An Observation About White People and Wypipo [View all]

[EffieBlack]

There’s been quite the kerfuffle here the last couple of days involving discussions of the word “Wypipo” with some white DUers getting very upset with the notion of using any race-identifying term to describe the behaviors of any subset of white people.

This is not the first time I’ve seen reactions like this from some whites - not just to such terms as “Wypipo” but to ANY reference to their race. One sure way to get a reaction on DU is to post anything that includes the term “white people.” As sure as day follows night, several white folk will strenuously object and we’ll see responses that have become so common, they have their own hashtags, such as #notallwhitepeople.

Yet, by the same token white folk seem to have no trouble at all identifying other racial groups and other demographics by their identifying characteristics - African-Americans, women, LGBQT, Muslims, etc. - and they do so frequently and without any self-consciousness or shame (often the very same post in which they complain about being referred to as “white”).

I’ve long been fascinated by this dynamic, so I used to conduct an experiment with my law students on the first day of class. I’d casually ask all of the black students to raise their hands. Without hesitation, the black students all raised their hands. And, invariably, the white students would turn toward the black students, anticipating that they WOULD raise their hands.

Then I’d ask all of the white students to raise their hands. But, instead of raising their hands, most of them just sat there and stared at me like I’d lost my damned mind. When I pressed them - “C’mon - raise your hands!” - a couple of them would do it grudgingly, but the others still didn’t want to and got very agitated, asking why THEY were being singled out by race. “Why are you asking. What does are race have to do with anything?”

They also frequently turned toward their black classmates and either tacitly or sometimes outright asked them to say something about how wrong this was (“Aren’t you gong t say anything?” “This is so wrong. Why aren’t you saying anything?”).

This led to some very interesting discussions. For example, the black students asked their white classmates why they didn't object when I first singled them out - not only did they not object, but they fully expected the black students to identify themselves - yet the white students expected the black students to defend them when it was THEIR turn in the barrel.

When I asked the black students why they complied so quickly, they usually just shrugged and said it was no big deal. They often noted that they were so used to being seen and identified as black, they thought nothing of it. And since I hadn’t said anything derogatory or suggested that I was going to treat them any differently or worse just because they were black, they weren’t concerned.

On the other hand, the white students said it made them very uncomfortable. The most common response was along the lines of, “I don’t think of myself as a white person. I’m just a person.” One student said she was afraid that, because I was black, my noticing they were white and saying it out loud meant that I planned to discriminate against them in favor of the black students.

I used this to help demonstrate how minorities are so accustomed to being identified as subgroups, to be singled out as minorities, while white people saw themselves, not as a group, but as just people and really resented being identified by their race. It also showed how minorities tend not to immediately assume that racial identifications include an inherent racial bias or judgment - without more, they see it as simply a description (“That white lady over there said the store closes at 5”), while whites tend to assume any racial identification is per se discriminatory - at least when applied to them.

That helps to explain why some white acquaintances get very uncomfortable when I say, for example, “I’ll meet you in the cafe at 3. I’m black and will be wearing a beige coat.” They’re ok with the coat, but don’t want me to think they’ll notice that I’m black - even though that’s the most logical way to spot me in restaurant filled with mostly white people - because they think that means they’re “being racist.”

So, I think the upset about “Wypipo” stems largely from a real discomfort, not just with a subset of white folk being poked fun at for certain behaviors that invite ridicule, but from the larger and deeper unease that many white people have at being identified as “white” at all, i.e., something other than just “people.”