My own mother hasn’t shown me the same level of affection as Trump addressing white supremacists since I was 12, reads a tweet from January 6, the day of the attack on the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. That entire afternoon, I lay belly-down on my bed, catatonically absorbing the news feed. With a double-digit number of tabs open on my laptop and my left thumb swiping past TikToks before I even finished watching them, I felt myself falling victim to the doom-scrolling spiral of my worst nightmares. I sent angry, minutes-long voice messages to my most politically aware friends, waiting for them to echo back the same frustration, waiting for that dot-dot-dot signal of their imminent response on my phone screen, waiting for something, anything to ease the sinking feeling of being unable to do something, anything about what was going on in the world.
The tweet was written by someone who I had gone to high school with, and attached to it was Trump’s video response to the protests. Although I had never been particularly close with the author of the tweet, I had never harboured any dislike towards her either. I stared at the words on my screen and heard the dissonant clanging of alarm bells go off in my head. Something about the tweet felt out of touch, disconnected from reality. The contrast between the weight of white supremacy in comparison to her relatively sheltered life as a white woman, who went to a private all-girls school in downtown Toronto, felt almost comical to me. All for a predictable punchline that capitalized on the destructively chaotic state of US politics in under 280 characters.
Maybe I was being harsh, or too dismissive of what was probably a very real issue in her life. She’s on our side, I reminded myself. She’s critiquing the white supremacists. I sent the tweet to my friend, who is Black and Indian. She responded, Black Twitter is so superior in every possible way. (True.) Followed by, What’s with white women and dragging mommy issues into everything?
The truth is, the two of us have a conversation about how much we hate white women at least once every few months. The scenario I just described quickly devolved into a “let’s bash white women” festival of us sharing our worst experiences with the “Karen” archetype and recalling the funniest instances of white women on Instagram reposting pastel-coloured infographics in the name of “wokeness” while simultaneously failing to address the racist behaviours of those in their inner circles.
To flip the “I’m not a racist, I have [insert non-white race] friends!” tactic on its back, both of us have many close friends who are white women, partially as a result of the environment we grew up in. Some of the most thoughtful, productive conversations about race I’ve ever had were with white women. Besides, it’s a running joke between me and some of my friends that my type is “average white girl.” Embarrassingly, this is at least somewhat grounded in truth.
In short, I apparently hate white women yet am disproportionately attracted to them. How can both of these things be true?
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I read Cathy Park Hong’s excellent book of essays Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning after the Atlanta spa shooting in March of this year. She writes: “Racial self-hatred is seeing yourself the way the whites see you, which turns you into your own worst enemy. Your only defense is to be hard on yourself, which becomes compulsive, and therefore a comfort, to peck yourself to death.”
For as long as I can remember, being outspoken about racism felt natural to me, like stepping into a new pair of shoes that hug your toes just right. But even then, I stuck to topics that felt “safe,” in that they only critiqued my external world: representation in the media; colourism; anti-Black racism in Asian communities. I removed the first-person pronoun and jabbed fingers at others. Nuanced conversations about race thrilled me and I felt a self-assured righteousness in my crusade for equality.
At the same time, being aware of racial dynamics in my life is a double-edged sword. Though it occurs mostly at a subconscious level, racial dynamics carve out the nuances of my interactions with others, what I choose to share about my life and what I choose to keep to myself, and the people I surround myself with. “To peck myself to death” meant the constant search for validation of my belonging, whether explicit or implied, from white people. In middle school, this looked like dragging my mom to Brandy Melville to buy me overpriced, unexciting tank tops. In high school, I would experience intense bursts of anxiety whenever a white friend came over out of fear that there would be carefully concealed judgement of the worn slippers scattered throughout the house or the tray of Chinese sauces and seasonings in the kitchen.
In hindsight, I’m certain that I’m far from the only one who’s experienced this, but there’s a quiet shame that comes with admitting the impact of internalized racism on your psyche. It’s that tiny squeak of a voice in your head that says, Why does it bother you if no one else seems to care? Or, there are way bigger issues in the world—child trafficking is literally a thing and you’re worried about this? Biggest of all: they won’t understand how it feels.
White supremacy is designed to alienate and pit people against each other, to remove vocabularies of solidarity and community. Another quotation from Hong’s book that stood out to me was: “Most white Americans can only understand racial trauma as a spectacle […] What’s harder to report is not the incident itself but the stress of its anticipation. The white reign of terror can be invisible and cumulative, chipping away at one’s worth until there’s nothing left but self-loathing.”
What brought about my reckoning—and an explosion of Asian Canadian and Asian American individuals finally voicing their frustrations—was the upsurge in anti-Asian racism during COVID-19, culminating in the devastating Atlanta shootings. It was certainly a “spectacle” that even white people understood to be unequivocally bad, and made them more likely to try and empathize or take action. Part of me wishes that I could say that I seized the moment to mobilize, take action, educate, and make a change. Another part, a kinder and more forgiving part of myself, realizes that what I actually did during that week was nothing to be ashamed of.
This is what I actually did: at the time I had been dating a white person (who navigated the world being perceived as a woman most of the time, though they identified as non-binary). The evening of the day that the news broke, I asked them to come over and I cried for at least an hour. I like to talk. I’m an extrovert at heart and I process my feelings through words, whether this means ranting to a friend or journaling. But in that moment, I was speechless: words tumbled through my head in a haphazard and directionless dance.
Afterwards, with me puffy-eyed and still sniffling, we played a round of Bananagrams. The shuffle and clink of plastic pieces across the table calmed me. I promptly won, and laughed.
One thing that stood out to me that night; they said, “I’m so sorry—I can’t imagine how you’re feeling right now.” Which was okay. Their compassion and care was what I needed at that moment. It does, however, embody the reason why I find myself drawn to those with white female privilege. There’s a soft safety and simplicity in being with someone whose racial identity does not further complicate their sense of self. In other words, it could also be described as a twisted reassurance to the tiny voice in my head that still murmurs, Not everyone thinks about race regularly, and people will know that you belong now that you’re seen in public with a white person.
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If the mystery of why I love white women is solved, then we can turn to why I hate white women. First, I would like to clarify that I do not actually hate white women. I say “I hate white women” because it’s a little easier than saying “I feel the compulsive need to hyperbolically express my resentment and envy of the way that white women, including queer white women, are able to navigate the world without the added intergenerational and external complexities of being racialized.”
I realize that this makes me sound like a Women and Gender Studies textbook. White women can be important allies, yes, but a pessimistic part of me is disillusioned by the way that white women and even queer white women sometimes align themselves with people of colour, equating very different and often intertwined systems of marginalization. I hear you, they say. I know how you feel. I appreciate the attempt at empathy, yet I wish that white women would spend more time listening to people of colour and less time trying to convince us that their lived experience resembles ours. I don’t hate white women; I am tired of them believing that the oppression that they face exempts them from enacting racist structures and patterns.
There is nuance to be found here, as well as an uncountable number of related and interconnected paths I could go down—as there is in any conversation about race. I could discuss the illusion of safe spaces in queer community, which exclude voices of colour, or the history of using white femininity as a justification for violence against Black men. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by this.
When this vastness hits me, I return to my own lived experience and speak from a place of sincerity. There’s something powerful in putting words to an indistinct, hazy feeling that you have carried around your whole life like an armful of smog. I used to work on silencing that little voice in my head, which still occasionally emerges as a nervous twitch of my fingers, a subtle gnawing in my stomach. Now, I argue with it.
Such a powerful piece, Elaine! You’re incredible.
So incredibly well written!!!!!!