Yes I’m Jewish, Yes I’m Blonde.
Summer,
Camarillo, CA
I am Ashkenazi Jewish and have always known so, and was raised speaking English and Yiddish. I am fair skinned, blue eyes and blonde hair. People assume because I am what people traditionally think of as “Arian raced” they can make nazi Germany jokes to me and I will tag along. I don’t look what people assume Jewish looks like and so people are surprised and sometimes don’t believe me and ask me to prove I am Jewish. I had a boyfriend once who didn’t know I was Jewish yet and told me that we needed to have children because it was our duty to carry on a traditional, clean, white race, I dumped him promptly after. Looks don’t determine someone’s heritage.
I am a student at Moorpark College, CA.
Brown in summer, white in winter
Ronisha,
Laugna Niguel, CA
I am of mixed race. My mother is one hundred percent Filipino and my father is white. In the summer, my skin is dark due to extra sun exposure. In the winter, my skin is pale. In the summer, I get compliments such as, your skin is so beautiful and glowing, you are so exotic, etc. In the winter, I feel ugly because of stereotypes like “Becky”
Whitefish Bay white school white Church
Mark Brandfass.
Pittsburgh, PA.
In the summer of ’63 my family had just moved to Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin. My father was a salesman for Westinghouse Electric and we moved as his work demanded. I would be entering the diocesan Catholic seminary the next year, my brothers and sisters attended the local Catholic schools. I don’t remember ever seeing anything else but white people in school and in church.
Progress? We’ve been running in place.
Christina H.
Washinton, DC
Too often this summer (2014), I’ve felt like we’re reliving the events and emotions of ’65, ’68, and ’69. I cannot believe we still have to protest the killings of unarmed black people. Progress on race? Some days it feels like this nation has just been running in place.
Taunted by Whites for being untanned.
Marcia S Davis,
Holland, MI
Since I was a kid and into adulthood, I’ve heard people say to me, a Caucasian, “You’re so white!” “You need to get some sun!” When I was younger I didn’t have the self-esteem to come back with a clever retort. I just buried my shame, dragging my self-image down with it, wishing I wasn’t in my own skin.
I call it Fish-Belly White. Peer pressure drove me to fry my skin with baby oil as a teenager just to fit in. Usually I just turned into a lobster. I’ve had numerous sunburns that are now emerging in my 50s as precancerous skin. Thankfully, I’ve been seeing a dermatologist annually for check-ups and may have saved my skin in time.
I’m not sure what to call this experience. Is it bullying? Is it a form of racism? Reverse racism? This project was a good outlet for me to express the shame of being the whitest of White people I know–many people who, ironically, tan their skin to be darker, yet have racist attitudes toward people of color.
If anyone criticizes my pale skin now, I just tell them [duh] I was born Caucasian. What you see is what you get. And hopefully I won’t get skin cancer.
I would love to understand what is behind the comments….what being “too white” means to them.
Black Woman Who Loves to Swim!
Eb,
Rowlett, TX.
I am a black woman and I am already missing the summertime. I love to go to a local swimming pool (and yes I will get my hair wet!) in the middle of a Texas summer. I have a naturally kinky, curly and thick afro and there is nothing relaxing on a hot day than a swim. I love my hair as much as the next woman but I have always had the mentality that my hair will not keep me from doing anything I want to do.
🙂
Every Hispanic Isn’t Always Hispanic Okay?
Mathew Rayne,
Houston, TX.
Once in awhile you go for a drive and see the people around you enjoying what there doing. Everyone is their own person! Sometimes your expected to do something that… you just rather not do? It’s my family line? In my blood? Just because I’m Hispanic doesn’t mean i wanted to do something you want in my future!
I like Mexican food, but not weekly
I like my truck, i don’t want it dropped.
I use to hot summer, don’t have me hay bailing it all
I use a computer, more than my cell
I speak English, little Spanish
….. I am me, but i’m not you
Conversations and connections change perspective
Mary Jo Nash,
Oakland, CA
The one connection we all have is that we are human.
I am lucky because when I was pretty young I was put in a group where I was the minority and I think in a small way that changed my perspective in life. I grew up in Portland, Oregon in a neighborhood that was mostly white. When the older kids went off to swim class one summer day, my neighbor took me with her to a school where she was doing some volunteer work. It turned out that I was the only white kid at this summer camp and all the other kids were black. I was a shy little kid at the time and any new situation made me a bit nervous. I felt awkward and out of place when I first arrived because I did not know any of the kids, however, we quickly started working together on an art project and I had a really good day. I don’t remember anyone talking to me about that experience in what one would call a “teachable moment” today, however, the experience stuck with me. I have found that some of my strongest connections happen when I take the time to get to know people who appear to be different than me on the outside. There are always connections to be found that lie beneath the surface if you take the time to start a conversation.
Hispanic Mulata NOT African American, Okay?
Tracy,
Pittsburgh, PA.
During the summer I’m darker so I’m African American, during the winter I’m lighter so I’m other. My family comes from a mix of dark and light skinned Spaniards, French and Jews. We are Dominican. I am American.
Wait, But You Don’t Look Mexican
Chloe Servin,
Miami, FL.
I’ve gotten that phrase countless times. Pupils, teachers, when I meet new people.
I currently am pale with slight color, but when I was younger I’d go outside every day and I was active, so I had a much darker color, plus I’d also go to the pool almost daily.
One summer I got too dark and my mom didn’t let me go to the pool for 2 weeks.
Funny, I know. I stopped being as active and stopped going outside. Over time I began losing my color, and I became pale.
I still tan quit quickly and don’t burn often, but I just haven’t had the time to be outside and try to catch some rays.
This summer I’m going to try to learn some Spanish and get some sun.
No, I don’t know the landscapers.
Beatrice Arreola
Wilmington, DE
It was the summer of the end of my sophomore year in college, when I got an internship in an engineering firm. It was my second engineering internship and I was excited that I was working in my field of study. I was part of the small structural section in the company which caused me not to be slightly isolated from the rest of the company. One day I had to go to ask a section leader of another group in the building a question about a project I was working on and after discussing it he asked me if I knew the landscapers that did the company’s lawn. I didn’t and he continued to ask if I was sure because he saw in the newspaper an ad for a landscaping company that had my last name on it. He asked me if I had anyone in my family that worked in landscaping. I thought about it and replied that no one in my family ever worked in landscaping to my knowledge, my father was a trucker and my uncles were either that or farmhands. Finally he said he thought that my dad was one of the landscapers and that he had talked to the president of the firm and that’s how I got a job offer. I told him that I met the company contact at a job fair on campus, was called in for an interview, and then was hired that way. Being a naive college girl it didn’t bother me at the moment but it wasn’t until the end of the week that I came back to think of that conversation that it really began to bother me. To this day I wonder if he thought that because I am of Mexican decent that the only way I could get an opportunity to work there would be if I knew a landscaper? I wonder if he even believed that I was an engineering student.
