Genes, color have no impact on value

By Sarah Auvil
auvils@mytjnow.com

People tend to still see the world in black and white, rather than appreciating the world in full-color vision and seeing race, while real, as merely the result of an exterior expression of a few genes. It is unable to fully define a person.

Almost every race has set expectations of what you should act like because of your ethnicity, and if you do not meet them, you are stereotyped. “Oreo,” “Twinkie,” the list of slang terms is endless for people who do not seem to fit the stereotypes that go along with their skin color and choose to act differently. 

But ultimately these words are meaningless; race could never truly express a person’s full identity and everything that influenced them over a lifetime.

I learned this the hard way, because personally I do not fully identity with my race and was teased about it growing up, even though I was the same outwardly as most of my peers. I was really into learning about diversity and minorities but went to predominantly white schools where my classmates just didn’t “get” me. I didn’t want to make other people uncomfortable, but I couldn’t not be myself, either.

An African-American is not less of a person or less authentic because they take on a more “white” way of speaking or behaving or has a lighter or darker shade than their peers. People come in more than just two colors, even within each race.

Most of us grow up with peers, neighbors or maybe even in a country with different ethnic origins than our own, and we can choose to take on those characteristics. 

Or we may grow up in one environment and completely reject it, feeling that we instead better relate to another group. This is simply part of finding and understanding ourselves in a deeper way.

Too many people just see themselves and others as either Black, White, Asian, Hispanic or Middle Eastern. There are so many different ethnicities and more complex subgroups within these categories, and this diversity needs to be appreciated. 

Few people in America these days are 100 percent anything anyway.  Even among European Americans there is great diversity in originating countries and cultures. 

I think this is why biracial and mixed individuals confuse others so much; they physically cannot be packaged nicely into only one of these categories the way people would like, so people over the centuries have tried to group them with the race they are most “like.” 

Even our own president is simply “black” even though he is biracial and had little contact with his African father. Tiger Woods is Chinese, Thai, Native American, Dutch and African-American. Try checking one box for that.

Probably my least favorite white stereotype is the belief a Caucasian person is somehow incapable of relating to another culture. Anyone can study a culture and seek to understand its people and their sufferings in a deep and open-minded way, even if they’re not part of it. Somehow white people are portrayed as being “plain” and devoid of “color” or “soul.” 

This thinking proliferates the idea that being one race is “cooler” or better than another, which is racist. 

It’s great to be proud of your heritage, but this is not Skyrim; your race does not give you +20 natural dancing/singing ability or -10 science. 

Being born white is not the same as being an ignorant person: that can come in any color. Even in writing this column there’s probably someone out there that is thinking, “She’s white, why is she writing about race and diversity?” 

It makes no sense that every color but white makes you a “person of color.” Last time I checked, I wasn’t translucent; I have a color and a cultural background, too.

I recently saw an online blog called “White Girl Problems.” I read through it, and after a few minutes realized I could not relate to any of the things it was talking about. 

I don’t wear uggs, make the “duck face” in pictures, straighten my hair or go to a tanning bed. I don’t think most “white girls” I’ve met at Winthrop fit that stereotype either. I’ve always marched to the beat of my own drum.

Instead I like to eat pho with hoisin sauce as if I was someone from southern Vietnam and drink pu’er tea from Yunnan, wear curvy jeans and excessive amounts of eyeliner, think Lee Hom Wang 10 years ago is way hotter than Channing Tatum, say “y’all” and get offended at inferior sweet tea, watch Bollywood movies with my best friend and tend to interject in random Korean and Chinese phrases like “jia you!” and “fighting!” 

This is who I am; it’s more than a stereotype, and I’m proud of it.