Hereís how it is.  Iím applyiní to some grad programs in English. In doing these apps to graduate school, I have yet to check off the ìWhiteî box.  Something about it just doesnít appeal to me. Even though they capitalize it with that big W, that still doesnít make me feel more inclined to consider myself a part of it. Iíve often wondered if it makes a big difference to Black people if we use a big B or a little b or if it matters to some and not to others. Probably that, I would guess, but how would I ever truly know? All I know is that the capital W doesnít make me feel better about it. So I sit there, looking at the application, thinking that I really should check off something, but it seems wrong to put myself in that anonymous identity grouping that the ìWhiteî bracket offers.

     More often than not I donít check anything off, ëcept the male category. Iíve always been pretty sure that Iím male.  I guess Iíve always felt male, but Iíve never felt any connection with whiteness as a race.

     In lieu of any sort of introductory comments, perhaps it would be best if I begin this essay with a litany of where I have spent time in Europe:

     [Reader: If yer even startiní to think that I was one of those kids --by kids I mean Americans between 18 and 25--in a grubby shirt and long hair who ride on the Eurail trains with a huge backpack and lots of money to spend youíre wrong or at least yer partially wrong at any rate so just ferget that thought and realize that I went to these places to really dig where I was from, not just to sew another patch onto my bag.]

     In the past four or five years I have spent much time cultivating my knowledge of Europe. Thrice have I lived on the other side of the Atlantic, and each time I have returned with a stronger appreciation of my heritage.  Even by passing time in places where my family does not originate, I still have the opportunity to steep myself in the cultural traditions and various aspects of daily life  What I have come to understand is that its people and its customs each have certain merits and certain lacks.  I have learned to wear pleather pants and sweaters.  I have learned to loathe those in America who claim to have ìgaydarî and identify any man in good fashion as homosexual.  Ha, I say.  Put them in Trafalgar Square or Puerta Del Sol or perhaps on the Quai du Louvre for a stroll and Iíd love to see them struggling to identify who is or is not gay.

     Likewise, I have learned to loathe those Americans who hit a quaint European town, see the ìtourist attractionsî (do they check off a box in some sort of guidebook?) and then move on to their next location. Many Americans of this sort arrive on location wearing some type of ballcap or sweatshirt--often one with a slogan like ìRetired: No Office, No Job, No Stressî or perhaps a simple state name such as ìHawaiiî or ìCaliforniaî--and carrying the burden of representing American people to the Europeans who have never even had an opportunity to see an American with bad teeth because the rest of ëem are too busy in the mills and factories to get over to the continent to see exactly where their ancestors called home and how they lived before working hard and living in the suburbs became an absolute obsession.

     But I digress. Iím sposta go into what I think about beiní white but I canít.  I canít because beiní white is something that most people donít think about and donít question. White in America is the norm and if Iím gunna go into the whole thing that might upset people because white people really arenít sposta talk about being white even if that is what we are even though we donít consider ourselves white (capital W or not).   If we question it or think about our own identity as a white, that might make us a white supremacist, which is the foremost symbol of hatred and intolerance in America.

     So let me say this: alongside the shame I feel with the knowledge of how my ancestors may have treated others, I celebrate my ìwhiteî skin. They very well may have been some Wiltings or Andersons or Ripps or some other nameless ancestor whose genes I now share that at one point kicked a Native American off their land or that mistreated a Black person or Hispanic Person or maybe even owned a Black person.  That may be a stretch because my family--far as I know--has always been in Europe or once here has been a big pack of city dwellers and farmers from the north but you never know maybe someone strayed south just so they could feel the power of ìowningî another person.  I donít know who did what or if anyone in my family has ever had those sort of experiences.

     Regardless, here I am with my own vague sense of those who have gone before me and my own minuscule life in the grand scheme of things and I want to understand the history of man and the history of my family and to know exactly who came from where and to understand if I have any Scottish or Irish blood in my family from my dadís dad whose side of the family is entirely out of the picture and never talked about and this is of course a roadblock to me understanding where I am from except that maybe it allows me to be more anonymous and to wonder more and know less.

     Even if I never find out, I donít wanna go for however many pages this ends up being without getting into the heart of the matter and saying what I want to say.
 
 

There. I said it. I gave it a bit of space because it is a big statement and I want it to be noticed.  Maybe there have been oppressions and mistakes and un-ethical action, but you know, for all that I still like what I see when I look in the mirror (unless I feel fat or have a zit or something) and I am not anxious to disavow my heritage.  I yam what I yam says the Invisible man, or something like that. Have I entertained notions of being something else? Sure.  But after pondering it for a certain length of time you realize that nothing about the color of your skin is not changing.  Please, an analogy.

     Iíve got this birthmark on my left shoulder that is about nine inches by nine inches.  Aní it has always bothered me.  It is an interruption in the pigment of my skin--it is not a strange color like red or purple or orange or something but it is a darker brown and when I was a kid and even up into my teens I used to pray that God would take it away and it seemed like that was an option but really it is probably there to stay.  Which, to be absolutely honest, is not that big of a problem. But sometimes it is when I want to go to the beach and be a big stud and play volleyball with my shirt off or when Iím on the skins team and I have to explain what it is or when everybody wants to jump in the hot tub or go skinny dipping or somthiní fun like that but there I am with this big mark on my shoulder and Iíve gotta tell people what it is and assure them that I am still a normal guy it is just that there is this brown mark on my shoulder and sometimes I joke that it is a coffee stain or something like that but really I never know what to say.

     The birthmark is unique. Iíve never felt like getting a tatoo.  It identifies me. It is big enough to matter. I had it when I was born.  It is not white.  It is brown.  It looks like someone tossed some mud on my shoulder.  But only it never washed off.  I have scrubbed.  It remains.  God hasnít taken it away.  Sometimes I still pray about it. I love water-skiing. The birthmark is the first think people notice. I ski with my family a lot. They know all about it.  It is nothing new to them.  Other people donít always understand. It seems to bother some people.  They wonder why I have it.  Some even act as though I had some choice in the matter.

     Iím only goiní into the whole birthmark thing because I think it is releveant ëcause the big brown mark on my back makes me wonder if I am still white when my whole body isnít covered in white skin (in fact most of it is more of a peach color) but this portion of my skin if it expanded all over my body while I was sleeping would probably make me Mexican or Chilean or Korean or Japanese or Brazilian or something and that would mean that there would be no way those people at the graduate school would want me to check off the White box because even though both of my parents are ìwhiteî and neether of them has a mark like mine I clearly wouldnít be white because my birthmark had expanded and left me with some really dark skin. Then when I showed up on the first day they would be all disappointed because I had checked off the White box and then I arrive and I donít look white and they think they must have accepted the wrong guy.

     In thaí Bible there is this guy named Cain who killed his brother because he was jealous or somethiní like that and at any rate God decided that this guy was destined to roam without any certain home and also he was supposed to have a certain mark on his skin but the Bible--amazing as it is--doesnít go into the details of what sort of mark it is or how dark (or light) it is and where he had it. This is in Genesis 4 [see reader, you can go look it up and check for yoí self].  Maybe he had it on his back shoulder and he was destined to wander around Europe and think about being white and dark or dark and white or mostly white and maybe he was a little brown and worried about being a little white or maybe he was mostly brown and worrying about being a little white.

     But then again that might not be the best source ëcause somewhere else it says wash me and I will be whiter than snow but it seems like alotta people who arenít white get washed by God but still are just as dark as they ever were.

     I heard this story once when I was kid about how pirates would come around and give someone the ìblack spotî or somethiní like that and this would kill the person or somehow signify that they were gonna die. I never really got how it worked but I remembered that it was black. For some reason that seemed really important.

     Color sticks with us.  Dawn, fresh and rosy fingered is about the only phrase which sticks with me after spendiní ours and ours readiní that book by Homer.  One fish two fish red fish blue fish or the red balloon for kids or Moby Dick with its big white whale (if you docapitalize W in white should it be a capital in whale?)  even Conrad and his heart of darkness. We are a society that is all about colors.  All Iíve gotta say is that it doesnít matter much cause nobody ever even sees his heart (not even Conrad himself) so who cares if it is dark at least he doesnít have a mark on his shoulder that looks like a bunch of mud that didnít wash off.

     There is something about the vast presumption about whiteness which seems to engulf each of us ìwhite peopleî in its swirling tide. If I go back to the beginning of time (I have heard it said that we are all from Africa originally which is fine with me) or maybe even to the beginning of this paper (when I said the names of all those countries) I guess it makes me think that there are people in each of those places of all sorts of colors and that they are the richer for it. If that is the truth than I guess loving Europe doesnít make me more white.  It may have been something of an identification experience for me though, like the way Alice Walker talks about going to Africa when she was 20 or 21 or however old she was when she wrote all those poems and lived with the Africans and realized a thing or two about who she was but nevertheless moved back here the way we all do. Maybe I am the White Alice Walker in Europe living amongst those from who I trace my identity and drawing deeply upon their example but never-the-less moving back here the way we all do.  The WAY WE ALL DO.   Maybe it does make me more white to love Europe and its endless cups of tea and good beer and crowded streets and good bread and small cars and cute downtowns.

     All I know is that I was born in Portland Oregon and I had a mark on my shoulder right from the get-go in the delivery room of Portland Advenist Hospital and that it was a brown mark and today it was windy so my cheeks are red and I love Jazz and right now Iím listening to a techno CD I bought in Europe and I want to go to graduate school but that white box is not something that Iím checking off because they donít want me to show up being some other color and having said I was white ëcause that would upset them and Kermit the Frog has always seemed green to me but then again you never really see his back (cause he is a good actor and never turns his back to the audience) so who knows maybe he has a big mark on his back too and he doesnít know what box to check off on his application to the International Association of Frogs because he is not a spotted toad and he is not a tree frog or a bullfrog but he doesnít feel like he should just check off the box that says ìgreenî because he doesnít feel like that is an accurate description because, after all, he has that mark on his back.

    If it were all more complex without being more simple.

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