I'm White . . . I'd Forgotten

I don't know about you, but for a long time, I'd forgotten that I'm white. Last December, I realized that I had forgotten that I'm a white person. Yes, I have acknowledged that I'm a white guy in the past, and I'd attended various conferences on race relations, diversity, etc., but a fuller recognition of my whiteness had slipped away some. What a luxury it is to just be Greg! What a luxury to let my whiteness come and go and never stay too long! At last year's People of Color Conference (POCC, under the auspices of the National Association of Independent Schools), I didn't rediscover my whiteness because of all the people of color around me. No, I became white again when the students of color from my school became more attuned to being students of color. And they were fired up and clearly in need of talking about it with whomever cared about them. My initial reaction was to defer to our Multicultural Dean, to let him have those conversations because he'd want those conversations, and then it suddenly struck me that all of us should be able to have these conversations with these kids. That the kids should be feel not just comfortable having those conversations with all of us, but also confident that we had something to offer them that recognized them not just as wonderful kids, but as kids of color. So if I was going to have the conversations, I had to acknowledge for myself what is surely apparent to those kids in their fired up state of revelation: Greg is a white guy. If you're white like me, I think we need to make time to consider our whiteness, our consciousness of whiteness, our willingness to address our whiteness with others. I think we need to forego the luxury of not thinking about it . . . if, in fact, you're like me and you haven't had to think about it. Now, I know that my situation - white, male, straight, and at least raised Protestant -- confers a lot more of that luxury than it does for women, Jews, gays. But that whiteness advantage we all share is a substantial luxury. And it may be that people of color would be pleased to know that we address it now and then instead of letting it slip away out of consciousness.