Too white for my own good.

Lauren Qualters,
West Chester, PA.

For my race card project I chose the phrase “Too white for my own good” which is most certainly a true statement, in both humerous and negative ways. I am certainly very sterotypically “white” but not in an intentional or discriminatory way. My traits are my own and they embody who I am. To take the prase another way, specifically the “for my own good” portion, recognizes that though I am aware of the many racial injustices that are a part of the world today, I often find myself blind to it because I am not the victim. Though I recognize this as a problem, it is still something that I struggle with in terms of omission and ignorance.

If there is someone I can pinpoint as being as “white” as me, it is my mother. We both grew up in (generally) the same white Philadelphia neighborhood, and have both (generally) been upper-middle class our whole lives. We atended the same all girls catholic high school that was very very white (in a graduating class of 213 we had maybe 10-15 non white students) and we enjoy a lot of the same activities. Not a week goes by that we do not text each other about our most recent “#whitepeopleproblems” or musings. If you go to the website ” Stuffwhitepeoplelike.com ” there is a 4/5 chance that my mom, myself, or both of us will absolutely love any entry that is picked at random. Entires include “Where the Wild Things Are”, “Picking your own Fruit” and “Hating People Who Wear Ed Hardy”. Check, check and check, and thats just on the first page. It is certainly easy to make fun of myself for being “too white” so that is one reasoning for choosing the phrase that I did.

Another aspect of my phrase is that I often find myself blind to the social injustices going on around me because it sometimes feels that “I’m not a part of it” or “It doesn’t effect me” – both of which are positively dripping with ignorance to the world around me. I admit that I live in a bubble and that it can very often be a safe and comfortable place to be, but “safe and comfortable” never changed the world. I am certainly interested in a variety of cultures and their practices, but I also recognize that I have a habit of ignoring the bad things that go on in the world right around me. I like to think that I am open minded and non discriminitory, but I doubt that I’m going to be the next big social activist.

Though I might be “too white for my own good” I like to think I do my part at work where I teach preschoolers. We do a lot of multicultural leanring, and talk a lot about accepting others. Bullying and discrimination are certainly not tolorated and I like to think that I am giving them the best advice that I can. I know I still have a ways to go in my own life, but hopefully by helping them out I can help the next generation to be a little bit more aware of the world around them.