“Dear Fellow WHITE people,”

(My COUNTER “Project 25” -unapologetic call for REAL change— Lived experience #1)

This morning one of my dear friends (who happens to be a beautiful Black woman,) asked me during one of our usually very deep conversations if I considered myself “WHITE!”

Well, a seemingly easy-to-answer question. I discovered that it wasn’t for me. My 7-year old grand daughter, love of my life, would have looked at her and said something like, “well, I thought my Oma is WHITE, but then we went to the childrens’ Science museum and we looked at skin color blocks, and guess what: She is really PEACH. On a good day, she might have added something along the lines of “and she is pretty cool for an old person. She has wild pink hair.”

I thought about my humans sister’s question. And this is the very simplified short answer (if you are still reading, WHITE people you might feel inspired to leave me “interesting” comments; and that is completely fine with me.)

I am a woman of European ancestry. I found out a while ago (came here in 1993,) that in America this meant WHITE. Back to my individual view: the reason for my outside appearance is simply based on my continental ancestry. That said, obviously there is a wide variety of cultural influences and appearances among my fellow human beings here and world wide. Am I colorblind? NO, because that would be willful ignorance towards the different circumstances and outcomes for people of this country. Lets cut to the chase: Do I think that everybody who came here — one way or another…