Hey, humans! I’m Riley, and have you ever noticed how white people only point out another person’s race if that person is not white? I run into this a lot, and I feel like most of the time, but not all the time, it’s to enforce some sort of stereotype.
Like, you would never hear a white person say “Oh, this white guy cut me off on the road the other day,” but you would definitely hear a white person say “Ah, this Asian lady cut me off on the road the other day.”
Because they have this stereotype that Asian women are bad drivers, and so, when that happens, they want to reinforce that and they want to make sure you know that this person was Asian and was a woman so that you know that’s why they were driving poorly.
But if it was a white person, it was just a white person, and there’s no need to say what their race was, you can just say, “A guy cut me off on the road yesterday” or “A person cut me off on the road yesterday.”
It’s that annoying idea that if a person of color does something, it represents their entire race, but if a white person does something, it was just a one-off, isolated incident, and doesn’t represent all white people. And I never know how to respond when something like that happens because it’s not, like, blatantly racist, but it’s a little subtly racist.
I think most people who speak like this don’t actually realize what they’re doing and generally racist people and don’t support racist policies. But that kind of subtly racist language has just made it into their vocabulary and their way of speaking, and it just seems normal to them.
And I also think it’s possible that this isn’t just a white person thing, that people of all races kind of have this indoctrinated into them in the way that they speak. I just feel like it’s the most prominent with white people because white people will almost never specify if it’s a white person they’re talking about.
Like if I’m talking to white people, and in my story I talk about “this white person who helped me” or “this white girl I saw” or “this white girl,” they get kind of jarred, like I said something weird or a little bit off, like people usually kind of look at me with a little questioning head tilt, you know?
And it feels to me like it’s because there’s this unspoken rule that we don’t specify someone’s race unless it’s not white. So when I say that a person was white, to them, to another person, it’s like, “Why are you telling me that? If you had just left it out, I would’ve already known.”
But I really don’t like that because it makes it seem like white is the default – like people are just white, period – and then if you’re talking about something that’s “not the norm,” you’re talking about a person of color.
And given that most of the people in the world are not white, and that a large percentage of people in the United States are not white, I don’t feel like “white” should be the default.
I made a video before about how this has worked its way into our media, how we assume that white is the default, and it also works its way into our language and into our literature.
Like, for instance, when you’re reading a book, if the character’s described and they don’t really talk about their skin tone… you kind of assume that they’re a white person. And if they’re not, it’ll be specified. They’ll say that they have dark skin or that they’re black or of Asian descent or something like that. Like the author works on the idea that the characters are all white unless you say otherwise.
I just don’t see the point in assuming that everyone is white unless stated otherwise. Like, if you’re telling a story, just say the race of everyone in the story, or don’t say the race of anyone in the story.
And I’m not arguing for, like, “colorblindness.” I’m not saying that we should just ignore everybody’s race, like clearly, race has a role in our world and how people are affected. Like, if your story is about a Black person getting pulled over by the cops, their race is a component in that and leaving it out of your story would kind of be misleading.
But it’s not always necessary to, like, point out race, and so a lot of the times I’ve told stories, and I don’t specify the race of the person who’s in my story, and then later, afterwards, the person I told my story to will see the person I was talking about and be like, “Oh, they’re Asian.” Like, they assumed I was talking about a white person because I didn’t specify.
Basically all I’m saying is, to my fellow white people, if you’re telling a story and there are white people in it, you can call them white. And in general, I think it’s okay to describe the race of anyone in your story, but think about why you’re bringing up their race when you’re telling it. Is it just to reinforce a stereotype? Or is it genuinely just to describe what the person looks like?
I just think we gotta be a little bit more thoughtful and considerate about the words and the language that we use because it does have a significant impact on how we see people and how we navigate the world.
Language is a powerful thing. So yeah, that was just a little annoyance I was having. Let me know in the comments if you ever run into this while talking with white people? And I love you all so much, and I’ll see you next time. Bye!
