We Are So White!
We were getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner.
“What time are we going?” Shane asked.
“We’re eating at 2:00,” I replied.
Dylan chimed in. “We are so white!”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean,” Dylan said, “I just saw a meme that said, ‘White People.’ The whole family was sitting down to dinner at exactly 2:00. And now we’re eating at exactly 2:00. We’re just like the meme!”
“For the record,” I said, “we were originally going to eat at 1:00 but we weren’t sure the turkey would be done in time. We actually changed the time to 2:00.”
“We’re just doing what all the other white people do,” he said. Dylan did not sound enthused about this.
I am not sure what other races do. We are pretty much all white. We’re like unhealthy bread, I guess.
I don’t know if Dylan was just stating the obvious, or if he was concerned that we were too average, or if he wanted us to be more like … well, some other race.
We live in a country where the word “white” has recently become even more associated with “supremacist.” And we live in an area of the country – the nation’s capital, in fact – where the “white” population is a minority.
So Dylan is torn. He’s very conscious of the fact that he is white, and he’s not necessarily proud of that fact. And as much as I am fine with “who I am,” I have to agree. In the past year particularly, I have been exceptionally stupefied by the words and actions of people claiming that – by some odd miracle of birthright – Caucasians are “more worthy” of all the goodness that life offers.
Personally, I think that goodness is a gift from God – and that everyone has a right to live however they want to live, regardless of where, how or to whom they were born.
And while I make no excuse for sitting down at the table at 2:00 on Thanksgiving day, I now have the thought lurking at the back of my mind: “We are so white.”
Maybe next year, just to be safe, we’ll eat at 1:00.