by Emma Sullivan
[TheAge] My phone pings. A friend request from the guy I went on a date with. I feel a sense of dread as I flick through his photos. My shoulders tense and rise to my ears before I let out a sigh of relief – he has friends of colour.
I find comfort in having no friends.
| I have all kinds of friends, which goes with having a wide variety of interests — and belonging to several minorities pretty much guarantees that most of my friends are not like me in one or more significant ways. Picking friends solely based on the colour of their skins is racist. |
The older I get, the more I find myself scanning the crowd to find faces like mine. Children of immigrants, those with a mixed heritage and third culture kids.
| Apparently third culture kids are those who grow up in a culture not their parents’, i.e. the first generation children of immigrants and expats, who do not feel completely a part of either the Olde Countrie or the New. The term dates back to 1950s sociology studies of the childen of expats in India. Mr. Wife and I, as two of the many children of immigrants in our respective milieus, and the trailing daughters, as expats during the first stage of their childhood, were third culture kids — along with tens of millions of others in America and elsewhere. We found it enriching, unlike Ms Sullivan. |
We gravitate towards each other with a sense of solidarity, even if our cultures are vastly different. It feels good to know we have shared experiences, from being familiar with the feeling that you have to assimilate to whiteness, to knowing to remove your shoes before you enter a house.
| What the poor darling is suffering from is limited experience. Everywhere one goes the social rules are different, and must be learnt — this has nothing to do with whiteness or any other colour, but is just part of the fun of going to new places. |
Being half white and growing up in a very Anglo-Saxon suburb, this hasn’t always been the case. In high school, I clung to my white privilege as it allowed me to laugh off comments like “you’re not really Asian” or “you don’t count”.
Read the rest at the link
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I am not certain they will accept us. Perhaps we should land at a different clearing.