I just got off the phone with my mother-in-law where I was explaining to her how the race talk went at LimmudNY. I made some comment like people of color don’t ever stop thinking about the color of their skin and it floored her. I think a fellow Hispanic friend said it better when she recently wrote me:

“They keep talking about being colorblind, not realizing that being colorblind is a priviledge of being white. People of color aren’t so lucky.”

But maybe it’s that whites don’t think about being white unless they’re put in situations where they are the only white face in the room? And I started to wonder just how long it takes, if ever, for my white friends to stop thinking of me as their colored friend, their Hispanic friend. Do I ever stop thinking of them as my white friends? I realized that I was writing one of my characters in my book and if I hadn’t mentioned once that she was Chinese. If I didn’t, I knew that people would assume that she was white. I notice that when there are white characters in my book, I go out of my way to note this, the way that white writers note people of color in their books.

And on another note why is racism that is unintentional or subtle any easier on the person of color who is experiencing it? Because the perpetrator wasn’t trying to hurt them? Isn’t that the difference between manslaughter and homocide? A friend wants to know why it’s white people who are telling me not to get on the defensive every time someone says something offensive to me.

Still another thought: The generic white boy in the room is a victim of racism, too, because his white friends are walking around thinking that only people of color have an interesting story to tell. It doesn’t occur to anyone as I told my mother-in-law that the white girl next to you could have been raised by wolves and you’ll never find out because you labeled her boring white girl and didn’t stop to ask about her story.

And yes, I think it’s a brand of racism that we objectify and fetishize people of color. What kind of world would I be in if I only thought that people of color had anything interesting to say? What would I do with all my white friends? My mother-in-law thinks that maybe white people are interesting to me because they’re exotic…it never occurs to her that perhaps I’m interested in them just because they’re people and that as a writer, I know that everyone has a story to tell. For a moment, I stopped thinking of them as white people and myself as a person of color and I just saw as all as people.