A white friend of mine told me how she heard a black woman declare

that she wishes she could try being white. The black woman, a well-known artist, had given a talk at which she made the "white" remark. My white friend, who attended, was taken aback. How, she asked me, could this strong, successful, confident black woman wish she were white? How could this black person feel such a thing, let alone declare it in public?

I told my friend that I don't know the black woman in question, but I'd bet anything that what she meant was that she'd like to be white for a little while. So would I and a whole lot of other black people I know – as long as we could promptly return to being black, since it's too good to give up.

We'd want to be white for a little while because we want to see what white society conceals from us: what some whites say to other whites when there are no blacks in the room or when people of color are out of earshot; how some whites behave when only whites are watching; and most importantly, what the experience of whiteness actually feels like in a society in which blackness is both feared and envied. What is it like to stand, drink in hand, in a circle of white peers while one of us chortles at a black joke or ogles an African-American derriere? How does it feel to be white and see two young black men with baggy pants walk toward us on the street at night, or to stand in a crowd at a funkified concert and gyrate to music that has not been second-nature to us since birth, or to go through our days and nights without experiencing the kinds of everyday treatment encountered by people with dark skin in America?

I told my friend about the old Eddie Murphy Saturday Night Live sketch in which he goes undercover, as a black man with whitened skin and hair, to discover how whites really treat one another (they don't use money but simply give stuff to one another; only people of color have to pay). The skit worked because it played on the core tension of all forms of apartheid: people want to witness the worlds that are forbidden to them.

Sure, there are blacks who truly wish for whiteness: think Michael Jackson's self-maiming surgeries or the bitterly secret lives of extremely light-skinned blacks who secretly "pass" for white. But I'm certain that what the black artist was trying to say in the talk attended by my friend was something like, "As an artist, I want to see everything. Especially the points of view that the world tries to hide from me."

Maybe in another life she'll get the chance. And she can paint it.

Comments

[AngelaTC]

I believe she would be disappointed to learn that most of that stuff doesn't actually happen. But there's no way I'll pretend that men don't stare at women's butts.

[Bruce A. Jacobs]

Angela: So you believe that mundane or profound differences in everyday treatment, in intra- vs. inter-racial conversation, and in where one feels most culturally comfortable "don't happen." A slew of white, brown and black people I know tell me otherwise. Someone is mistaken here, and the odds tell me it's you. Don't assume, either, that guys are the only gender who look at the opposite (or the same) gender's butts. That's why I deliberately didn't use a gender pronoun there.