Being a student at a liberal school in Western Washington, it is easy to say that everyone here is very open-minded. A lot of students are sensitive to a wide variety of topics, so it isn’t too hard to feel accepted here.
However, this liberal school is also a primarily white student-populated university. Being a person of color, it didn’t take long for me to miss home. After mapping that the nearest Asian market was about two hours away, I knew it was going to be difficult to stay true to my identity while living here for four years.
Minority groups experience being marginalized on the daily. You always hear things on the news about hate crime. It has been on the forefront of topics all over social media. It is a common fact that racism still exists within America.
Now sometimes people are sensitive to topics and try to understand the issue in a good way, and sometimes people take topics and make them their own issue, even if they don’t identify with that margin of people.
So here is my plea to people not of color: Please don’t make minority issues your own.
I remember sitting in one of my classes, listening to my teacher lead a discussion about infrastructure in different countries. The topic of developing countries had been brought up, and a girl, caucasian, raised her hand and told the professor that people get offended when their country is labeled as a “developing country” and so it was wrong in doing so. I remember getting this weird surge of confusion, questioning how and why she would jump to a conclusion like that when my family itself came from a developing country, and I wasn’t offended at my country being labeled as so.
Of course, this depends on other people and how they want their country to be categorized, but for some reason, I was so angry at her to assume an issue in this. To me, it was almost as if she was stereotyping a group of people, even though I knew she had good intentions.
This became a recurring theme I saw throughout my time in different classes. Students, not of color, bringing up topics and issues about other countries or minorities. People from outreach programs talking in front of lecture halls trying to recruit people on their next volunteer trip overseas. Seeing people petitioning about police brutality while having no person of color working with them.
Everyone knows about the White Savior Complex. People going into African countries to volunteer, having white teachers enter racialized or low-income schools, movies of colored history where a white character is placed as the hero. All of these actions show a superiority of race over another, even though these people have good intentions when making these decisions.
Now, I’m not saying don’t help the cause. There are also white allies fighting for the cause in a positive way. You see them marching beside people of color, standing up against injustice. They listen to the issue, but also talk less. When talking less, they allow those of color to be in the leadership role. They let people of color tell their narrative. We are the ones being marginalized, not you.
For white allies, there is a fine line between supporting the cause and taking it over. Your “wokeness” on racism may make you seem super cool and accepting, but it can also be detrimental and ignorant to our experience as a minority. Don’t make it seem like you understand exactly where we are coming from when you yourself haven’t lived through it. Because you are the majority, your voice is already so loud that we have a hard time screaming over it.
By making this issue your own, you are erasing our voice. This fight against racism is our own story to be told, not yours. Your history is in the textbook, so let us make our own.
Identifying yourself as liberal isn’t a bad thing. Being caught up with the news isn’t a bad thing. Identifying racial injustice is not a bad thing.
However, reading a news article and actually experiencing it are two completely different things. I know you’re trying to make this world a better place; we are, too. Just please do so alongside us, not without us.