#white passing

— White Passing

[pt: white passing]

a term for one whos able to pass as a white individual, which effects ones indentity and connection to culture greatly.

this term was very self indulgent. i often get told im 'too white' to be indigenous, which has made me feel a complete disconnect from my culture and community, and worry that if i dive deeper into the culture, it wont matter due to the fact im 'too white.'

> please follow our DNI(link).

As a non-American Jew, the first time I ever heard Jews being referred to as white was when I was a full grown adult watching an American reality show. I FOR REAL thought they were making that shit up in order to generate buzz and get people talking about the controversy! That’s how foreign the notion was to me. Imagine my shock and horror to discover that THIS IS A COMMON MISCONCEPTION IN THE UNITED STATES.

It’s the way that referring to Jews as ‘white’ ERASES white people’s antisemitism, it erases our persecution at the hands of white people, it erases our suffering, it erases the OTHERING that Jews had suffered for CENTURIES from actual white people.

Based on what the skin tone of some Jews in a few places might afford them SO LONG AS NO ONE KNOWS THEY’RE JEWISH.

If you have to hide your real identity in order to enjoy the privileges of being perceived as white, YOU’RE NOT WHITE (this is true for Jews just like it is true for other white-passing People of Color).

White passing is not the same as white.

WHITE PASSING IS NOT THE SAME AS WHITE.

Dona Drake (Nov 15, 1914 – June 20, 1989) was a 3/4 Black, 1/4 White, American singer, dancer, and film actress in the 1930s and 1940s. Because of her passing for Mexican or White, she was typically cast in ethnic roles including Latin American and Middle Easterners. Drake often presented herself as Mexican and went by the names Una Novella and Rita Novella. As Rita Rio, she led a touring all-girl orchestra in the early 1940s, also known as "Dona Drake and her Girl Band", among other names for her musical and dance acts.

i don’t talk about this enough because i’m always afraid someone’s gonna try to fact-check my existence. that someone’s gonna look at me and decide, again, that i’m not enough. not native enough. not métis enough. not oppressed enough. not traumatized enough. not legit enough. and i’m tired. i’m so fucking tired.

i’m métis. my dad is blackfoot and ojibwe. his dad—my pa—literally went to a residential school. he had our language beaten out of him. had culture stripped from him like it was dirt that needed cleaning. and guess what? he survived. and then he passed down whatever scraps colonialism didn’t steal to my dad, who passed it down to me. stories. pride. grief. resilience. memory. and you know what the world says to that?

“oh. you don’t look native.”

i want to scream every time i hear that. like indigeneity is a costume i forgot to put on that morning. like you get to look at my skin, my face, my paleness, and just erase everything else. like the blood in my veins doesn’t matter because it doesn’t match your textbook idea of what native is “supposed” to look like. as if colonization didn’t literally breed people like me into existence. as if passing privilege means absence. as if my culture disappears the second you decide it’s inconvenient.

white-passing isn’t some kind of golden ticket. it’s a complicated-ass identity crisis you never get a break from. it means i don’t get followed around stores, but i do get erased. it means i don’t get some forms of direct violence, but i get silence. silence when i speak about my people. silence when i try to grieve what was taken from us. silence when i say, “my pa was in a residential school,” and someone replies with “oh… but you’re basically white, right?”

no. i’m not basically anything. i’m métis. and yes, my mum’s french. colonizer blood, settler ancestry. that shit lives in my family tree like rot and roots at the same time. and i don’t ignore it. i can’t. it’s part of me, and it makes things more complicated than i ever asked for. it means i’m constantly reconciling the fact that i carry both the colonized and the colonizer inside me. it’s guilt. it’s shame. it’s discomfort. and it’s mine to live with. and yet people act like that’s the part that makes me more “valid.” like proximity to whiteness is some kind of credibility. like i should be grateful.

i’m not fucking grateful. i’m angry.

i’m angry that i have to “prove” anything. i’m angry that my culture is something i have to perform in order for people to believe it’s real. i’m angry that i have to talk about residential schools—literal generational trauma—as some kind of evidence that i belong. why do i need trauma receipts for you to listen? why do i have to list blood quantum and history and geography like this is a test?

you wanna talk about passing privilege? fine. it’s real. i’ll say it myself. i know i can walk into places and not be immediately marked as “other.” that’s safety i didn’t earn, and i don’t deny it. but it doesn’t mean i’m not indigenous. it doesn’t mean my ancestors didn’t bleed. it doesn’t mean my culture is a costume i’m borrowing.

i’m not borrowing anything. this is mine. this grief, this pride, this confusion, this rage—it’s all mine. my identity isn’t a checklist. it’s a constant push and pull between what i feel, what i know, and what the world tries to take from me.

sometimes i feel like i’m stuck in the middle. not native enough for some people, not white enough for others. and i get it—métis identity has always been complicated. we’ve always existed in the margins, the in-betweens, the places where people refuse to look. and still—we exist. we survive.

so yeah, i’m white-passing. and i’m métis. and i’m pissed off. and i’m proud. and i’m still here.

Lights, camera, action! Tonight, we're uncovering the painful secrets underneath the glitz and glamour of Hollywood with "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo".

Content Warning: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo contains open discussions of biphobia and homophobia, as well as sexual and domestic violence, misogyny, alcoholism, chronic illness, discussions of suicide, abortion, and traumatizing familial revelations. Reader discretion is advised.  If you’re under the age of 18, stay in a child’s place. There’s nothing for you here.  Spoilers for The…

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