Last week I read an article on Medium.com, called “Brown in America: A lesson in internalized whiteness.” The author, Larissa Dzegar, talks about being a PoC (Person of Color) and her realizations in her experience with “internalized whiteness.”
I can heavily relate to this concept of “internalized whiteness,” as I am a PoC who has been surrounded by white people for the majority of my life. I was adopted from China at a very young age and grew up in a white family living in a predominantly white midwest city (Dubuque, IA). And now, I am currently attending a predominantly white institution of higher education (Augustana College in Rock Island, IL).
When I was younger, I grew up in a white family. I lived in a nice house located on the Northwest end of Dubuque, safe neighborhood (three police officers who lived, at most, one block away from my house) and never feared for my safety when I was out in the community.
Because I grew up in this white space, I internalized this “whiteness” that surrounded me. I rarely self-identified myself as Asian or Chinese. I didn’t want to be that. I wanted to be white. I actually wrote a poem in middle school about how I hated my “squinty eyes,” believe it or not. It did not bother me that the only people that looked like me that I saw on a daily basis was my adopted sister and a couple Asian kids at school. It did not bother me that my race was underrepresented in every single TV show I watched as a kid or when there was an Asian on the TV, they could transform into dragons and followed every Asian sterotype in the book (shoutout to American Dragon: Jake Long). It did not bother me when people would joke about me being good at math, or being a bad driver, or even eating dog for dinner. I even laughed along, too.
Just like Dzegar mentions in her post: “I wasn’t always woke.” It was not until my freshman year of college at Luther in Sharon Jacob’s religion class on the Book of Revelation when I got woke. To my surprise, in this religion class, every day we discussed social justice issues, social inequalities, and the marginalization of groups of people in America. This class honestly changed my entire view of my identity and its relationship to others around me. It helped me embrace and accept my ethnicity as an Asian American.
Although, I still struggle with internalized whiteness today. I cannot wipe it out entirely, but by even just acknowleding its existence, it allows me to take action.
Here are 5 steps to take if you find that your are a PoC with internalized whiteness:
1. Recognize. They always say, the first step to fixing a problem is admitting the problem exists. Internalized whiteness is hard to recognize and even accept. It took me 18 years of my life to recognize my internalized whiteness and fully embrace my non-whiteness. When I was younger, whenever people would make racist jokes or stereotypical comments towards me, I would always laugh along, but there would always be a tinge of uncomfortableness with the situation, like I knew it wasn’t right. But, at the time, I didn’t know what to do or how to deal with that feeling, so I supressed it. Listen to your gut and don’t ignore that uncomfortableness next time someone asks to touch your hair or asks “no… where are you really from?”, because your feelings are valid and they matter.
2. Educate yourself. I was talking with one of my friends, Nate Gruber, who is an adopted Asian American about internalized whiteness. He, too, had a similar experience as I did–getting woke in the classroom. Gruber took a class in college about social inequality and social justice, which opened his eyes to his own identity and the societal constructs that are put in place in order to marginalize certain groups of people. If you can, take a class on social justice or race relations or gender studies. Education is the best tool to fight ignorance.
3. Get uncomfortable in order to be comfortable. I’ll be the first to admit, I am the least confrontational person you will ever meet. It’s hard calling out your friends or collegues on their inappropriate or insensitive comments–but that’s the only way they will learn. It’s an uncomfortable situtation to have to deal with, but you will feel better in confronting them about the situation and hopefully, they will learn that culturally insensitive jokes are offensive and insulting.
4. Talk it out. Sometimes simply just talking with other people who have gone through similar experiences as yourself helps a lot and makes you feel better that you are not alone in this. For me personally, I can heavily relate to a lot of my fellow Asian Americans (who were also adopted into white families). I find comfort in knowing that I’m not the only one who has experienced this strange disconnect between how I culturally identify myself, and how others culturally identify me.
5. Embrace your identity. Like I said before, I would rarely ever self-identify myself as Asian. I really thought of myself as “basically white.” Another one of my friends I spoke to, Amy Kittelson, also an Asian American, didn’t see herself as Asian either. “I didn’t realize the mindset I was in until 7th grade. Some kid asked me to translate this Japanese writing on a candy bar and I said, ‘I DON’T KNOW BECAUSE IM NOT JAPANESE'” Kittelson said. For many who experience internalized whiteness, we do not see ourselves as or our cultural identities. Instead, we embrace the dominant, white culture and push away our non-whiteness. Even sometimes we distance ourselves from others in our same ethnic group in fear of not wanting to be associated with them and the culture. The best thing you can do for yourself is embrace your ethnicity and own it. By accepting, loving, and taking pride in your cultural ethnicity, it will help you stick up for yourself or others when someone makes a racist/sterotypical comment. It will provide you with a sense of belonging, instead of the uncomfortable hybrid space that your internalized whiteness but ethnically different apperance puts you in.