I remember it just like it was yesterday: the day I realized I was white.

Now, before you all laugh at me, let me explain. Many Whites in America do not see themselves as a people group due to our deeply held belief of individualism. We do not believe we have a culture because, well, we are the culture of America. We are the majority culture; therefore, it is easy for us to ignore our ethnicity. You might ask, why does this matter? Well, not only does this deny a part of who we are, but it puts us (whites) at a disadvantage when having talks about race. Why? Because others see us as a people group. Let me backtrack a little bit: for the majority of my life, I grew up in a mostly White Suburban area. I also attended a private school that was pretty much homogeneously white. Growing up, my parents taught me to respect everyone and judge everyone by not the color of their skin, but the content of their character. (This is directly from MLK himself, but this is taking it out of context.) In other words, they taught me to be color-blind! Basically, treating people as if they were white also. It’s a good starting place because on one hand you do treat everyone the same, but it is a horrible end point. For this means that you ignore what makes others unique.

Now let me preface this following story by saying that I have interacted with people outside of my ethnicity before my attendance at college! However, I never attempted to have a deep and meaningful relationship or conversation with any of them about race or ethnicity. We were cordial and in the same room, but I never asked them if they ever felt excluded by the majority culture or if they ever experienced any form of discrimination. In fact, the friends of different ethnic backgrounds I knew back at home seemed to function quite well in White Culture. But I will get into this more later.

Last year, I was a Resident Assistant at a residence hall at Old Dominion University. (GO MONARCHS!) This was my sophomore year. Being an RA, it was your job to be there for all of your residents, regardless of how different they are from you. However, I wanted to go further than that. I did not just want to be in the same room with my residents, I wanted to connect to everyone as a friend that could help them along the way. One day, I saw that the community room was being occupied by my African American residents. I decided to go in and use this as a chance to connect with them. As an extrovert that prides himself in being able to connect with anyone (well at least in my mind I can!), I am ashamed to say that there were several instances where I felt uncomfortable. First, to be quite frank, there were some jokes or interactions I just did not get because they were not prevalent in my culture. Secondly, we started talking about incidents such as those of Trayvon Martin and others who were the victims of police brutality (May they rest in peace). As they were talking about it, I realized that NONE of my white circle of friends had any concern about any of these events because we thought that many of the incidents were over exaggerated. That they were just law breakers that should have just listened to the police and therefore, they did not deserve any more of our sympathy. Now, as a Christian who by God’s grace, is called to live a life of reconciliation just as Jesus reconciled himself to us, we are called to love and hear the cries of those that are hurting. I realized that I and many of my other white friends, have failed to live up to this.

To sum up the interaction, I felt like an outcast. I was not the one in control of the social interaction. Indeed, for the first time in my life, I was the minority in a situation. I could no longer ignore it, I was white. In fact, one of my residents even called out the fact (jokingly) that I was white and “didn’t know how to act up in here!” I find it funny now as I have grown more comfortable, but then I felt so many feelings of anger, hurt, embarrassment….but then I realized, this is what many minorities face every day. Many feel the need to be “white” in order to get anywhere in America. (Side note: I realize that it is not that simple. There are many African Americans that identify with White culture more than Black culture. But the fact remains that they are still discriminated against in many ways today simply on the basis of their skin color.) Then I began to realize that the American Culture I thought everyone was simply a part of was actually a White Culture.

On my ethnic journey on realizing what it meant to be White, the good and the bad, God has renewed me and showed me how he has gifted every culture with different aspects to show a fuller image of who he is. To be color blind is to not acknowledge our differences that are actually a beautiful thing. I have also had many mentors in ODU InterVarsity Christian Fellowship to guide me along the way. However, if you are not Christian, let me use another situation. Along my journey of learning what it meant to be White and pursuing justice, I made a very good friend who is African American. For privacy reasons, I will not mention her name. To summarize, she taught me (and still is) what it means to be White. As funny as it sounds, it is true. Many times, we learn more about ourselves from people who are very different than us! Whenever I felt frustrated after trying to reach out to those of other cultures, she was there to talk to me. Whenever I said something racist or ignorant (which I’m again ashamed to say happens a lot!), she was there to listen to me and we would often have an amazing conversation and then laugh about it! To paraphrase a phrase that she always tells me: ‘People who walk on egg shells never learn anything about other people; hence, do not grow.’ We are all imperfect human beings in a broken world. For such delicate situations as this, we need someone to walk with us. To pick us back up when we grow weary.

Next week, I will be writing an article on exactly what White Culture is. In the following weeks, I will write more on how Whites can work towards establishing a just society where white people are not in charge, but instead where white people and people of other cultures are actually dependent on each other. Because, as I will argue in my following articles, we need each other.