Living white, I have been a prince all these years and hardly knew it. I have lived in the ancestral home of my parents and many others who were just like them. I’ve had a general sense that I was a prince. Something made me special, and I was better than those living outside. But it also has seemed so normal and nothing out of the ordinary. Being white has simply been who I was. It has been so easy being white and being a prince.
Now it isn’t so easy being white. I thought I liked being a prince, but now I’m not so convinced. I notice that when I assert that I am white, even in small ways, I suck the air out of the room. I take the air others need to breathe. Non-white people have a harder time breathing just because I am acknowledged and recognized as being white. The prince gets a bigger share.
As I search my memories, I realize how, even though I was born a prince, I was also taught what it means to be a prince. As a young person, I was taught what it meant to be white, and I absorbed that lesson in my muscles and bones. The lessons were deep and lasting.
I learned at an early age that those non-white people smelled funny. They used vanilla to cover their offensive body smells. It was something I would notice when I rode the bus, just as I was taught to observe.
I remember learning that the non-white people made everything unclean by coming into contact with it. As a prince, I needed to be careful that I did not come into contact with anything they might have touched. They themselves were unclean, because that is the way they were naturally. In addition, they were the ones who did the dirty jobs. As a white youngster, it gradually became obvious to me, and I absorbed my lessons well.
As a youngster, I learned that we were white, and the non-whites were “other”, they were not of the same princely lineage. Mostly they were dull and not too smart, although there were some who were exceptional. Some of them could be jovial, and they were occasionally a form of entertainment for me. Mostly, however, they were a source of caution and fear.
By the time I became an adult, I was intimately aware that being a prince was more than having white skin. Being white was something that penetrated my whole body and it was an awareness that flowed through my veins. My whole body responded to non-white people with an awareness that signaled that I was different, I was special. It was like an aura that surrounded my presence. With no effort at all, I had learned to carry it with me at all times. Those who were like me, routinely reinforced my identity as white. We all liked being princely.
Now I am in the uncomfortable situation of learning how to become less white. I feel like I am trying to answer the question of whether the leopard can change its spots. My body constantly reacts to non-white people by reminding me that I really am a prince. My head has to learn and absorb new realities. I have to become aware of new history that explains the foundations for my being a prince. I have to remember the lessons I wrongly received as a youngster and that my white companions constantly reinforced.
My heart and my body have learned the princely lessons very well, and they constantly resist my attempts to become a little less white. Apart from experiencing fear, tension and anxiety, being white has been a fine princely role. But I know it is time to give up that role. It is time to let non-white people breathe.
It is time to give up the pain that accompanies the deep feeling of being separate. The myth that we are separate has been the cause of a wound that I share with other white people. The more I surrender the princely assertion that I am white, the closer I get to closing the gap I feel between me and all the others. Perhaps my body will learn that I may be special, but no more special than others.
Perhaps if I no longer call myself white I will slowly stop living white.