I was at a birthday party recently where I was one of two women of colour. My skin was the darker of the two.
While sitting and talking to a group of people, a woman sat on the bench next to me and we started to chat. She is a smart woman who is pursuing her PhD at Cambridge.
She was a little intense but seemed like a nice person.
Within five minutes of talking (which was mainly about her), she told me her father is Native American. I listened as she talked about how people don’t treat her father like he is indigenous because of the colour of his skin.
I asked “Does he pass?”
She educated me that the better term is “White assumed” which I was happy to use. I call people whatever they identify as and prefer so this didn’t seem unreasonable.
She then told me that it is so hard for her to walk through the world as an indigenous woman (my term as I can’t remember her turn of phrase) with a face like hers. She pointed to her face and expected some kind of response from me.
I listened.
She then went on to talk about the disadvantage she experiences as a white woman with racism.
I listened.
Then she told me she is going to write a book called “Schrödinger’s White Woman” to explain her disadvantages. She asked if I knew who Schrödinger’s is.
I ask what those advantages are.
For a brilliant woman, she was wildly unable to articulate more than the advantages for being assumed white.
I offered that being half Papua New Guinean and half white Australian meant I didn’t belong anywhere since my PNG family saw me as white and in Australia I am black.
I was trying to relate to her.
Nevertheless, she we on… and I sat through a few more minutes of what I realised was the Disadvantage Olympics where I was a spectator.
For the first time in decades, I considered texting my friends at the party to save me but finally escaped by myself by looking for a drink (one of those times I wished I did drink).
If it isn’t clear why this shocked me, it is because a person who would never be mistaken for a person of colour sat in front of one and ranted about racism and her disadvantages due to it like she was walking a path of suffering I could never understand.
It was a complete inability to read the room.
It took me a while to tell others this or say anything to her face (which I didn’t) because I was pretty shocked and didn’t want to cause a scene.
No one likes an angry black woman,.
