I just had to invoke my non-white heritage. My great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side was Burmese. So, since it is not a) my culture and b) I am white enough / enough generations removed that few people even guess anything other than white. I am not ashamed of it (though my great-grandfather was, enough to tell my grandmother that his parents were dead, when they were very much alive), but I get all the privilege a white woman gets handed, and normally, trying to claim that heritage feels a little bit like playing oppression Olympics.
But my dad, watching the inauguration, (he was not a Trump supporter), decided it was safe to bitch at me about how much they were “emphasizing women and colour”.
Oh, fuck no. I’m going to pull all the knives out for that one. I don’t like to pull that one, for the reasons I stated above. I have never been discriminated against for it, so the only time it’s coming out is when I can use it to shut up someone on the attack. Someone who will maybe give a fuck.
Like telling my father to think about how that sounds when he says that to a woman with Southeast Asian heritage on a day where the first Woman VP and the first South Asian VP is being inaugurated. Coming out of an administration where the rights of women and POC (and especially Black people) were under constant attack and the president openly encouraged white nationalists.
Normally, I try to keep peace. I don’t have a lot of other family I am even willing to speak to. But today… not today. And if pulling that out gets him to even slightly rethink what he says… that strikes me as the only reason to do it.
But I hate it. Not because I am ashamed of my great-great-grandfather, or even entirely upset with my great-grandfather, knowing the societal pressures he was under. Yes, it was shit societal pressure, but I am not going to trash someone for protecting their non-white self and family in a white supremacist society. I am somewhat, for how he hurt my grandmother (who just wanted to have grandparents) but I can understand. No, I am ashamed of the other side, the side that’s been handed everything and feels the need to whine that those “others” are trying to take it away. Who parrot the white supremacist talking points while claiming they’re not racist, because they’re less racist than their friends and other family members.
I am not perfect. Hell, I won’t even claim to not be somewhat racist, just by the virtue of growing up white in a racist society, in an “I’m not racist, but…” family. But sitting around and saying nothing, in the face of that? Just to preserve my own comfort? Today of all days… it just felt even more like complicity.
TBC, this isn’t about cookies. There’s a reason I am putting it here, in the “grinds my gears” thread. Because I am mad. I am not proud of myself. I am sure as fuck not proud of the fact that we still have a society where a retired, white civil servant with a pension and property thinks that he’s hard-done-by, and doesn’t feel any concerns about saying so. Who thinks that reaching a hand down to help someone get back on their feet is like kicking him down to take their place. I am mad, because I need to do a lot of work deprogramming myself from the bullshit I was raised on, which I absolutely blame my family, schools, and general society for. I resent being put in a position where I hwve to repudiate so much of what they taught me, just to be a decent human being.
Especially when it’s so easy not to say something so blatantly racist and sexist. Just stop at the point before you do. And the irony is? My great-grandfather was being more considerate of his daughter than mine was of me. He was trying to protect her, in a fucked up kind of way. Mine couldn’t even be bothered to stop and think about who his is.
