Clever Blog Title

Seriously though, I think when they see that someone is a poc on the admissions form they start getting excited like

Then if the essay is good they get all impressed.

Then when they admit you they just sit around patting each other on the back for being such good white people.

And then students of color are still a huge minority and we’re like “Hey there’s a lot of white bullshit here and why is all the faculty white?” And then the administration’s all

“wait but we let you in. I don’t understand what’s happening.”

Don’t get me wrong, now. The New School is a lot better than the other schools I toured and A LOT better than the one I transferred from.

I appreciate the fact that we have classes on race and that the administration is making an obvious effort to increase ethnic diversity. But it’d be nice if the people teaching classes weren’t ALL WHITE. I’ve taken two psych classes with an emphasis on ethnicity and stereotypes here and both professors were 1) not even faculty, but grad students and 2) cis white males.

I just wish they’d spend less time getting off on what awesome white people they are and actually do something that requires effort on their part, instead of the part of students of color.

And hire some fucking non-white faculty!

Ain’t seen one faculty member of color yet but almost every single maintenance person is a person of color. The fuck is that about?

There is also an entire ONE class about Natives. “Native American Art and Design”, which is run by a white person who’s all about Clovis point and “admiring the skill of these beautiful people”.

1. Curse. Curse loudly and constantly. Every sentence should contain at least one curse word so that people who have just met you end up being able to identify you as “the one who swears all the time”. Being aware of the proximity of people traveling with children will be a legitimate challenge.

2. You must perfect the art of thinking you might be pretty bad ass, while simultaneously knowing that you are very much the opposite of bad ass. Throw cigarette butts at expensive cars, but only when there are no cops or children around. Walk with headphones in, hood up, strut like mother fucking Joan Jett. But don’t turn the volume up too high because you need to be able to hear in case someone yells your name from behind or there is an ambulance that you need to get out of the way of.

3. Talk too much about native issues, but only to the people closest to you, ensuring that they will be constantly annoyed with you. If you are interrupted by being introduced to someone or by someone you don’t know horribly well, continue ranting about native issues until the person you do know is prompted to turn to the new person and sarcastically say something like “if you couldn’t tell, she’s a native american”.

4. Have no money. Make sure everyone around you is painfully aware of it. Be oblivious to the fact that it is uncomfortable for people to hear you being so nonchalant about not being able to eat or do laundry. When you do have money, spend it in ways that aren’t actual irresponsible, but make you feel irresponsible. Like on clothes to replace the ones with holes in them, food that isn’t pasta, good shampoo, and textbooks.

5. Hate yourself. But only in a mild, eye-rolling, self-deprecating humor kind of way. For example: Cry during sad parts of movies or books, but be unreasonably ashamed of it. Plan your sad movie viewings/ book readings to make sure that there is no chance you will be seen bawling your goddamn eyes out.

6. Try to solve everyone’s problems. They told you not to, they obviously don’t want you to, you’re totally aware that they probably just want a shoulder to cry on and that it’s probably not going to actually solve anything… but fuck it, do it anyway. You can hate yourself for it later.

7. Think about doing drugs. A lot. Never actually do them because you’re a pussy and you’re broke. But smoke more cigarettes than you can afford to. Be aware that if you didn’t smoke, you could probably afford to eat more. Smoke anyway. Tell everyone, including yourself, that you’re trying to quit.

8. Be disorganized, but have OCD so that when people move your shit, you can tell immediately and it will make you anxious as fuck. Organize rarely. If you organize your things, you may forget where you put them or someone else might be able to find them and use them. Disorganization deters people from using your things. It always encourages them to move your things because your mess bothers them.

9. Use other people’s things. You’re too broke from smoking to be able to afford your own.

10. Curse more.

You don’t have to ACTUALLY be a Native American.

You don’t have to know anything legitimate about the culture

(Because it’s all the same culture, obviously)

As long as you decide that you “feel connected to native american culture”

you’re just as Native as Tecumseh, Geronimo, and Sacajawea.

Or so say 3 different people in my Culture, Ethnicity, and Mental Health class.

And at least 50 other people I’ve met over my lifetime.

Somebody asked me the other day why urban natives seem to get more worked up about appropriation and stuff than rez folks do.

This is why.

Because even the people who don’t say that, think it.

We’re literally not even real to them.

We’re just another New Age spirituality fad.

And it’s just me here defending us, by myself.

And then I come home and I’m the only Native in the building.

I’m just here, alone, trying to convince anyone that Natives even exist.

This has been a whiny, self-pitying thingamajig.

As white-passing people of color, we have our own set of struggles.

We have to hear all the horrible, racist things that our white friends (and sometimes even our not-white friends) say about people of color that they wouldn’t dare say if we were visible poc. And because we look white, we are expected to be okay with it. We are expected to understand and sympathize with the “I’m not trying to be racist but…” agenda. Basically, we are expected to support whiteness as an ideal.

When we talk about our identities being anything other than white, our white friends act like we are throwing ourselves an unnecessary pity party. They act like we are so full of white-guilt that we are trying to falsely identify as people of color to get away from it. Or, worse (and more commonly), they act like looking white is some kind of accomplishment, as if you were born inherently better than your visible counter-parts, are fully aware of their inferiority, and are being ridiculous or annoyingly humble by also identifying as a person of color. This experience is similar to when visible poc are seen as “credits to their race”. Except that the white-passing, instead of being seen as being better because they aren’t “lazy”, are seen as better by default. As if being born light-skinned, instead being a product of recessive genes, is evidence that we were meant for better things than our visible parents, siblings, and friends.

And we cannot effectively contest it because, when we do, it is held as evidence of our inborn moral superiority to visible people of color; evidence of our grace and humbleness. Yet we are not as good as white people because we are not actually white. We are still people of color, and, therefore, our words are cooed at benevolently and brushed off, as we cannot posses the wisdom and authority that comes with being an actual white person. We are light-skinned because we are better, but we are not white enough to actually be taken seriously. Our purpose in white people’s lives is not as evidence that racism is idiotic, counter-intuitive, and without any basis in logic, but to reinforce the value of racial hierarchy. And anything we say will be twisted and mangled to support the racist schema of the white people who have been kind enough to let us sit around and act white with them.

A self-aware white-passing person is constantly aware of their unmerited advantages and simultaneously unable to do much to convince the white people around them (and often other people of color as well) that we do not deserve to be on this pedestal. Or, rather, that our visible counter-parts deserve to be on the pedestal equally as much, if not more, than we do. A self-aware white-passing person realizes that when they set off a metal detector and get waved ahead instead of having to go through lengthy and invasive searches, it is because of the value a racist society has arbitrarily placed on pale skin and European features.

And then there is the isolation from visible people of color. Because while we may identify more with them, we still look white. And we are never, ever, unaware of that fact.

As a person of color, I know that I usually prefer to be with other people of color (and some non-delusional white people). So while we can’t blame them for not automatically seeing us as people of color, we also can’t just go over and say “hey I’m a person of color, too” because THAT IS SUCH A WHITE PEOPLE THING TO DO!

HOWEVER

I’ve seen a lot of stuff come through my feed, lately, about white-passing people of color trying to equate their struggles with those of visible people of color.

Personally, I don’t understand how any self-respecting poc (visible or white-passing) could do that to another poc. Every time you try do that, you are saying that you face the same discrimination as visible poc. This is just not true.

As white-passing people we have the privilege of letting people think that we’re white to get jobs, grades, respect and to avoid having our words and actions serve as a testament or evidence of our race/ethnicity. Most importantly, we have the ability to sit in a room full of white people and not have all eyes on us. When we are tired of the discrimination, we can get up and leave and be assured that, in a few blocks, at most a few cities, we will be in a place where no one knows that we’re people of color; where we can sit in peace, without being discriminated against because of our skin tone.

This is a white-passing privilege that visible poc do not have.

So, yes, we have our struggles. But they are not remotely the same as those of people who do not have the privilege of passing. Pretending otherwise is hurtful, invalidating, counter productive, and generally fucked-up.

So, please, quit trying to play oppression olympics and acknowledge your privilege like a decent human being!

Today I feel like an asshole.

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So my mom is white. Probably. She was adopted so really who knows. But she does and has always identified with being a white woman.

My dad is Pikuni Blackfeet and Spanish and was brought up as traditionally as possible outside the rez.

They had two kids together (though they’ve been divorced since before my sister was born). But my mom is always whitewashing him and, consequentially, me and my sister.

Whenever we talked about our experiences as Natives, she would act like we were being cute. Like being Native was some sort of phase we would eventually realize was silly and grow out of. Our experiences as people of color were basically written off. When we asked questions about why our American History books started with the Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock, or why Manifest Destiny was depicted as a good thing, they were met with condescending smiles and “don’t worry about it, sweetie”.

But by far the most offensive thing my mother has ever done to us happened during the last census.

One day I picked up from her coffee table the census forms she had filled out for my sister and me. The fact that she had filled one out for me was already problematic because I didn’t live with her. But what was more striking was that, for each of us, she had checked only one box for race. And that box was “White/Caucasian”.

I showed my sister and we angrily called my mom into the room. When confronted about the lack of acknowledgement of our mixed heritage, she had only 3 words to say: “But I’m white”.

After a lot of argument she stood over us with this sort of ignorant, privileged, falsely benevolent look on her face while we checked “Native American” and “Hispanic”. After I had put the forms in my purse and promised to deliver them safely to a mailbox, mom told us that she didn’t see why we had gotten so upset about it and asked us if checking those boxes was really “worth the argument”.

And to this day I can’t figure out how to convey to her that it is worth the argument.

Anyway, this has been a post.

You may now return to your Christmas Eve things or other nightly activities.

Things About Me/ My Profile He’ll Disapprove Of:

• Political moderate
• Tattoos
• Alcohol
• Tobacco
• Punk/ska/rock music
• A picture of my bra

He’s going to be so disappointed.

Hope he still sends me birthday money.

Lawlz.