Pssst … I wannabe white

Aristotle: ‘There is nothing so unequal as the equal treatment of unequals.’

I’d like to preface my paper by stating that I am speaking about my experience only, my life only, my interpretation only. I speak only for myself. I definitely am not speaking on behalf of others, especially other Aboriginal people. I state this up front, for just as whites who question their whiteness are often considered traitors to their race, I have found the same reaction when I have said to certain Aboriginal people who misunderstand my point and my pain: ‘I’d really like to be white, for a change’. Such a statement has been seen as a betrayal and a violation of Aboriginality when in fact it is a cry from the heart which has been ravaged by racism.

Thus should anybody, black or white, be offended by my remarks, I take no responsibility for your interpretation, only for my intention, which is to share rather than to offend.

Psssst … I Wannabe White

Whiteness has moulded, wounded, and informed me. How, when, why, where I don’t really know (I’d be an expert if I did) for, essentially, it is something you detect, not define.

But right from the start, I knew that not to be white was … well … not quite right.

Don’t ask me how I knew it. I just knew it. I knew from an early age, long before the geneticists, the racists, the theorists and the apologists came along, that white was … somehow … was about being … right … being bright … and having might on your side.

I knew from my primary school days when kids like Richard C*** used to call out ‘Gooday, Blackgin’. He said it with such a grin. Ouch, it wounded and scalded as I tried to get him back. I knew that anything other than white was not quite right at about eight years old when a white kid gave me a lolly one day and I obligingly said ‘ta’. That kid laughed at me and said: ‘Tar’s black, so take it back’!

In my early teens, I began to suspect that white was not only right but racist when I was booking my seat at the local picture show and Tubs B*** one of my white classmates, piped up and said: ‘Don’t worry about booking a seat, Lillian, because no one would want to sit next to an ugly blackgin like you’.… I had just turned fourteen.

I was devastated and humiliated. In a moment of realisation which has never left me, I knew that boonginess was anathema to whiteness.

I was to be awakened to whiteness through many remarks like that. Hence, I intuitively came to know that I was part of the ‘otherness’ which whiteness in this country both overtly and covertly defined or ignored.

My teens were traumatic as I searched for signals that said I was OK. But lo, there were no magazines that had women or girls with my features and colour. Whiteness was applauded and accorded Goddess status and statement through endless pages of women with white skin, blue eyes (usually), thin European noses, and mostly blond hair. Not that they were all like that. Deviation was all right if your skin was white. Thus, brown eyes and hair was more than acceptable in the lightness of whiteness. Whiteness, I realised, was like a flashing sentinel signalling all those who could pass through. It aided and abetted, especially those polished, varnished white women, with porcelain skin and features, all taking pride of place in the beauty and popularity stakes.

By the 60s when I was a teenager, even the first black models out of the States were acceptably European looking in both features and colour. No broad noses or black skins. Heaven forbid! The correctness and mightiness of whiteness saw to that.

My now deceased cousin, Gloria Huggins-Murphy, and I used to joke about not making it into the Surfie Stakes of the 60s. There was no glass ceiling to exclude us from the sand, the surf, the sun, where the blond, bold and beautiful surfie girls and boys played. It was more the stares and glares, as it was elsewhere when people of colour or ‘otherness’ strayed over the line. And, oh yes, despite what feminists would like to believe, white women were implicated too in that they were both the messenger and the message. Just like the blokes. I found, too, that fear, in white women – disguised as smugness – was part of whiteness.

My cousin and I knew intuitively that we were relegated to being Boongie rather than Blondie. We knew that our noses, our hair, our skin, were not quite right … that is, not white. So I never ever got to flaunt my itsy bitsy, teeny weeny, yellow black and red bikini!

And as for the cosmetic counters at the big stores, their darkest foundation, as the white girls behind the counter kindly pointed out, was … well … ‘the darkest they had’. Whiteness acknowledged whiteness even in the cosmetic industry for this so-called ‘darkest shade they had’ was unquestionably light and for white girls. They were apologetic and unnerved as they went on to the next customer, and we coloured girls giggled and moved on … having known beforehand what the response was going to be.

But colour is not just skin deep as whiteness attests to. Whiteness shamed and whiteness blamed. It defined and it delineated. That is, it defined and delineated who could come into the fold and who stayed out. In the spectrum of blackness, whiteness divided and ruled and, as a young girl, I was too boongie even for the local black beauty contests such as the Miss Opal contests. Whiteness saw to that for in the same way that little black girls chose white dolls over black ones, it too had permeated the psyche of the good coloured citizens who chose, consciously or unconsciously, the assimilated and acceptable face of lightness, so that none of the winners were ever too ‘boongie’ looking.

I was beginning to get the message. Who wouldn’t? Who couldn’t? When Whiteness was fortified and glorified even in the realm of blackness.

I thought it must be me, as Whiteness continued to scare me, scar me and jar me. Its tentacles were ever present even through the well-meaning and wonderful whitefellas with rose-coloured glasses who, so they said, ‘never noticed colour’ or stated that ‘I always wanted to be your colour, Lillian’. They oozed saccharin as they purred over and praised my acceptable caramel colouring. The acceptable caramel colouring of an octoroon, a half-caste, a part-Aborigine. But which part, which caste?

Oh the arrogance of whiteness within these well-meaning whitefellas. They exuded decency whilst being in denial. Despite being browned off by these inane remarks, being acceptable Brown in colour versus objectionable Black did have and still does have its advantages. For as the Black Panther saying of the 60s went: ‘If you’re White, that’s all right, if you’re Brown stick around, if you’re Black stay back’.

So, being Brown, it was OK to hang around. And so, in my late teens and early twenties, Whiteness beckoned me further. It even rewarded me as I became one of the very few Aborigines or the first one to do this, or to do that. I was even congratulated by my ‘own people’ as a role model who practised the rituals of whiteness, such as politeness, niceness, cleanliness and Godliness. Or so the theory went!

Whiteness, through whitefellas, some of them my best friends, insidiously seeped into my soul and psyche, without me knowing it. Encountering whitefellas daily as I rose in their ranks meant that I could observe, scrutinise and analyse them, for I was most often a minority of one, be it in the workforce, the shop or the street. Whitefellas both fascinated me and infuriated me, as they still do, today. I wanted to join them and beat them, at the same time.

In the 1960s in my heyday when I first strutted my stuff, this was all very heady and giddy. I was often confused. But then who wasn’t in the sixties? I even became educated. Truly educated in the eyes of whitefellas. I acquired degrees. I was a success and as I ventured down the many meandering corridors of acceptability, whiteness was not necessarily unkind.

But while whiteness welcomed me, it also rejected me. That’s part of its paradox. Being able to drink of the same water but not from the same cup. And speaking of drinking, I was always ‘not like the rest of them’ (meaning my mob) whilst I was clean, sober and toiling, but when I got drunk, I was often just another ‘boozing boong’.

I began to weary and I became wary … of whitefellas, their games, their institutions. I studied them, labelled them, dissected them, shook my head at their paradoxes, their pronouncements and their practices. Most people of colour have endless opportunity to observe whiteness, given that most have to live in it. Whereas the opposite is not true for whitefellas.

Naively, I dodged, ducked and rode the waves of whiteness which were ever present, thinking that there would be reprieve around the corner. Meanwhile, whitefellas kept on keeping on, glibly gliding through life, their superiority never allowing them to look at the shadow side – or should that be shallow side – of their inferiority. Finally I balked. After endless years of aspiring, perspiring and desiring, I surrendered. The bereftness of whiteness had taken its toll on me. I’d played their game, with all its delusions and illusions. Despite being bright enough and light enough, I still was not right because ultimately, well, by now, it was pretty obvious … I was not white.

I’d tapped on the brittle outer shell of whiteness and just when I thought it would open up a new world, it clamped shut like a clam shell. The marginalised are forever boundary riders when it comes to whiteness, or so I found.

My intuitive recall was alive as ever. From puberty to maturity, from schooldays to workdays, I knew for sure that whiteness was about apartness. Like a sensual, but slimy suitor, it had sucked me in then spat me out.

So, having generally located myself in relation to Whiteness and what it has done both for me and to me, why do you reckon I wannabe White?

The answer is simple: to alleviate the pain of being the target of racism. I’ve tried everything else to shake off the racism which leaves scars on one’s soul. That racism which is about pigmentation and identification of you as ‘other’. That racism which has whitefellas in this country saying: ‘You’re imagining all of this, Lillian’. That white racism which says: ‘You’ve got a chip on your shoulder, your’re too sensitive, too paranoid’.

That racism which has the Hansonites say, ‘We’re all Australians and we need to be treated equally’.

That racism which whitefellas aren’t even aware of, let alone need to examine because of the privileges and power of whiteness which treats those on its lowest rung better than the most exalted of the ‘others’.

Yeah, I wannabe white … so that I don’t have to be acutely aware every day of my ‘otherness’ in the eyes of the dominant whites. So that I don’t have to be further insulted and assaulted on a regular basis by the smugness, the emptiness and well-meaningness of whiteness.

Yeah, for a change I’d like to be part of the powerful, part of the fold, part of the majority, which doesn’t necessarily have to examine itself. Sure, it would be strange and foreign, even if it were only for a day or two, but it would be a relief from the attitudinal stares and glares.

Oh to walk the terrain without pain!

But in order to do so, I’d need to get a nose job and have my skin turned white. Perhaps even dye my hair blonde. Then when people looked at me it would be because, well … I might be a blonde but at least I’m not a boong. But then people do notice blondes, too. So if I didn’t like them looking at me because I was a blonde, I could re-dye my hair and escape from the despair.

Wow, what a relief from racism! Wow, that’s what whiteness affords you. What a delight to be white, for a change. Wow, what a relief to be white and … well … you know … considered SO right and SO bright!