I'm white.
Just wanted to say that up front.


If you ask me at any other time I'm probably going to tell you that I'm a woman. I'm middle-class. I come from the "heroin capital of the Northeast".  I'm a student (though, depending where I am, I'm not going to tell you that I go to Columbia cause I'm sort of ashamed).

The whiteness always comes last, but somehow I feel like I can never get past it. When I realized I was white - oh, what a day that was - I realized that it was visible. This is what people knew of me first - not my hometown or my school or my financial situation. They saw my whiteness and that said something, and I'd never even known.


So when I say there's no I in racism, I know how ridiculous it is. But that's how it feels for white folks sometimes, and honestly so.  It's so easy to say you don't see color when you don't see your own.