What if Whiteness Disappears Completely?

Last updated on: May 9, 2016 at 6:30 am by Ambaa Choate

What if Whiteness Disappears Completely? 2016-05-08T16:46:50-04:00 Ambaa Choate

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Recently an Old Navy ad featuring an interracial family brought some intense racism out of the woodwork. Twitter was full of people insulted by this beautiful family in an ad. It’s pretty mystifying to me that people can have so much anger over someone else’s family. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know where it comes from.

There’s a fear running deep in some parts of America, a fear of disappearing, of vanishing. There are white people who fear that whiteness will cease to exist because, well, our genetics are weaker than other colors! Not in a bad way, just a fact that with one black parent and one white parent, you’re likely to have skin at least one shade darker than white. Or at least that you might not read as white to others.

White racists see this as a lose of heritage and they take it personally that black people are “allowed” to celebrate their history and heritage. But to me the glaring problem with that is that it is the racists themselves who aren’t seeing the white parts of mixed race people. Those kids still have their European heritage (or whatever it is) and it’s you who are denying it to them.

https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1437913135140-944c1ee62782 by London Scout

Me personally? I couldn’t care less if whiteness ceases to exist. Some people will say that I have some kind of self-hatred. People have said it before that I don’t take enough pride in my skin color. But what is there to be proud of there? I can be proud of my ancestry and culture without it having anything to do with my skin color.

In the ultimate reality where we are all equally a part of God, the color of our skin does not matter at all. It’s a superficial aspect of bodies that are not who we really are anyway. If you think about a world in the future in which your skin color no longer exists and you feel that it’s wiping out you and your people, I think you have too narrow of a view of who is your family and your people.

But wait, I imagine you’re saying, why then are you called the “white” Hindu? If you don’t care about whiteness why are you calling out your race? As I’ve said before, this blog is not just about being a Hindu. It is about my real experience with my race and my religion and how those intersect.

Some people will say it is racist to not be equal with this, to say that I don’t care if there’s no such thing as whiteness but I don’t feel the same way about other skin colors. Isn’t it unfair to be someone who would never say that brownness shouldn’t exist but that it’s okay for whiteness not to exist? Nope. The reason being the history of how whiteness has been treated as default, how white skin has been used to hurt and exploit others. I don’t mind that going away. I really don’t.

I don’t feel that it in any way erases me. If my progeny are not white in the future, it does not erase me and it does not erase the heritage and culture that I am passing on to them.

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