fascinating panda up to some crazy shenanigans on Facebook, I feel a deep rage.”
We talked about how that rage was from a deep place of a human needing to be humanized in their community.
She concluded with, “Do you know how once, I would like to meet the eyes of a white person and they look me in the eye and my gut sees respect, mutuality and acknowledgment? Do you know how many times I feel as if a person is barely seeing me and just looking right through me and past me? And you want me to educate that person about my blackness? No, thank you.”
I could relate. I remember when I was 16 and I would smile at my dorm mates or schoolmates in college and their gaze would settle somewhere slightly north of the highest strand of hair sticking out over my head. I remember the day I was able to label that sinking, raw feeling in the belly of my tummy to that unseeing gaze as I realized that I felt invisible to the person. I remember the feeling of invisibility. My own social context of immigrant, a privileged person and the child of an amazing mother who just happened to be white, generated feelings of sadness and isolation for me. Not rage.
Y’all, I am the queen of bridge building and peacemaking and I was worn out when this conversation was over.
I walked away thinking about the angel called Angela, that dorm mate in 1981, who taught me how to “see” white people so I could honor their individual dignity and humanity and not see a blur of sameness. I am so grateful for the saint that opened my eyes. My life is richer for it. However, that was not her job. It was grace that let her “see” me so I could “see” others.
Today, I wonder…..
- Whom do you render invisible?
- How are you getting your education about people who do not look like you or who you view as part of a blurred whole?
- Do you expect marginalized people to educate you about themselves, their communities and their lives?
- Do you sense the power differential in that demand?
- What are you going to do differently after reading this article?
Hmmmmm…….????? I wonder….
Iyabo is a Leadership Development Coach whose work focuses on the soul of the leader. She moves leaders from thriving careers into discovering, crafting and living into their life work. By helping successful people integrate spirituality into their leadership roles, they become more engaged with their work, expand the connection of their work to social justice issues and experience more satisfaction in their life work. Using the power of narrative and reflection, she helps leaders fine tune the sacred “work their souls must have” (Alice Walker).
Iyabo is located in Atlanta, Georgia and graduated from Goucher College (B.A.), Georgetown University Law School (J.D.) and Candler School of Theology at Emory University (M.Div.).
Iyabo’s home on the web is at http://www.coachiyabo.com
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