Vicki Hohner,
Olympia, WA
While I am a white midwesterner by origin, I spent most of my formative years as a minority. First as part of the only white family in several Alaska Native villages, where my parents were elementary school teachers for many years; and in my high school years, as part of a small Texas-Mexico border town which was 3/4 Hispanic. I have been the target of bullying and racial stereotyping, and while I know what I experienced was not as extreme as many people of color experience it did give me some perspective on their lived experiences. In Alaska, even at a young age, I could see how the white Western influence was destroying native communities’ ability to continue to live off the land without providing adequate alternative livelihoods for the “educated”. In Texas, I saw how the white power dynamic enabled the smaller white population to dictate much of the social and economic interactions of the Hispanic residents. When I first moved to my present location I was uncomfortable because I found the town “too white”. When traveling in other countries, I try to fit into the local population and avoid “ugly Americans”, of which I, unfortunately, see many; entitled, demanding, loud, and disrespectful of the people and places they are visiting. I find it interesting as well as infuriating when white people who do not know me well make statements that assume I think like they do, seeing people of color as “the other” or less than/undesirable. My parents felt some guilt about subjecting us to such an unusual childhood, but I am extremely grateful for the perspective it provided, which allows me to relate more often to the challenges and negative experiences of people of color and be more outraged at the disparate treatment of similar activities and offenses.
