My main issue with passing-by-default is that if it's, um, a white person-not-you who is making the assumption that you are white, then it smacks of color-blindness in a skeevy way that makes me want to punch people. If it is a choice you are making for yourself for whatever reason, then that is you and not something I can judge.
*thinks* Like, if it's an assumption based in unawareness or willful blindness or whatever, then it's a major issue for me. If it's something else, then that's...something else. Which is really not clarification of anything at *all*.
It bugs me when people look at, say, Edward James Olmos or Wentworth Miller or Gabe Saporta and is like, "Oh, totally a white dude," because they're not obviously a person of color. Which is not on the person passing (though none of these guys do) but on the observer. And it's not that I think everyone should have magical OH IT'S A PERSON OF COLOR radar, but the way that the default assumption of white in the absence of any outward markers makes people invisible makes me really angry. Like, almost all of my issues with passing have to do with the culture that makes it safer/easier/whatever to be white or thought white than to be able to say, "Hey, no, I'm totally a person of color." My issues with people who *do* pass are mostly of the, "But it won't get *better* for everyone if you pass, because not everyone has that option."
no subject
My main issue with passing-by-default is that if it's, um, a white person-not-you who is making the assumption that you are white, then it smacks of color-blindness in a skeevy way that makes me want to punch people. If it is a choice you are making for yourself for whatever reason, then that is you and not something I can judge.
*thinks* Like, if it's an assumption based in unawareness or willful blindness or whatever, then it's a major issue for me. If it's something else, then that's...something else. Which is really not clarification of anything at *all*.
It bugs me when people look at, say, Edward James Olmos or Wentworth Miller or Gabe Saporta and is like, "Oh, totally a white dude," because they're not obviously a person of color. Which is not on the person passing (though none of these guys do) but on the observer. And it's not that I think everyone should have magical OH IT'S A PERSON OF COLOR radar, but the way that the default assumption of white in the absence of any outward markers makes people invisible makes me really angry. Like, almost all of my issues with passing have to do with the culture that makes it safer/easier/whatever to be white or thought white than to be able to say, "Hey, no, I'm totally a person of color." My issues with people who *do* pass are mostly of the, "But it won't get *better* for everyone if you pass, because not everyone has that option."
So, yeah. It is problematic!
and this:
is Wentworth Miller.