While at WisCon 33 I was on one panel that wasn’t going to be a panel. Cultural Appropriation 101 was supposed to be a workshop. At least, that’s what Programming asked us to do. But then we only had your normal panel-length time slot of 75 minutes to do it in.
(”We” being myself and Victor J. Raymond of the Carl Brandon Society’s Steering Committee, plus Cabell Gathman of the University of Wisconsin.)
So we talked some, we took questions from the audience some, we did a couple of exercises from the Writing the Other book I co-wrote with Cynthia Ward. Also, we made a stab at putting together a glossary. It’s that last thing I’d like to work on a little more now with you.
Here are some of the defnitions we used during the workshop:
RACISM - A system of advantage based on race. Unfortunately, racism is not dead.
HONORARY WHITENESS: -I first heard of this term from linguistic anthropologist and Carl Brandon Society co-founder MJ Hardman. If a white person likes a person of color and thinks that person of color is righteous and good, and therefor like themselves, they may accord that person of color honorary whiteness. This is usually done unconsciously.
PAWS: -As in the paws given out in the course of the children’s show “Blue’s Clues.” Somebody who’s extraordinarily clueful about cultural and racial issues has four paws. Four is the max.
COOKIE - A very public reward for behaving commendably in regards to racial or cultural issues. Often, seeking said cookie is the secret motivation for such behavior. (Note: cookies are the imaginary and parodic equivalent of paws; paws are often awarded without the recipient ever knowing they have received them.)
CLUEFULNESS - Of a certain level of empathy and understanding when it comes to the situations of those of a nondominant cultural background, race, etc. Applied to those of the correspondingly dominant background. Many of my white friends exhibit a high degree of cluefulness.
P.O.S.E.E. - An acronym of my invention, standing for Person of Southern European Extraction. Some P.O.S.E.E.s argue that they are not white.
P.O.N.E.E. - My companion acronym, standing for Person of Northern European Extraction. The whitest of the white; John Aegard is my little P.O.N.E.E.
THE UNMARKED STATE - Posessing characteristics which are seen as “normal,” and thus not worth being mentioned. In this society, at this time, this includes being white, male, heterosexual, affluent, and with certain physical abilities. Just about everyone deviates from the unmarked state in one way or another, though some ways are deemed important and others are not.
Here are a few terms that could use definitions. Try to be smart and nice.
PEOPLE OF COLOR
MAGICAL NEGRO
EXOTICIZING
ESSENTIALISM
And I’m sure there must be others.
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But what about someone like me who (when you add it all up) is approximately half P.O.N.E.E. and half P.O.S.E.E.? What do we call ourselves then? …Mixed-race?
I know I’m not being helpful, but I’m too excited for the next time someone asks me my ethnicity and I can tell then “poney-posey”.
It might be usefull to have a “sort of white” or “mostly white” category (other than POSEE, which from your definition seems to function in that way). I think there are a lot of groups that don’t exactly fit into the “southern european extraction” defition but whose race is given similar treatment in the US today. I am thinking of mostly of Jews and Arabs, but there may be others as well. I guess technically the “middle east” is Asia, but such people are not generally considered “Asian” (my history teacher in HS made us call the middle east “southwest Asia”). And as a Jew, my family is from eastern europe, rather than southern, though I guess if you go back far enough it could be considered southern (probably in Spain pre-inquisition). But I kind of identify with your POSEE defintion in terms of being basically white but not quite. I’ve heard it described as a sort of consciousness that your whiteness could be revoked at some indeterminate time in the future. It may also be linked to an emotional understanding that, not too long ago, your family and people of your ethnicity were not considered “white,” though now they/you are.
Oreo.
If this concept hangs together at all, is it possible for a black person to exist in the diaspora without being one? Surely it’s a question of degree?
Emily wrote:
It’s also true that there was a West-East polarization in Europe that was at least implicitly racialized (and you saw this among both Jews and non-Jews) such that Western Europeans were “white” and Eastern Europeans were not, and it also had a lot, an awful lot, to do with class. I don’t know if the same dynamic holds now though.
Emily,
I think you are right that Jews are broadly categorized as “white” in the U.S. because the vast majority are Ashkenazi and thus their skin falls on the “white” side of the racial spectrum. I don’t think that’s true of people of Arab ethnicity, though; they might get categorized as white when the options given are limited and no other option fits better, but certainly when I hear people talk about Arabs, they are frequently distinguished from “white.” I’ve heard people refer to someone as being “half white and half Arab,” for example, which doesn’t really make sense if being Arab is like being Irish or German.
but certainly when I hear people talk about Arabs, they are frequently distinguished from “white.”
True. In fact, in a conversation a few years ago I was shocked to be rather unpleasantly introduced to the term “sand n****r”.
I would definitely add Christian (possibly even Protestant) to the list of “unmarked state” characteristics. Though I supposed the Protestant thing depends on location — where I grew up, the kids who had Christmas trees but didn’t go to CCD were the weird ones, while I know that Catholics are the “exception” in a lot of other places.
Yeah, I don’t know about Arabs. I would agree that especially in our post-9/11 environment they are often not considered “white” but I guess I also don’t think that “Arab” is really considered a “race” itself. Perhaps an ethnicity a la Latin@. But I think this is actual a good example of how some groups are in a way “eligible” for whiteness, but may have it revoked or denied in a fluctuating historical context. Without 9/11, I don’t know if Arabs would be as “non-white.”
Also, I’m not really comparing being Arab or Jewish to Irish or German, because I think they would both qualify as PONEE, and I think that the PONEE groups are pretty safely in the “white” category now, though I know the Irish have a history in this country of not necessarily being considered “white.” I actually think that POSEE peoples like Italians, Greeks, etc. are also not in real danger of being considered “not white” in this country any time soon, and I would probably put Jews in that category, though I THINK that even the white supremacists make a distictions between Italian/Greek heritage and Jews (not sure about that).
It’s interesting to try to tease out and define the subtlties within the concept of whiteness. I don’t know that everyone’s understanding would be the same. There may be regional/subcultural variations that we learn growing up without really even thinking about it. That’s why I like PONEE and POSEE as having actual concrete criteria, but describing a real division among people who are considered white. I don’t know if adding too many distinctions makes the initial ones less relevant or not.
Also, PG, thanks for linking to your blog. I enjoy your comments here and didn’t know that you had a blog so that is a fun discovery!
Certainly here in the Chicago area the default for “Christian” is a presumption of “Roman Catholic”.
maybe the definition is obvious, but how about:
Token: The single counterexample held up to “prove” that a system is not racist.
For a discussion of magical negro, might I suggest the TVTropes site. Warning…if you’re a writer, you can get lost in that site for DAYS. They were actually the first place I saw the term, and they have a hell of a lot of good examples of it.
I don’t understand cultural appropriation – is it dependent on the intention of the person partaking of the culture? Perhaps I don’t have a good grasp on the issue so if anyone has a helpful link, I’d appreciate it.
I like PONEE & POSEE a lot. Thank you for sharing that!
for Person of Color – “person whose race is marked”. Which covers situations where Italians or Jewish people are considered not white, and allows for talk of whiteness as constructed and the color line moving over time.
Though looking at it, I don’t think I like that as much as I did when it was in my head. I’m just thinking of the situationality of it – groups I’ve been in where being Japanese was not marked, being White was exoticised but valued, and being anything else (Korean, African, African-American, Chinese) was definitely Other. And the old PONEEs I grew up around who considered Southern Europeans not quite white and Jews not white at all.
But it seems too much like defining people of color from a white perspective, when applied more broadly.
Essentialism – the tendency, when trying to define the limits of a race or group, of “boiling it down” to such an extent that the diversity within the group is erased. Essentialism frequently is an unintentional result of privilege; the person creating the definition is able to treat a group as if it were less complex and diverse than it actually is. An example might be saying that “Asians do better in school because their culture values education and hard work so much” or “Black people are very religious” – while many people in the group might fit into the definition, many others don’t fit the definition well or at all.
Essentializing can also be seen as a way of policing or enforcing the categories, power structure and hierarchy that’s already in place by suggesting that outlying behaviors or beliefs are not valid. This kind of essentializing can also happen within the group in question [I can’t come up with a good example, does someone else have one?] This frequently occurs when more than one kind of power structure intersects – Homophobia is sometimes more pronounced within certain racial groups, for example.
Rosa, I guess this list is meant to be applicable mainly in the U.S. or other white-dominant countries? Because “for Person of Color – “person whose race is marked” wouldn’t really work in, say, Japan, where white people’s race is very much marked. The cases I find most interesting for this is somewhere like South Africa, where the population majority was not the dominant group for so long, and still does not seem to be the face of South Africa to in the West (e.g. the only South African writer most Americans could name is J.M. Coetzee; the only South African musician Dave Matthews; the only South African actress Charlize Theron; etc.)
Jeannette, the website badindiangirl.com is one of the more amusing reactions I’ve seen against the attempt to police Indian women’s behavior by essentializing what it means to be an Indian woman.
Honorary whiteness is such a useful term. My father-in-law is one of the most openly racist people I know (personally, there are many worse people on-line), yet views himself as not-racist because of his many friends, co-workers and acquaintances of various stripes that he likes just fine. He awards honorary whiteness to virtually anyone he knows personally and likes at all. It allows him to retain his basic racism without drowning in the cognitive dissonance of all the smart, funny, hard-working people of color in his life.
for Person of Color – “person whose race is marked”. Which covers situations where Italians or Jewish people are considered not white, and allows for talk of whiteness as constructed and the color line moving over time.
I like this definition. I’m not sure that it’s the right definition for Person of Color, but it’s definitely the right definition for some useful term. I’m Jewish, and where I grew up, there was no question that I was white. (Hmm. Where I grew up is also largely Italian and Irish, and relatively small WASP population. Wonder if that has any correlation. Anyway…) In some other places I’ve lived, people tended to put me into “maybe not white” or “sort of white” because I was Jewish, but I wasn’t the same degree of “not white” as, say, a black person or an Asian person would be. I wouldn’t say that I was considered a Person of Color there — if the only choices were black and white, then I was white — but if you asked many people I knew there if I was white, without giving other categories as the only possible alternatives, then you probably would have gotten a confused look and a, “Maybe? I guess so? Or maybe not?” from a lot of them.
“He awards honorary whiteness to virtually anyone he knows personally and likes at all. It allows him to retain his basic racism without drowning in the cognitive dissonance of all the smart, funny, hard-working people of color in his life.”
This was the same technique my grandfather — KKK member — used to reconcile the fact that individual blacks and Jews weren’t evil.
“Person whose race is marked” has a nice symmetry with “unmarked state.”
I’m not sure how I feel about trying to use it to cover people in POSEE/Jewish/provisionally white categories. I’m leaning against it. I think that would be broadening “people of color” so much that it becomes useless or even insulting (like Jewish groups trying to claim Cardoza as the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice).
I hope someone smart takes on exoticizing. I feel stuck at “I know it when I see it.”
If you need to take in all of the provisionally white in one term that is not as restricted geographically, how about WBNQ … white but not quite. Looks like radio station call letters … broadcasting from the outer edge of whiteness …
I think I like the term WBNQ. It seems to cover both acknowledging that, in most things, we do have and benefit from white privilege, while also noting that there are some times and places and issues where that’s called into question.
And, in my experience, the people who call it into question are pretty much always white people. I’ve sometimes been mistaken for other races or ethnicities by people who are part of those groups, but once they find out my background (1/4 German Jewish, 1/4 Austrian Jewish possibly mixed with some Sephardic, 1/2 Eastern European Jewish), they don’t question that I’m white.
Tapetum,
Given all the mildly racist white people I’ve known personally, my father-in-law doesn’t rank high on the list (he has always been cool with his sons dating — and eventually marrying — WoC), but he does that same honorary whiteness thing to keep his fondness for individuals from creating cognitive dissonance with his dislike of the groups to which they belong. Thanks for pointing that out. I’d never quite been able to square away his ability to have a Taiwanese guy as his close friend and business partner, and to have several black friends and friendly acquaintances, with his ability also to make huge negative generalization about various non-white groups, but the Honorary Whiteness Award explains it all. I suspect that if he befriended someone who was trans or gay, he’d manage a similar feat as well.
I can’t be racist, I have black friends.
“But you don’t actually think of them as black. You’ve mentally moved them into ‘just like a white person, not like those other black people.'”
Most of these are common currency on the blogs I read, but I’ve never heard the term “paws” before. How is it used in conversation? I’m imagining something like “I like you, Jenna — you’ve got four paws” or “As far as I’m concerned, Bill lost a paw with that offensive comment.”
I have plenty of friends who have individual traits that I dislike, some very strongly. But I don’t think of them as “honorary person-without-that-nasty trait.” Rather, in some instances they have other positive traits which make it worth being friends with them irrespective of the things I don’t like. Prolife, but funny. And so on.
It’s not that this shit doesn’t exist, it’s just that life isn’t made up of yes/no choices. You can like AND dislike things about people, and you can do so simultaneously. If you’re a white who holds racist beliefs, then surely you can hold those beliefs (as a “negative” count against someone) and also like them for other reasons.
If you dislike black people but nonetheless become friends with a black person, what makes it different from disliking someone of some other group, and becoming friends with her? Is every new friend an “Honorary Democratic prochoicer?” Are black people who are friends with white people and who treat them as equals granting them “honorary black person” status? I don’t think so.
It’s just that people (of all races and political persuasions) tend to be a bit less polarized than may be convenient for the purposes of definitions. What’s so odd about that? Doesn’t this happen to all of us on a frequent basis in our lives? Do we all have to choose between befriending only people who have NO qualities we dislike, or pretending that those qualities don’t exist? Does that only apply to race, and only apply to white people? Why is it being presented as a white thing that only happens w/r/t race, instead of a relatively universal ?
Sailorman, I think that the key is the racist person can hold onto their racist beliefs despite first-hand evidence. So they think Black people are lazy, and they have one Black friend who works really hard, and instead of thinking “wow, that was a wrong belief I shouldn’t apply to the next Black person I meet” they think ‘My friend is so hard-working, it’s like she’s not really Black”.
That’s a lot of mental energy expended to keep up a belief in the face of direct evidence.
Sailorman,
How and why would you consider race to be same as political views or always showing up late or trash-talking other people?
And I think there are white people who get to be “honorary blacks” or “honorary Mexicans” or honorary whatever. I don’t think it’s exclusive to whites.
PG: That looks like a really interesting site that I’ll definitely be checking out :)
A question for all of you: How is the term “Person of Color” affected by “passing,” e.g. if someone comes from a non-white background and identifies as such but looks white, are they still a PoC? Can one’s status as a Person of Color change depending on if people are aware of one’s background or not?
Now I’ll take a crack at Exoticization, using the Wiktionary to start: Exoticization is “the act of romanticizing elements of something…that is foreign to oneself”, such as an unfamiliar culture. A sort of Essentialism, exoticization emphasizes the differences between the agent of exoticization (the one making the problematic judgment) and the subject of the exoticization (the group or person being exoticized), often so much so that the two cultures would seem to be incomprehensible to each other. It is often unintentional* racism and can occur when someone tries to admire or compliment that which they don’t really understand, ending up retreading stereotypes instead of the reality of the culture or group. (Note: often a result of someone trying to show how not racist they are, e.g. they’ve been to Africa and seen the tribal dances there, and bought real totem masks, and loved the true culture of the African people, etc.
*Is there a better term than “unintentional?” All I can think of is “benevolent”, like “benevolent sexism,” which is not the right sense at all. There should be a term for the condescending, paternalistic attitude that some people have – “I admire the simplicity and noble savagery of your native culture.”
There should be a term for the condescending, paternalistic attitude that some people have – “I admire the simplicity and noble savagery of your native culture.” — romanticism, paternalism
See, PG, that phrase came directly out of my experience as a White person in Japan (though nobody *ever* called me white, they just called me American, and my Black friend who taught over there was *always* the Black American. unmarked/marked) and with Japanese students in the States.
It needs something about marked negatively, and something about colonialism, I think, to be a definition of POC. And maybe something about solidarity…
And I’m thinking about the POSEE thing…how much of the not thinking of Italians, Greeks & Spaniards as not-quite-white is actually about color and the one-drop rule and a not-stated awareness of mixing & passing?
I used to work with a biracial white & Black woman in a face-t0-face customer service job, and white customers would often ask her if she was Italian.
Yes: people hold on to their beliefs in the face of conflicting evidence. People also use selective perception to reinforce their beliefs and avoid challenging them.
But again, doesn’t this happen all over the place? Many people don’t change their general beliefs based on conflicting evidence. It doesn’t seem like a race-specific thing; it seems pretty universal.
The same? No. Similar in some ways? Yes. Like I said, it’s a trait which some people view as negative while maintaining friendships with those who possess said “negative” trait.
If you’re trying to build a language, it’s important to distinguish whether a defined term is simply a specific application of a general rule, or whether something is unique. If you miss that, the choice of language means that the outcome of conversations is limited before it starts; the language can’t ever expand beyond the specific rule.
Similarly, if you’re trying to solve a problem, it’s important to distinguish whether it’s a specific manifestation of a common problem, or whether it’s a new problem which is really unique.
If you want to say that Honorary ____ness is something that only happens with whites in the form of Honorary Whiteness, then you can no longer look for parallels or solutions in any actions of a nonwhite. Your definition has excluded that from consideration and discussion; you have defined it as irrelevant. If you want to say that Honorary ___ness is something that only happens in the context of race, then you have excluded non-race issues through your definition.
Just like people don’t lend themselves to simple one-sided classifications, neither does the world. Define your language too narrowly and you turn it into a controlling force. that is a bad thing for discussion.
Sailorman: Since this was for a glossary to be used in a discussion of racism where “honorary whiteness” was more common than other honorary memberships, it makes sense that that was what went on the page. I see what you mean about the definition being overly specific, but I think that it’s worth emphasizing “honorary whiteness” over other kinds because it occurs most often in that milieu.
Perhaps Nisi could add something at the end of the definition about other honorary memberships? “Honorary membership can be granted for many aspects of identity, but is most often used with those relating to race and gender.” I suppose theoretically it could happen anytime there’s an Us v. Them dynamic.
Sailorman,
I think honorary _____ness with regards to whiteness (or just race) is different than taking the good and bad individual traits of a friend as a package. I think race functions really differently in our society.
It may be worth talking about honorary ______ness in other contexts than whiteness – in both contexts the bestowing of that title is seen as a compliment by the person giving it and probably in a more complicated light by the person receiving it. (When I was living in Latin America, I was often told that I didn’t look or seem American, but rather “European.” I think this was intended as a compliment, but it was … weird and frankly, I’d rather represent as a “good” American to show we’re not all like whatever the person thought Americans were like than be seen as “not really American.”).
But I think the honorary whiteness has more negative implications because of the way whiteness serves as the default for normal and good.
I think that the “honorary whiteness” isn’t about the same sort of issues as, say, chronic lateness. If I’m annoyed by someone who’s chronically late, then that just means that I’m annoyed by someone who’s chronically late. That person might have other characteristics that I do like.
With “honorary whiteness,” it’s not just saying that you like the person even though he’s black (for example); it’s saying something like, “Black people are lazy … oh, I don’t mean Joe, he’s not lazy.” It’s saying that even though there are certain things that you say apply to every member of the group, you’re granting this one person special status that says that those things don’t apply to him. With the chronic lateness example, or the political views example, those things aren’t meant to signify anything other than themselves.
POSEE and PONEE are great terms, as is “marked” – my girlfriend is of Italian descent and is generally considered to be white in the city but not in rural areas. It’s not the same as being a person of colour, but it’s not the same as being a PONEE like me, either.
chingona, #27:
I’ve encountered this socially (specifically wrt Chineseness). This probably isn’t the right thread for it, but I think the derogative ‘weeaboo’ is interesting – it’s an insult used by (primarily) white people against other white people who are attempting to gain honorary Japaneseness. Fucked-up on both sides? I think so.
It’s interesting – and perhaps sad – that this race issues thread has mostly just centred whiteness. At the risk (certainty?) of prolonging that, I wanted to answer RJN #4:
Speaking as a London-born PONEE, there is indeed currently a distinct dynamic between Eastern and Western Europe. But I don’t know whether that’s about culture/perceived whiteness or whether it’s simply motivated by current politics – specifically, the emergence of Eastern Europe from the Soviet bloc, and more recently the expansion of the EU which has allowed Eastern Europeans to freely travel to Western Europe to find jobs, thus raising the same wroth as groups of immigrant workers always get, eg. blame for high rent/low wages, relegation to the unregulated & underpaid ‘grey’ economy (especially for women), a perception that all female Eastern Europeans are prostitutes, essentialist blaming, being accused of having too many children/generally TAKING UP SPACE, HOW DARE THEY, etc.
Will this pass as Eastern European economies gain more parity with Western European ones? I think it will. It feels like it’s more about politics and labour (which is politics) than perceived whiteness.
And here’s a couple of posts from RenEv’s blog about the simultaneous shunning of and exoticisation of Eastern European women in the USA: 1, 2.
I used to work with a biracial white & Black woman in a face-t0-face customer service job, and white customers would often ask her if she was Italian.
I’m of Italian background, and I used to work with a bunch of Black women. We would hang out together at lunch (I guess maybe I was “honorary black”). Anyway, I got asked if I was black a couple of times – by Arab Americans, if I remember correctly. There are some interesting undertones in that, I guess.
I once got asked if I was black by a black guy. I think it just means that people really aren’t too good at figuring out race by looks. (It was a rather odd encounter. I was at college, walking to the dining hall, and there was a bunch of black guys standing around talking, and one of them shouted out “Hey!” to me. I turned around, and he asked, “You black?” I shook my head no. Then he asked, “You mixed?” I said no again. Then he said “OK” and turned back to his friends. I still have no idea what that was about.)
A blue’s clues reference? Isnt’ that a bit… infantile? How many non-parents over 12 have even seen that show?
Several of my Indian friends had that experience of people’s being puzzled by their race when they lived in Texas. I remember one of them was volunteering at an elementary school and a kid came up to him and asked, “Are you Mexican?” He said no. “But you’re not black?” No. “What are you?” Indian. “Oh, yeah, my dad’s part Cherokee.” No, not that kind of Indian.
Another was once selected by a principal to “represent” the Latino kids at her school, based wholly on her skin color and features striking the principal as looking Latino. So many parts of Texas are nearly devoid of Asians and Middle Easterners that I can’t be surprised that the people there think the population must be composed entirely of white, African American and Latino.
The one that I seem to encounter more in more diverse places, though, is the assumption that one must be a first-generation immigrant, most often expressed as “Wow, your English is really good.” I would hope so, since it’s the only language I speak fluently.
The one that I seem to encounter more in more diverse places, though, is the assumption that one must be a first-generation immigrant, most often expressed as “Wow, your English is really good.” I would hope so, since it’s the only language I speak fluently.
An Indian friend of mine (he was born in the US, his parents were born in India, his only accent is maybe a slight Texas one) went to buy a car, and the car dealer, to try to figure out which sorts of cars to show him, asked “Are you planning to go back to your country?”
Ruchama:
I don’t think I’ve ever experienced having my whiteness called into question. Perhaps that’s a function of where I live and where I spend time online, or perhaps it’s a result on never having learned to pick up certain subtle social cues.
Hershele,
As the person who suggested WBNQ, I wanted to be clear that I didn’t put it forward to be THE category for Jews. I put it forward as a possible descriptor for people whose whiteness is a relatively recent development or who feel their whiteness is somewhat provisional or conditional, and many Jews feel they fall into that category. Whether my suggestion works or not, what I was trying to get at was something similar to POSEE that was not geographically limited and allowed for the way these things change over time. (For example, I have never heard the whiteness of John Sununu or Ralph Nader questioned and I believe Arabs are supposed to check white on census forms, but for now, especially post-9/11, it’s hard to put Arabs unequivocally in the white box.)
Personally, I tend to identify as white and Jewish. I function in the world and am treated as a white person (and not even a particularly clueful one). As I believe I’ve mentioned in another thread around here somewhere, I sometimes feel uncomfortable with (sure look white to me) Jews who say they aren’t white because I feel like they’re trying to get out of owning up to their white privilege. But some of those Jews who say they aren’t white have had different life experiences than I have, and they have reasons for feeling as they do.
But to the extent that “white” also means mainstream, default, unmarked, etc., there are ways in which I’m outside of that. Which gets me to something I thought about posting on your recent comment to the gentile privilege checklist but didn’t. I’m going to go there now.
chingona:
I actually had come to think similar things about the idea of a Gentile privilege checklist. Without ascribing such motives to Julie, I can certainly envision someone “accused” of having white privilege pointing to some such orthogonal privilege of which they’re on the other side and attempting to . . . well, to play that card, I suppose. It’s more subtly wrong than “well, Richard Parsons is head of Time-Warner and I’m not.”
Now, I went over to look at the comments at ABW on this, and someone of (recently, as she pointed out) mixed heritage suggested that she has some of the cultural baggage of being a POC, but generally is classed as white, to the point that she’s surprised when she isn’t. I guess that’s the essence of WBNQ. I’d certainly be very, very surprised to find myself on the other side of white-privilege issues.
With one exception, every time it’s happened to me has been by people from either Louisiana or Mississippi. (The one exception was someone from San Francisco.)