I am trying to understand my "white supremacy" [View all]

[Generic Other]

I am staring at a tube of Titanium white paint on my desk. It's larger than the smaller bottles of colored paints: buff, burnt sienna, Indian Yellow, black. When I mix in a color, the larger white is transformed. Forever. In America, I am like the paint. My colored paint mixed with the dominant paint color creates a new shade. A person of mixed-race -- specifically with one white parent. And in my case, one Asian parent.

Does the "white supremacist liberal" label apply to me too? Because most mixed-race people are defined by the dominant culture, I have always felt the "one-drop" rule was applied to me by other white people. I could not always pass for white. I was usually identified by others as non-white. And I self-identified.

I am not alone. The 2010 census identifies 9 million mixed-race Americans. Our president, is mixed-race, for example. He is as much white as he is black, yet he is never described as our white president. To make such a claim would seem silly to many. Why? Technically, Obama is our first half-white president as much as he is our first black president. Try telling that to the Confederate-flag waving crowd. Clearly, he is not "white" enough for them. That message is not lost on mixed-race children.

So is Obama also a "white supremacist liberal"? It doesn't seem as if he could be. The idea is quite literally absurd on the face of it. Maybe his mother was. Or my father. Both were born a part of the dominant culture that continues to enjoy white privilege and to practice white supremacy -- whatever you wish to call it.

The young woman who disrupted Sanders' event in Seattle also has a white parent. While our white parents challenged the system, they did not change the underlying attitude toward race. Mixed-race people are keenly aware of this reality.

What does it mean to be biracial in America? Many experience a profound sense of rejection from the dominant culture early in life. They are sensitive to the fact that they are always automatically categorized as inferior "other," a re-enforcement of the notion of "white supremacy," a form of "white privilege" rarely spoken of but certainly understood by many biracial individuals and their families. In other words, the dominant culture gets to decide who is white enough to pass as one of them. And they get to decide this about a person based on the race of one of their parents.

I didn't have a concept of race as a young child. Until someone called me names. Until someone told me not being white was bad. And even though I thought I was white, I wasn't considered white enough, largely viewed as inferior by many. And deep down I wondered if they might actually be right because even I who hated the message internalized the message. This is why I know white supremacy is alive and well. I know it firsthand. This is the prism through which I view my experience. It colors my perspective.

I am not trying to defend or accuse, just trying to understand, to acknowledge that we do all live in a white supremacist culture and that even liberals have much work to do to challenge the status quo. I don't agree with the young activist's method of delivery, but I am trying to listen to her message. She is right. Black Lives Matter. And we must not forget. We all have to overcome our conditioning. I feel like I cannot be silent on this issue.

Apologies if I have offended anyone. It is not my intention. I was just thinking out loud. Confronting my own truth.