A metaphor for life in America being White is that it’s like having the difficulty of a video game set on easy mode. I first heard this metaphor when I was a teenager, approximately in middle school or early high school, and it’s stuck with me since then. The premise is simple, and the metaphor can be expanded on. It’s not just that White is the easy setting, it’s that those who are playing at that level don’t know there’s more difficulty settings, and that there are some parts of the game that are less impacted by the changes in difficulty (race) than others. But, obviously, the metaphor isn’t perfect. It’s not like different racial categories correspond one-to-one with medium or hard difficulties, and it ignores intersectionality. And it’s that last bit, the ignorance of intersectionality that I’d like to explore.
Something that I often think goes underexamined within many “queer” spaces, or at least those I’ve been exposed to in predominantly White areas, are really White queer spaces. And, as an extension of that, much of the discussion around the challenges of being queer ignores how much easier being queer is when you’re White. And acknowledging this goes beyond just saying that, “and of course, it’s harder for our BIPOC siblings” or something to that effect; it’s recognizing that it’s harder in ways that are unique to their existence. Much has been said about how traditional gender roles are a reflection of a White supremacist ideal, and thus, even harder for people of color to adhere to. But even the more moderate gendered expectations of late-stage capitalism are White. The effect this has on people of color with a non-normative relationship with gender, especially those who have a gender identity that colonialism tried to stamp out, is not one that White gender-diverse queer people can fully understand.
Access to gender-affirming care is increasingly becoming harder to get in the US, and it was never very accessible to begin with. For people of color, even if they get their foot in the door, the system of hoops they have to jump through, like all of the medical system, is easier to navigate when you’re White, simply because the various people who serve as barriers are more likely to treat you more kindly. That last bit – “more likely” – is important. It is that fog of ambiguity and chance that helps obscure the effects of systemic racism to many White people unless our society is viewed on a large scale, and that large scale can be hard to grasp. More notably, if the data conflicts with someone’s perception of reality, they’re just as likely, if not more so, to double down on their perception, rather than adjust to accommodate the data. When it comes to racial issues, since the White person doesn’t see the looks being given to their one Black friend in a White area, since they don’t see the invisible switch of bias that gets that Black friend denied a loan, since they don’t see the doctor not treating a Black patient’s concerns as seriously, their belief that systemic racism doesn’t exist is maintained despite abstract evidence. Additionally, even when racism does rear its ugly head in the open, the situation tends to be one that can be ascribed to an individual, ignoring the system that shaped and enabled the individual. Furthermore, in that case, the White friend doesn’t see the dozen other times the same thing happened to that Black person and there wasn’t a White person present to call it out, so it went unhandled.
Whiteness is a shield and a shroud. It protects White people from the full cruelty of an uncaring machine which sees most people solely as something to fuel it, both worker and consumer, and obscures them from seeing that other people are experiencing that cruelty because they are not White. I’ve heard the refrain that the system is broken, and I disagree. The system is working as intended; the intent was never equality. At what point is the White tendency towards encouraging people of color to work within the system a manifestation of subconscious fears of losing power unfairly afforded to them by a system designed for that purpose?