Whenever I went to the beach with my family or friends in Egypt, joking about the importance of sunscreen was inevitable. I would always say things like: "If I don't cover myself in sunscreen, I'll be black." And we would laugh about it, because to us, black is just a color, a normal skin color like any other.
It was not until I came to the states that I found that my joke could be offensive to some or make people feel uncomfortable. I understood this because I was introduced to a whole new term that had never hit my ears before: race.
The more I stayed in the states, the more I understood about the racial hierarchy in America. Americans assume that everyone will get their ladder of racial hierarchy. But it takes a while to figure it all out. It took me a while to understand that I'm a "person of color". But don't we all have different colors? How can a color be offensive more than the other?
Why is it OK to say "the white girl" but not the "black girl," you say African American not black. What? What if she's not African American? It didn't all make sense to me...at all.
To me a color was merely a color! However, it's different for Americans; a color represents a culture, and a code you should abide by. This is why it's very common to hear in America things like: "He is very white!" "My mom is Latina, of course she would slap me for a C." (As if other moms would cheer for a C grade). "Oh my God, he looks so Jewish." Wait, stop here. Jewish isn't a color, nor a race or an ethnicity. Judaism is a religion, what's happening here?
This is when I realized that most of the Americans find it hard to distinguish between a race and a religion. The first time someone said to me that Muslims do this or that, I didn't get it. Islam is a set of beliefs, what do you mean by linking a non-religious act to all Muslims?
Well, here is the thing. Americans refer to Muslim as a race, so something like "he looks so jewish" shouldn't have surprised me that much!
In the novel "Americanah," the author talks about the American tribalism saying:
"There's a ladder of racial hierarchy in America. White is always on top, specifically White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, otherwise known as WASP, and American Black is always on the bottom, and what's in the middle depends on time and place. Or as that marvelous rhyme goes: if you're white, you're all right; if you're brown, stick around; if you're black, get back! It's a complicated system that only Americans understand. The longer you are here, the more you start to get it."
As much as I's like to end by that excerpt from "Americanah," there's something I should add to it. Yes, it's a complicated system that only Americans understand, because it only exists in their minds, because I'm not as good as my American friends at telling who's Jewish, Hispanic, Latino, African American, African, Jamaican,...etc. I'm not good at it, because I don't see it. If you're black, brown or white, I'll say you're black, brown or white without thinking it may be offensive. Or maybe because I still don't get how your color can be offensive to you in any way.
