Would You Ever Give Up Your Whiteness?

I asked 79 white people if they would give up their whiteness. Here are the results.

Illustration: Jenn Kitagawa

Sometimes I’ll ask a white person a question I often wonder about. It’s a question only they can answer, and typically one they’ve rarely, if ever, considered:

Would you give up your whiteness?

Generally, when I ask a white person this question they look at me like I’ve just asked: Would you ever walk across the ocean? Or maybe it’s more like: Would you ever light a winning lottery ticket on fire, just to see how it feels?

How could a white person give up their whiteness? It’s not like a gym membership. But ah, in fact, it’s a lot like a gym membership — only it’s one where other people pay your annual fees.

Whiteness.

What exactly is it? Defining whiteness is both easy as all hell, and somewhat difficult. Essentially, whiteness is social power masquerading as an ethnicity. As a personal identity.

Let’s be all the way real about this: Whiteness is, primarily, a relationship to power.

Now, if I asked a black person whether they’d give up their blackness, they might not know what I mean, either. What’s there…