I am fully aware of my whiteness. Is this because I carry around with me the burden of guilt from centuries of past and current oppression, racism and injustice by the hands of my race.
I do not want to be racist. I am in development. I want to save the world. Me the white person can fix it...some white colonial mentality seeps out...
This line of thinking is exactly the type of thought perpetuated throughout development and justified with the theory of modernization - that underdeveloped nations are somehow backwards and need us, the developed Westerners to help them.
I live in a ‘white world’. Canada is multi-cultural and in Toronto 47% of the population are visible minorities according to the 2006 census. It is possible that combined visible minorities are no longer a minority. In Scarborough, where I live 68% of the population are visible minorities. Yet it is the white population that still holds more power.
Visible Minorities in Scarborough
I have been born into a history which carries authority, power and prestige, along with fear and oppression. I can see it when I travel to Kenya, Uganda or Haiti or China, Egypt and Brazil. I am a white ruler... and oppressor. Respected and honoured, though not always loved. My race makes me stick out like a sore thumb but often I do not receive insults I receive praises, offers of marriage and friendship, attention and reverence. I come from the land of abundance, dreams and plenty.
I travel across borders with nothing more than a slight worry regarding being kidnapped purely because my skin colour says I am rich and worth something. I have never been questioned or held because of my ethnicity or colour, or because of being from a country of colour.
I am assumed to be well educated (and I am) to have all the answers (which I don’t) because I am from the land with power. The land of white colonial legacy. My old roommate is incredibly smart, from Nigeria and just as well educated as me if not more. She has ‘shocked’ many people by saying she is attending U of T. All I have done is barely meet expectations.
I have been driving for almost 10 years. I have never been pulled over because of my colour, in fact I have never been pulled over.
I have had my own room since I was 10, usually the size of the majority of homes in the rest of the world.
I could read on my own by 6 years old... much of the world is still illiterate. Many kids at the age of 6 have to go into prostitution to support their families.
I grew up with a single mother and very little money, we always packed lunches if we had money for food. Often it would be processed meat on white bread with processed sugary snacks. Our lunches were always packed in plastic. As Shane (2008) discusses this exposure to BPA and other pthalates has exposed me to harmful levels of chemicals which can increase rates of cancer and harm my health. Safe packaging and food in general is simply not available for those with low income and little time to spare.
I have used an invalid train ticket and was checked and the cop assumed I didn’t know better, was this because of the stereotype I fit of an innocent, well educated white girl who couldn't possibly knowingly break the law?
When I travel people admire me for ‘roughing it’ and having an adventure even though the majority of the world lives that way. For them... “it’s just how it is”.
I was expected, encouraged and groomed to go to university. To be successful. I had potential, was not a hooligan. I fit the white mold.
Living in low-income housing has exposed me to many health/environmental hazards. We often would have our water turned off without notice, and once had no power in the middle of winter, also with no notice. No one complains, no media is contacted, no outrage raised. Most tenants are immigrants and maybe assume this is normal here in Canada, as it is assumedly better than what they lived in before. Others, like myself, cannot be bothered to do anything, and convince ourselves that nobody would listen to us, to the poor. We are invisible. Those, the privileged, they who hold power can easily dismiss the poor, the immigrant, the woman, the student, those apparently without power.
The area I lived in is largely minorities, it is also one of the most polluted areas in the GTA for air pollution, water contamination and has some of the highest incidences of respiratory illness and cancers (Welsh, 2008). The few blocks surrounding the community I lived in used to be a landfill and now have methane gas vents throughout abandoned fields. These kinds of hazards are typically in areas where the poor and visible minorities live. This clearly demonstrates the lines of privilege which were created historically and are perpetuated today. There are studies illustrating the health impacts of living near old landfills such as increased low birth weights, congenital defects and cancers, although there have not been nearly enough (Gradient Corporation, 2007).
Though I seem to have these circumstances which may tie me to those who are underprivileged my whiteness distances me from them. My white privilege can never allow me to fully understand. I am white and I cannot understand. Perhaps my white face represents the authority which discriminates them, which doesn’t see them and so I am shut out.
How has it become this way? Why have we accepted this as ‘the way it is’?
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