White Humans
White Humans are Whites who identify as humans rather than as better-than-any-other-humans. Simple. I’m white as skim milk and secretly wish I could be browner for beauty’s sake. But I’m not fool enough to sincerely wish that.
Dear Black, Asian, Latinx, Samoan, Maasi humans, I was born white. It happens when your parents are white. They can’t help it. Same as you can’t help mirroring those who gave you life. Most humans know that before they’re teens.
Honestly, I can’t deny that I’ve rolled in White privilege like a frisky horse in grass. I can’t help that either. Wouldn’t you? But I keep wanting us all on the same greased chute into life. I’m a White Human. And I don’t care whether you have a different eye flap than me or another tone of skin.
Well not much. Because I am a woman and I admit that strangling the sexism out of my brain has not been completely successful. I bet you’re sexist too. If you live in a New York loft or a house of straw and mud. Apache, Haitian, Parisian. Sexism. Us.
And to that extent I admit to you I’m a racist. I bet you are too. I was reading Ta-Nehisi Coates and getting mad. OK sir, but what about us women? You can’t be that aggrieved while ignoring the rape, mutilation, income inequality. Etc. Of women.
So here we all are. Imperfect, abjectly human, pimpled, third grade teachers wanting kids to thrive, pimps. Hooked noses, button noses, blond, white-once-brown, jet black. Crooked toes, crossed eyes, hunger. Anyone here not belong to that group?
And I’m tired of hearing Black Americans. How about Black Humans? Isn’t that the point? Black Americans can’t come out of your mouth without dragging hundreds of years of intolerable history along with it. You can’t say it without hearing chains clank. But Black Human? Level playing field. Which biology tells us, folk wisdom (when wise) tells us, common sense tells us. We’re human animals in a world of other animals. We’re animals with pretty music and Vermeers, but we’re meat. Meat.
No Munchkins, no Oz. That guy behind the curtain whispering trash? He had to fly home to Kansas. Good luck to him assembling a following in Kansas.
Best of all would be “We’re humans.” But none of us has gotten that far yet. But now there’s ferment in the human lab, beakers bubbling, odors changing. Let’s get going folks, change.