This Is Us
White Supremacy in Me
Light-skinned and part of the problem
When I was in my senior year of high school I argued against affirmative action. My AP history class had taken a field trip to Selma and we’d spent the day wandering around, drinking in the history of the small city. I was one of two Black students in a class of 30. Ashley and I were bound at the hip until we went our separate ways in college. I wonder how she felt at that moment. As she watched her light-skinned friend stand up on our school bus and give the worst possible answer to the impossible question our white teacher had just posed.
The question was impossible for several reasons. While we had discussed race in class it was always historical, and because Obama was president everyone was keen to claim that our country was post-racial. That particular sentiment had never felt true to me, but at the time I didn’t have the information — or support — to challenge it.
Growing up, I spent a lot of time swallowing my words when it came to race. My childhood was spent navigating mostly white suburbs, learning in mostly white “gifted” classes, and going home to my white-passing mother who espoused racial blindness and bristled if I referred to myself as Black. NO. I was mixed. I was both. So, in effect, I was neither.
Being neither, I rarely felt entitled to an opinion. But on that bus back to Charlotte, North Carolina, when our teacher asked for the class’s thoughts on affirmative action, the eyes of every white student were fixed on Ashley and me.
I don’t know for certain why I chose to answer. I think it was a combination of my pathological aversion to uncomfortable silences and what I could see in the corner of my eye, which was the tense set of Ashley’s shoulders as she gazed, unblinking, at her reflection in the window. She was looking hard into the glass like she wanted to will her body to the other side, away from this conversation.
So I stood, jerking onto my feet, and declared that I thought people should get into college based purely on their merits as students, and that race shouldn’t factor in at all. Then I sat down, feeling mildly queasy, and decided I’d give Ashley’s disappearing act a go for the next couple hours.
